Oberto, the Opera Research Unit at Oxford Brookes, is delighted to be collaborating with Queen Mary, University of London, on a new project, Opera in the East End, which will be launched on Monday 6 March 2017.

The People’s Palace in 1891

Opera in the East End (OIEE!) will be the first project to focus on the performance of opera in the East End of London from a multi-disciplinary perspective. We are beginning the project with a day of events at which Queen Mary are celebrating the 80th anniversary of the new People’s Palace in the Mile End Road, where Benjamin Britten conducted Albert Herring with the English Opera Group in 1948.

The programme includes performance, an archival exhibition and a Witness Seminar with a star line-up of guests who were students at the London Opera Centre, the forerunner of the National Opera Studio, whose home was the Troxy Cinema on the Commercial Road, Stepney. The panel includes Dame Josephine Barstow, Teresa Cahill, Robert Lloyd and David Patmore.

In the evening one of the country’s brightest young opera groups, Shadwell Opera, will perform Schönberg’s Erwartung and Mark Anthony Turnage’s Twice Through the Heart.

Please contact us by email or on twitter (@OBERTOBrookes) if you would like more information.

Tickets for day events (including the witness seminar) can be booked here. Tickets for the evening performances by Shadwell Opera must be booked separately here.