Par BENJAMIN GEORGE. Picture a day like this is the fourth collaboration between George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, whose acclaimed partnership produced Written on Skin, Lessons in Love and Violence, and Into the Little Hill. The opera – “a kind of Alice in Wonderland, but for adults”, says Crimp – lasts just over an hour and is cast in seven scenes. It is scored for five voices (S-S-MS-CT-Bar) and twenty-two instrumentalists. It premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2023, conducted by the composer. Picture a day like this is a bittersweet fable of grief and renewal. Benjamin and Crimp tell the story of a Woman who has lost her child: if, before nightfall, she meets one truly happy person and cuts a button from their sleeve, her child will live again. In her search she meets a pair of lovers, a Composer and their Assistant, an Artisan, Collector, and, in a beautiful garden, the mysterious Zabelle. This limited edition of the full score is one of only one hundred and fifty, presented in a cloth-bound hard cover. It is signed by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp and includes facsimile reproductions of pages from the manuscript and Benjamin’s sketches, and a photograph of Benjamin, Crimp and directors Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma in rehearsal at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. ‘Benjamin proves with this taut, sharp miniature that he is the finest opera composer of today…a work of depth of feeling, humanistic artistry and expressive rigor…a drama that is miraculously condensed.’ Süddeutsche Zeitung (Reinhard J. Brembeck) 9 July 2023 ‘…spare, haunting, immediate…a fable of loss and anguish for our times… The whole has the slick perfection of a piece crafted specifically for exceptional performers…the score [is] deft and restrained, its occasional outbursts of passion all the more intense for the careful control of the rest…There is a ritualistic slowness to the movement, resembling an underwater memory or the trance-like dullness of bereavement…For Zabelle’s enchanted garden, video artist Hicham Berrada has created an ambivalent scene of blossoming chemical reactions — toxic and vibrant, sinister and fascinating…It is fiendishly clever…. [the opera] tackles huge subjects with daring economy of means…Its impact is unsettling...For all its beguiling beauty, its moments of dark wit and bitter social observation, Picture remains a voyage beyond all comfort zones.’ Financial Times (Shirley Apthorp) 7 July 2023 / Date parution : 2023-10-31/ Répertoire / Choeur et Orchestre

A delightful Christmas cantata for children’s voices (and ensemble/electronic backing tracks) with or without narrator: reggae jazz rock ballad and pop numbers to witty text by Richard and Thomas Allain.Caesar has called a census in the Holy Land. So everyone is crowding back into Bethlehem a town where they read Shalom! Magazine where suddenly there are donkey traffic gridlocks and hotels where you can't get a room for love or shekels.Tom works doing odd jobs at the Fun Big Inn which isn't much fun at all. This busy night he decides to leave the landlord in the lurch and head for the bright lights of Jerusalem. But he doesn't get far runningfirst into reggae singing shepherds and then three groovy wise dudes following a star. Tom can hardly ignore the remarkable things they have to tell him. So what does he do next? What would any of us do?Richard and Thomas Allain retell the story of the Nativity in a new and individual way with immediacy and wit in a string of unforgettable tuneful songs and sharply clever words in an idiom accessible to everyone.Manger Tom can be performed with unison voices someone to narrate highly effective with just Piano or Keyboard accompaniment. But there are parts available too for instruments you might want to add. Included with the score of Manger Tom is a CD which comprises of a full performance of the musical numbers by professional singers and players as well as just the accompaniments for everyone to sing along to if they prefer.Additionally lyric sheets and a script are available as free downloads - visit www.hybridpublications.com to access the bonus material. Lyric sheets enable easy rehearsals and the script allows Manger Tom to be performed as a full nativity play.

Lyric opera in two acts. Libretto by David Pountney.Commissioned?jointly by the Royal Academy of Music London UK and The Juilliard School New York USA.UK premiere: 18th March 2011 - Royal Academy of MusicOpera and Sinfonia at the Royal Academy of Music London conducted by Jane Glover.US premiere: 16th November 2011 - Students of The Julliard School at Peter Jay Sharp Theatre New York conducted by AnneManson.Overview.The piece consists of three interlocking stories of students involved in political action in three different situations.?Die Weiße Rose? was the name taken by a group of students atthe University of Munich led by Sophie and Hans Scholl. They produced leaflets protesting against the National Socialist government of Germany in 1942-3 until they were arrested and guillotined.?Soar to Heaven? follows twocharacters Wu and Zhou involved on opposite sides of the Cultural Revolution in China.?The Oxford Revolution? tells the story of James Meredith who fought a lonely battle against segregation and racial prejudice to becomethe first black student to enrol at ?Ole Miss? the University of Mississippi in the USA.Librettist's Note.There are inevitably and properly some differences between the original libretto and whatMax ultimately set to music. Most of these are insignificant but all the Latin texts in the opera were added by Max and texts for the alternating black / white choruses (Scene 19) and final chorus (Scene 28) were written by him.