Published: 27 October, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR

THE world premiere of a new chamber opera based on Joseph Conrad’s seminal 1982 novella Heart of Darkness is being performed at the Linbury Theatre in the Royal Opera House on Tuesday.

It’s a co-production between Opera East, active in East Anglia for more than 10 years, and ROH2, the department at the opera house looking after a programme of opera development.

Young British composer Tarik O’Regan has teamed up with librettist Tom Phillips to write the piece.
    
Set in Africa at the height of  European colonialism, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness explores themes of obsession and brutality in the oppressive atmosphere of the equatorial rainforest as river boat captain Marlow ventures upstream in search of notorious ivory trader, Kurtz. Leading British tenor Alan Oke is Marlow in the opera.

Most famous among numerous adaptations of the novel is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, which moves the action from the Congo to Vietnam and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Another world premiere later next month at the Linbury is an innovative new opera Yes by American-born playwright-critic Bonnie Greer and Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen.

The piece is a “docu-opera” stemming from Bonnie’s experience in 2009 when she appeared on the BBC’s political discussion programme Question Time alongside Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party.

It was, she said after the programme, “probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life”.
Yes opens on November 22 followed by three more performances.