The Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation, in partnership with the Mathias Corvinus Collegium and the Grange Festival, was pleased to present the worldwide concert perfomance première of Anna, an opera in two acts. On 14 July 2023 at the Grange Festival hosted the first full concert performance of the opera written by Sir Roger Scruton and set to music by David Matthews. The opera, set in Eastern Europe (possibly Czechoslovakia) a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, deals with the dilemma faced by those who had stood out against Communism but are now left to make sense of the liberation itself and the new materialistic capitalism which accompanies it. Conductor Jac van Steen led the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and a cast of stellar soloists for this free performance.
SYNOPSIS
The Professor, deprived of his university position on account of his dissident profile, had lost his wife some years before the action of the opera, and had then been arrested on suspicion of helping opponents of the system to flee the country. The Professor was never brought to trial but instead died under interrogation, leaving his two children, then 19 and 14, to fend for themselves, without hope of a further education, and condemned to menial employment. They have kept the apartment assigned to their parents, a small, neat place in a modern block on the outskirts of an ordinary Central European town, and Peter has, through his industry and intelligence, risen to the position of floor manager in the run-down local firm, not yet privatized, which makes electrical appliances. Anna has found work in a bookshop, and also gives lessons in the violin. They are devoted to each other, Peter is serious, gloomy, and protective of his sister; she is a quiet, busy, lovable girl, popular with all who know her and for him the one trusted source of love and stability. She is not without ambition and, like Peter, deeply frustrated by the impossibility of pursuing it. The Professor constantly appears in the memory of Peter and Anna, as they puzzle over his fate, Peter longing for justice, Anna desiring to fill the gap in her life, and to bring the work of mourning to an end.
PRODUCTION TEAM
Composer — David Matthews
Story and Libretto — Roger Scruton
Conductor — Jac van Steen
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
The Grange Festival Chorus
CAST
Peter — Alex Otturburn
Anna — Rhian Lois
Marta — Marta Fontanals-Simmons
Miro — Oliver Johnston
Father Antonin — Jonathan Lemalu
MEDIA
