Get outside the box of opera as you know it

This new production by New Zealand Opera sees a King in distress transformed into a modern corporate everyman as a disarming device to explore our complicated relationships with mental health and power. As an added twist, audiences will experience the action again, with only a window separating you and the King.

Maxwell Davies’s extraordinary score derives from the songs King George III played on his mechanical organ and attempted to train his bullfinches to sing. The music requires a baritone of extraordinary technique to sing over five octaves, with New Zealander Robert Tucker fit for the challenge.

Partnering with the ground-breaking contemporary music ensemble Stroma, this modern take on opera will have a maddening intrigue of its own.

These performances of Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies are given by permission of Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd, exclusive agents for Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd of London. 

RNZB Dance Centre

Mon 2 Mar, Wed 4 Mar, Thurs 5 Mar, Sat 7 Mar, 8.30pm

$73 – $79 (excluding booking fees).  
Visit www.festival.co.nz

Creative Director Marnie Karmelita:
“We are proud to support New Zealand Opera’s presentation of this work that has such current resonance and stretches the idea of what opera could be and how it can be experienced.”

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies was one of the most significant figures in post-War European music. He rose to prominence in late 1960s with neo-expressionistic music-theatre pieces Eight Songs for a Mad King and Vesalii Icones, orchestra scores Worldes Blis and St Thomas Wake, and opera Taverner . Since the 1970s, his worklist included Trumpet Concerto, 10 Symphonies, and 10 Strathclyde Concertos written for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He created many works for young performers,  and was active as a conductor, both of his own works and standard repertoire. He was the Master of the Queen’s Music from 2004 until 2014.

Thomas de Mallet Burgess

Thomas de Mallet Burgess is a graduate of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University. He has established an international reputation for directing award-winning opera and leading ground-breaking research in opera performer training.

His substantial credits as an opera director encompass critically acclaimed productions for national companies such as The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Canadian Opera Company, Opera Ireland and one of the world’s most important opera festivals, Wexford Festival Opera.

He is author of the ground-breaking performer training work: “The Singing and Acting Handbook” (published Routledge) and a regular visiting artist at conservatories worldwide.

His strong commitment to the role of the arts in encouraging communities to find their voice has resulted in a sustained history of collaboration with the Learning and Participation programmes of major organisations in the UK, including English Touring Opera (where he pioneered a three-year programme on music with the Deaf Community).

Before moving to New Zealand he founded Lost & Found Opera in Perth, hailed as “the nation’s most innovative opera company” (Opera Magazine) and “one of the few genuinely disruptive arts organisations in Australia” (The West Australian).

Robin Rawstorne

Robin Rawstorne is Creative Director of Rawstorne studio – a multidisciplinary design studio driven by artistic passion and innovation, with a focus on applying storytelling techniques and design thinking to emerging technology briefs and re-inventing traditional ones.

Prior to forming Rawstorne studio Robin worked in Europe as Set Designer for largescale opera and theatre.

The studio now works within the realms of show direction and design, exhibition design, experiential installations and architectural dreamscapes for clients that include museums, festivals, advertising agencies, gaming companies, theatre, dance and opera companies, local government and art trusts, both in New Zealand and Asia.

Robert Tucker

Born in Australia and raised in Dunedin, Baritone Robert Tucker completed a Bachelor of Music at the University of Otago in 2004 and spent time living in Australia and the UK before returning to New Zealand in 2012. He was an Emerging Performer at the Australian Opera Studio in 2005 and is a current Freemasons Opera Scholar with New Zealand Opera.

In 2016 Robert played Baron Douphol in NZ Opera’s Christchurch season of La traviata and Tommo in the new chamber opera from Ross Harris and Vincent O’Sullivan, Brass Poppies, a New Zealand Festival, Auckland Arts Festival and NZ Opera co-production. Other roles include Yamadori/ Sharpless (cover): Madama Butterfly; Masetto: Don Giovanni; Schaunard: La bohème; Baron Douphol: La traviata (cover); Noah: Noye’s Fludde (NZO); Ford: Falstaff (IFAC Opera Japan); Count Almaviva: The Marriage of Figaro (English Chamber Opera); Morales: Carmen (Scottish Opera, AOS); Guglielmo: Così fan tutte  (Australian Opera Studio, Opera Otago); Papageno: Die Zauberflöte; Harlequin: Ariadne auf Naxos; Lescaut: Manon; Mr Peachum: The Threepenny Opera; Garibaldo: Rodelinda (AOS); Opera Highlights tour (Scottish Opera).

He has also made his film debut as Mr. Peacock in the short film Mr. Peacocks Day based on the short story by Katherine Mansfield. 

Theatre , Solo , Opera ,

1 hr 15 min