News

I am delighted to announce that I have been selected as one of three St Martin in the Fields Associate Choral Leaders. I will be working as part of their vibrant music department and to build up the music-making at Dunstable Priory Church. On top of our weekly Sunday services, our first big event is an evensong for the Church’s dedication festival at 4pm on the 15th of October – featuring music by Stanford, Goodall

After the success of A Rose by Another Name: Romeo and Juliet, Marginalia were delighted to be invited to premiere our Hansel and Gretel at JAM on the Marsh in July. The production is sung in my own up-to-date English translation and is woven together with original fairy-narration written with the help of Romeo and Juliet’s Rebecca Hare. Eleanor Burke’s dramatic vision is high-energy, equal parts funny, moving and totally chaotic. We welcome Evie Butcher

June 24th (Histon Baptist Church) and 25th (West Road Concert Hall) 2023 As I told the choir when we started rehearsals in April, Elijah has all the drama of an opera without any of the running around. With this gauntlet thrown, the choir produced a vivid and gripping performance that was equally slick in terms of ensemble and textual precision. We were lucky enough to have four outstanding soloists: Anna-Luise Wagner, Jessica Lawrence-Hares, Peter Weatherley

I am delighted to be have been appointed as the new director of Choir 2000. They are a choral society based in Histon, near Cambridge, who perform lots of the famous choral classics, as well as lighter music, new music and music by underrepresented composers. Our first concert, ‘Songs of Closing and departing’ is coming up on the 25th and 26th of March. It pairs Fauré’s Requiem with solo songs and choral pieces by Amy

“What is the role of a performer? If it just to bring the score to life? To realise as faithfully as possible the intentions of the composer? Perhaps. But sometimes, you can remake the score, or just throw it out entirely.” We recently visited Francis Holland Sloane Square to talk to their Sixth Form about creative agency as a performer, marking the launch of Marginalia Performance’s Education Programme. We introduced our work making classical music

Chloë Allison answers questions on her doctoral research into medieval polyphony, which forms the basis of Marginalia Performance’ latest performance project. In the Shadow of Notre Dame breathes life into the forgotten sound world of twelfth-century Paris and explores its vibrant and ambitious musical community in story and song. What is your research about? At the end of the twelfth century, Paris was an exciting place to live. The French kings had recently moved their

Owen Davies from Play to See attended our Pimlico performance of ‘A rose by another name: Juliet and Romeo’ and gave us a glowing review! Keep an eye out for dates in Oxford and Cambridge in the new year. “The pandemic has had many dreadful effects but there have been some unexpected glimmers of light. Young performers – starved of opportunities to perform in traditional venues – have begun to devise innovative shows, performed in

Marginalia’s A rose by another name: Juliet & Romeo is a newly devised piece for two singers and one actor, irreverently combining Shakespeare’s timeless words with Bellini’s intoxicating melodies. Creator Chloë Allison explains what inspired her to fuse theatre and opera. Photo Tristan Selden “There are provocative tensions between William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830) by Vincenzo Bellini and librettist Felice Romani. Shakespeare’s Romeo, although not entirely sinless,

I am thrilled to announce the launch of Marginalia Performance, founded and directed by myself and Dr Anna-Luise Wagner. Marginalia is an interdisciplinary performance collective that brings cutting-edge academic research to life in performance, telling stories that have remained hidden on the margins of history. We also shine new light on more familiar material, re-energising well-known repertoire by exploring it from different perspectives. As well as using research to unlock possibilities for original and engaging

The last few months have been quiet for everyone in the performing arts sector. When we finished our run of La Cenerentola back in February, COVID-19 was in other parts of the world, and none of us could have possibly imagined that within weeks every stage in the UK would have fallen silent. I was extremely disappointed when two recitals as part of the Cambridge Brahms festival and another for the Brockenhurst music society were