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| Andrew Norman: A Trip to the Moon – Youth Company rehearsal, Garsington Opera 2024 (Photo: Julian Guidera) |
American composer Andrew Norman is perhaps best known for his orchestral works from Sacred Geometry (2003) to Play (2013) to Sustain (2018), which have won various awards including the 2017 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Music, whilst the Los Angeles Philharmonic won the Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance for their 2019 recording of Sustain.
Norman has, so far, only written one opera, A Trip to the Moon from 2017 which is subtitled ‘a melodrama for children’. The work was commissioned by Simon Rattle and premiered in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic, 200 volunteer singers and an orchestra made up of school children alongside members of the Philharmonic. Norman says of the piece that it was ‘conceived as an experience as much for the wide variety of people making it as for the audience watching it.’ But that it is ‘first and foremost a children’s opera, to be performed by and for children‘. Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra gave the work its first UK performance in a semi-staging at the Barbican Hall.
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| Andrew Norman: A Trip to the Moon – Adult Company rehearsal, Garsington Opera 2024 (Photo: Julian Guidera) |
Andrew Norman’s A Trip to the Moon is now receiving a full staging at Garsington Opera on 30 and 31 July 2024, directed by Karen Gillingham, (Gasington’s Creative Director of Learning & Participation), and conducted by Douglas Boyd with the Philharmonia Orchestra, professional soloists including Robert Murray and Jennifer France, and the Garsington Opera Youth and Adult community companies, plus children from two local primary schools making some 150 local people in all.
This is a community performance, and as with Garsington’s other community ventures, the event is inter-generational, with local people of different generations working shoulder-to-shoulder with professional singers and creative teams.
For many members of the Youth and Adult companies, the performance brings the experience of working alongside professionals as well as the chance to make friends with other company members. As one members of the Adult company put it, ‘I have been involved in Garsington Opera Adult Company for over 13 years and I love it. Singing brings me joy and I relish the challenge of pushing myself outside my comfort zone. Learning about the intricate tapestry of an opera’s creation alongside top-tier professionals is something truly wonderful.‘
As Karen Gillingham explains, ‘the infant group (5-7yr olds) came up
with moon games – crater hop scotch and meteoroid football. They are
bursting with ideas and super cute. One of the children is suffering
from severe trauma and is selective mute. He loves the rehearsals and
sings during them. It is an act of bravery for him to do this.‘
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| Andrew Norman: A Trip to the Moon – Adult Company rehearsal, Garsington Opera 2024 (Photo: Julian Guidera) |
The opera takes its theme from Georges Méliès’ seminal 1902 silent film [see it on YouTube], and the fantastical opera explores how linguistic barriers must be broken down so that Earth people can communicate with Moon people, who have their own lyrical lunar language, and eventually they all learn to rise above their mutual mistrust and come together to overcome a mysterious threat.
The images in this article were taken at recent rehearsals for A Trip to the Moon with the Garsington Opera Youth and Adult community companies at the new Garsington Studios.
Full details from Garsington Opera’s website.
