Twenty years ago, Blackheath Halls launched an ambitious annual community opera project with a production of Bizet’s Carmen. This September, the project returns to the opera that started it all, celebrating two decades of creativity, collaboration and community.
The company has never been one to shy away from a challenge. Last year they presented Gluck’s rarely staged Iphigenia in Tauris [see my review] and other works have included Bernstein’s Candide [see my review], Blow’s Venus and Adonis [see my review], Mozart’s Idomeneo, and Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Magic Bullets).
For the 20th anniversary production, Carmen will be directed by Harry Fehr and conducted by Christopher Stark [the team responsible for Blackheath’s production of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana in 2024, see my review] with performances from 20 to 27 September 2026. Mezzo-soprano Katie Bray will make her role debut as Carmen with Oliver Johnston as Don Jose [he sang Turiddu in Blackheath’s Cavalleria Rusticana], Chuma Sijeqa as Escamillo and Meeta Raval as Micaela. The production brings together professional opera singers, Trinity Laban vocal students, community orchestra and a community chorus of local performers aged 8 to 80+, including students from partner school Charlton Park Academy, a Special Academy for students with complex special educational needs.
Blackheath Halls Community Opera has welcomed thousands of people from across south-east London since 2007, creating an extraordinary intergenerational community brought together through opera. Several members of this year’s community chorus and orchestra also performed in the very first production of Carmen, and they are returning to the stage alongside first-time participants.
Tom Butler, who is performing Morales, sang in the Blackheath Halls Opera chorus as a child, and he is currently studying at the Royal Academy Opera School at the Royal Academy of Music. He comments:
“Blackheath Halls is pretty much the entire reason that I’ve gone into opera – I sang in multiple productions as part of the children’s chorus, and as one of Noah’s Sons in Britten’s ‘Noye’s Fludde’, then again in the chorus as a teenager for Weber’s ‘The Magic Bullets’.
My brother also sang in the children’s chorus before me and my Dad now sings in the chorus every year, so it’s a big part of my life, and I’ve gone to see the opera every year! It’s thrilling to be able to return as a principal, and I’m honoured to be involved again.”
Full details from Blackheath Halls’ website.
