Double Bill - Riders to the Sea and Cupboard Love

Berwick Festival Opera is delighted to continue its successful partnership with Byre Opera, who are touring their latest beautifully sung and elegantly staged production to the dramatic setting of Berwick’s Peace Hall.

For 2019, they’re presenting a double bill of contrasting British 20th Century one act operas, a tragedy and a comedy.

Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea is based on the play of the same name by J M Synge - with the original text largely intact but with its emotional impact and expressive power considerably intensified. Set in an Irish fishing community in Donegal, it focuses on a mother’s plaintive struggles with the heart wrenching and escalating loss of her menfolk to the sea.

Madeleine Dring’s Cupboard Love, written in the 1950s and staged for the first time in the UK, is a fast-paced, darkly hilarious and lyrical “whodunit” for 3 voices. The plot involves a young couple (He and She), an affair and a murder. She thinks He’s done it. He thinks She’s done it. Who’s been killed? Where's the body? Who’s done what? Come and find out for yourself...