Pop-up Opera

Pop-up Opera are back with their ingenious retelling of comic operetta Le Docteur Miracle. This is a rare chance to see Bizet's gem with madcap laughs galore.

At the age of eighteen, Bizet won a competition organised by Offenbach to write an operetta. It was to be based on a libretto, a French adaptation
of Sheridan's St Patrick's Day. The result was Le Docteur Miracle where a young man, Silvio, comes to the mayor's house in various disguises in order to win the hand of his daughter, Laurette. As this is only a one act operetta, Pop-up Opera have extended the piece in their own inimitable style with extracts from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers and from Carmen. At the beginning of Le Docteur Miracle, Silvio is serenading Laurette but this does not feature in the original score. Here, Silvio sings the tenor aria from The Pearl Fishers ‘Je crois entendre encore’. Prepare yourself for some surprises that perfectly complement the French bistro feel as Pop-up Opera give you a musical menu with a Pearl Fishers starter, a Docteur Miracle main course and a dessert of Carmen.

The production also gestures to Pop-up Opera's previous version of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and their forthcoming retelling of Mozart's Così fan tutte in which 'medical miracles' and disguise feature prominently for comic effect.