Michael Berkeley: A Dinner Engagement
4, 6, 8, 11 June 2018, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Barbican, London
Opera & Vocal
The Long Christmas Dinner
Libretto by Thornton Wilder
Music by Paul Hindemith
A Dinner Engagement
Libretto by Paul Dehn
Music by Lennox Berkeley
Dominic Wheeler conductor
Ashley Dean director
Cordelia Chisholm designer
Kevin Treacy lighting designer
Laura Jane Stanfield costume designer
Victoria Newlyn movement director
The Guildhall School’s opera department presents a double-bill of one-act operas with a distinctive culinary flavour.
Hindemith’s imaginative family drama traverses 90 years in the lives of several generations of the Bayard family in New England. This subtle examination of American family life show births, marriages and deaths set against a backdrop of a rapidly changing society.
A gem of British comic opera, A Dinner Engagement is a comedy of manners set amongst the vegetables. Finding themselves in financial straits, Lord and Lady Dunmow prepare to host dinner for the Grand Duchess of Monteblanco and her son Phillipe in an attempt to marry off their troublesome daughter and thus solve their money problems. However, when dinner gets burnt, things go from bad to worse…
Tickets
£25 (£15 concessions), available from the Barbican Box Office from 3 April 2018.
Priority booking for Guildhall Circle members from Monda7 26 March 2018.
Silk Street Theatre