Midsummer Opera

Ralph Vaughan Williams's brooding one-act opera, Riders To The Sea of 1927, is an almost verbatim setting of the 1904 play by Irish playwright J M Synge.

It's a complex interplay of ancient Celtic paganism and Roman Catholic Christianity against the backdrop of the power of the ever-present and consuming ocean. Midsummer Opera will perform it semi-staged in the wide space of St John's Waterloo.

Walton's stirring music for Laurence Olivier's 1944 film, arranged by Christopher Palmer into the suite 'Henry V - A Shakespeare Scenario' complete with declamatory narrator, played and sung by the full Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Midsummer Opera conducted by David Roblou, brings this varied programme to a rousing conclusion.