Opera della Luna

Two crazy operas in one unforgettable evening.

Croquefer and L’ile De Tulipatan
By Jacques Offenbach.

Sung in English in a completely new version by Jeff Clarke.
Opera della Luna come to The Lowry with two hilarious one-act operas by the French master of comic opera.

Croquefer
or The Last of the Paladins
Croquefer has abducted the daughter of his arch-rival: Rattlebone, with whom he has been at war for 23 years. Despite having lost most of his body parts, including his tongue, at the Crusades, Rattlebone is determined to fight one last battle to save his daughter.

Their bloody final fight-to-the-death is only prevented by the deft interference of Croquefer’s aide Fireball, who cunningly poisons the wine, thereby inflicting on all the combatants a devastating and debilitating dose of the squits.

L’Ile de Tulipatan
On the island of Tulipatan, King Cacatois XXII is unaware that his only son and heir, Alexis, is in fact biologically, his daughter. Knowing how desperate he was for a son, the doctors concealed the child’s true sex from the king, who has now grown increasingly despairing of his son’s gentle disposition.

Coincidentally, in order to avoid her child being conscripted into the army, the wife of the King’s Field Marshall has also lied to her husband about their daughter, who is in fact, a boy. How extraordinary it would be if these two bizarrely brought-up children were to meet and somehow fall in love.