Emily Howard music

Words by Selma Dimitrijevic after a
short story by Robert Silverberg

Richard Baker conductor
Dan Ayling director
Ana Inés Jabares-Pita designer
Sally Ferguson lighting designer

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Nicholas Morris The Invisible
Anna Dennis The Other Invisible
Anne Mason Mother / The Judge
Peter Savidge Father / Brothel Owner
Caryl Hughes Sister
Daniel Norman Guard
Nathan Vale Guard

(duration approx. 75′)

And then they found me guilty, and then they pronounced me invisible, for a span of one year

Robert Silverberg, To See the Invisible Man

Condemned for a ‘crime of coldness’ by an authoritarian regime, The Invisible is cast adrift from society. All human interaction is outlawed. This life of isolation leads to strange, vicarious thrills and painful inner torment. Yet, as the lonely exile draws to a close, it is not coldness but perilous empathy with a fellow Invisible that risks the cycle of exclusion beginning all over again…

Emily Howard’s new opera, based on a short story by renowned American sci-fi writer Robert Silverberg, is a claustrophobic study of isolation; a dark satire on social conventions; and a stark reminder of our cruelty to outsiders. Howard’s music embraces extremes – the eerie beauty of The Invisible’s secluded psychological spaces set against the perpetual motion of the World of Warmth.

‘austerely sensuous and sensuously austere’ Poet Sir Geoffrey Hill on Howard’s music
  The opening performance of To See The Invisible will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC
Radio 3’s Hear and Now

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