28/01/25
From Kendal to Copenhagen: 2024 Highlights
2024 was a bumper year for Mahogany Opera. We look back on our achievements and give thanks to everyone who has supported us...
We started 2024 in JANUARY by celebrating the previous year's successes, with a particular focus on ROLL UP! - a new Snappy Opera co-created by Jack McNeill, Claire Willoughby and Annie Ruscillo and the students of Sandgate School in Kendal. We presented a public screening of a very special film of the project at Kendal's Brewery Arts Centre, and explored the importance of working creatively in SEND settings in our first MEET ME @ MAHOGANY event of the year.
In FEBRUARY we hosted a day of creativity and connection for artists making work in Scotland. In partnership with Edinburgh Futures Institute and Snap-Elastic, A NEW SOUND helped to highlight the barriers artists face in creating new work, and how we can overcome them to create a better future together.
VIEW THE A NEW SOUND MANIFESTO
With the brighter weather in MARCH, we celebrated SPRING AWAKENINGS - a unique and inspiring celebration of spring, exploring ideas of growth for the year ahead, playing with words, music, ceremony and singing in the great outdoors, in the heart of the wild Ennerdale Valley – building on our work through THE GREAT LEARNING. We also shared our learning from A NEW SOUND, in our second MEET ME @ MAHOGANY event of the year.
READ MORE ABOUT SPRING AWAKENINGS
READ MORE ABOUT THE GREAT LEARNING
WATCH THE MEET ME @ MAHGANY DISCUSSION
In APRIL we were thrilled to welcome Karen Malim to the Mahogany Opera team! Karen joined us as our Development Manager and has helped to drive our fundraising efforts, supporting all of the work that we do!
MAY saw more exciting SNAPPY OPERAS activity. We revived ROLL UP! with workshops and performances with the pupils at Hadrian School in Newcastle, and continued our international journey with a special Teachers Workshop in Klaipeda, Lithuania. We continued in a similar vein in JUNE with a Snappy Opera Schools Workshop in Kiel, Germany, while back on home soil rehearsals began for SKY IN A SMALL CAGE, with the first sing-through of the new opera in the St Pancras Clock Tower in London.
JULY brought about another revival of a recent production, with our Artistic Director, Frederic Wake-Walker, directing performances of Errollyn Wallen’s DIDO’S GHOST with students from Trinity Laban in London.
Our work on SKY IN A SMALL CAGE - a new opera which presents a poetic reflection on the life and works of Sufi poet, Rumi, with music by Rolf Hind and words by Dante Micheaux – came to fruition in AUGUST with a world premiere at the Copenhagen Opera Festival, followed by the UK premiere at the Barbican Centre, London, in SEPTEMBER. This month also saw a series of creative workshops by HOOLIGAN ART COMMUNITY at the Findhorn Bay Festival, as part of THE HOOLIGAN PROJECT – an associate project supported by Mahogany Opera.
READ MORE ABOUT SKY IN A SMALL CAGE
In OCTOBER we continued our distinctive approach to recruitment with an OPEN CALL to find a creative team to develop a new SNAPPY OPERA in partnership with Dunedin Consort. This approach has become a Mahogany Opera calling card, so in NOVEMBER we opened this up to discussion - how we use these to reach different artists when recruiting for specific projects, how our approach to auditioning might differ from traditional opera companies, and what learning we (and others) could take from this to improve recruitment in the future - in our final MEET ME @ MAHOGANY event of the year. THE GREAT LEARNING also reached a climax in November, with a special daylong workshop for choir leaders in Cumbria, in partnership with Full of Noises, focussing on AIRSONGS – a new Mahogany supported project by Jack McNeill, planned for 2025.
As the festive season began, we started DECEMBER by announcing our involvement in A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE - a new commission with Master of the King’s Music, Errollyn Wallen CBE – and worked at Snape Maltings, in partnership with Britten Pears Arts, on workshops exploring initial material and characters for the piece with professional singers and local young people. We ended the year with a final Christmas gift – announcing composer Bethany Tennick & Librettist Iona Ramsay as the creative team for our latest SNAPPY OPERA COMMISSION. The pair will work with the teams from Mahogany Opera and Dunedin Consort to create the new Snappy Opera - the first to be developed in Scotland - with a class of children from Kildrum Primary School in Cumbernauld, in 2025.
Whether developing new work, supporting artists, or inspiring young minds, none of our achievements in 2025 would have been possible without the support of the individuals, businesses, trusts and foundations who have funded our work. We are also grateful to all our friends and supporters, who have advocated for our work and helped share our opportunities.
If, like us, you believe that music and the arts can transform lives, and would like to support us in 2025 and beyond, do get in touch:
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