Ghost: Emma Wheeler & Anna Appleby’s life experience as queer, neurodivergent women has inspired their new electronica-opera premiering at Tête à Tête

If You Died, Who Would You Choose To Haunt?

Manchester-based composer and songwriter Anna Appleby‘s work includes a chamber opera-ballet Citizens of Nowhere in 2016/17, an opera, Drought in 2022, for the BBC Philharmonic and an award-winning collaborative youth opera for Glyndebourne, Pay the Piper. But she also has a performance alter-ego called Norrisette, the moniker under which she writes, records, performs and produces electronic music and contemporary songs, as well as starting a regular music night in collaboration with Industries called FLUFF which is a platform for queer electronic artists. FLUFF was featured in the Guardian for its role in the underground music scene in Manchester.

Now Appleby and classically trained singer, Emma Wheeler have created Ghost, a new electronica-opera premiering at Tête à Tête Festival on the 28th September 2024, at the Cockpit Theatre, London. It features just the two performers, who have also written and composed the show together, and you can expect to hear everything from synthesizers and hyperpop to haunting vocals and fast-paced comic monologues.

Ghost is built on Emma Wheeler and Anna Appleby’s life experience as queer, neurodivergent women – stories that have not historically been told in opera. This opera is the coming-together of two musical worlds, from Appleby’s Glyndebourne and BBC Philharmonic opera composition history and Emma Wheeler’s rich mezzo vocals, to Norrisette and Rosé Gold’s grungy underground electronica and DIY drag fashion extravagance.

Prepare for a ghost story like no other!