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Background
The
Yorke Trust has
successfully performed opera every summer as the culmination of a period
of intensive training for young singers and instrumentalists drawn from
international music conservatoires.
The Sailor’s Tale is the Trust’s first
commission and
is modelled on Stravinsky’s popular work The Soldier’s
Tale.
Based on the life of Nelson, and involving children’s choruses,
the work developed closer links between the Yorke Trust and the
community.
Throughout
the year eight primary schools have had visits from professional
musicians, actors, designers and writers.
They have been researching Nelson’s life, how to sing, write
poetry, navigate the ocean, tie knots, make fabric, and much more
including taking part in special art competition.
For all the 150 children involved, music drama has been a totally
new experience.
Performance venues
were all associated with Nelson and had been chosen
so the visitor could enjoy a day out in beautiful surroundings, have a picnic,
visit historic country houses, or just stroll in an attractive village
they came to the opera.
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The New Work
Stravinsky’s popular and
successful music theatre work The
Soldier’s Tale was written at a time of austerity at the end of
the First World War. Conceived
as a way of touring musical theatre on a low budget, the forces used
were both flexible and small. There
have been a number of attempts to write a companion piece, but as yet
there has been nothing that has stood the test of time.
The life of Horatio Nelson, born in a neighbouring village to
South Creake, presents an ideal source of material for The
Sailor’s Tale. Five
performances of the Stravinsky and the new work are being given as a
double bill in Wells-next-the-Sea, Burnham Market, Walsingham and South
Creake. Additionally,
twelve lunch-time performances of the new work are being taken to venues
including Houghton Hall, Holkham Gardens, Wells Buttlands, Burnham
Thorpe, Burnham Market Green and Green Quay, King’s Lynn.
All the venues have connections with Nelson.
In order to involve children,
optional scenes have been written that can be included or omitted in
subsequent productions. These
sections of the work are being used as school projects and will be
published later, together with a recording, as a Nelson Children’s
Song Book. Primary schools
taking part include Bircham, Blakeney, Brancaster, Burnham Market,
Hindringham, Ingoldisthorpe, Langham and Wells-next-the-Sea. Some are so small as to preclude any significant music making
in the weekly timetable – for all the children, being involved in
music drama is a totally new experience.
Supporting workshops in singing
have begun with Gill Smith and the Shantymen.
Joyce Ellis brings boys from the Kinder Children’s Choir of the
High Peak for workshops and a concert 18-21 April; Kevin Hathway leads
percussion workshops in partnership with London’s Royal College of
Music 9-12 May and 20-22 June. Writing
workshops led by Kevin Crossley-Holland will encourage children to
contribute to the new work. Other
workshops include drama and fabric design (parents are being involved
with set construction and making costumes).
The librettist Kevin Crossley-Holland has
written this about The Sailor’s
Tale:-
The
story revolves around Horatio Nelson, as a boy in Burnham Thorpe in
Norfolk, and as England’s greatest maritime hero.
Rapid scenes, some of them ‘documentary’ and set in
Nelson’s lifetime, some set in the present day, aim to reveal
Nelson’s complex, vain, passionate, morally brave and physically
brave, lovable character. The
action is underpinned by certain recurring questions: in what ways was
the boy father to the man? what
was Nelson’s attitude to the enemies he fought?
what was the dynamic of his relationship with Emma Hamilton, and
should we think of it as one of the world’s great love matches?
how can public figures maintain private lives?
and how did Nelson use his power?
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