commissioned by: Streetwise Opera

premiere:  Spitalfields Festival, London, U.K.  December – 2010

collaborators: directed by Flat-e. music by Mira Calix

instrumentation:  Charmian Bedford – soprano, choir, electronics

format: film short

nominated: – British Composers Award – Outreach Category – 2011

Following on from their successful collaboration on My Secret Heart, Flat-e
and Mira Calix have collaborated on a new commission for Streetwise Opera  , The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Inviting the audience to step into the magical world of legend and folklore, Fables – A Film Opera is part-opera, part-film. It has been created by some of the country’s leading composers and filmmakers working around the country with Streetwise Opera performers.

Composers  Mira Calix, Orlando Gough, Paul Sartin/Andy Mellon (members of the folk band Bellowhead) and Emily Hall have teamed up with film-makers Tom Marshall, Flat-e, Gaëlle Denis, Iain Finlay and director Emma Bernard to produce truly innovative works that span the genres of opera, folk, electronica and film. The teams have created four stunning seven-minute films based on fables from the classic, The Boy who Cried Wolf; the folkloric, the legend of the Hartlepool Monkey; the literary, Oscar Wilde’s poignant The Nightingale and the Rose and the contemporary Shinishi Hoshi’s captivating He-y, Come on Ou-t!

The production will involve a screening of the four film operas interspersed with live opera starring a cast of over 100 Streetwise Opera performers and professional musicians. . Shoreditch Church will be transformed for the event by designer Livi Vaughan (who works for internationally renowned theatre company Punch Drunk), transporting audiences into a magical world the moment they set foot in the building. Following the live premiere, the films will tour to film festivals, cinemas and other venues internationally.