The last two years can only be described as exquisite pain, that place you strive for when creating art that drowns you in a pit of despair and then makes you realise that you have understood something intangible, it might be small, but your life changes.

We have worked towards a new way of delivering work, building different kinds of partnerships and raising funding in new ways. We have sought opportunities in Europe as our government drives us away from the natural tendency of artists to ignore borders, both political and intellectual. We hope that all this struggle will produce a sustainable company that has a much more horizontal way of working with a larger ensemble taking part and feeding into the way we adapt and change our processes. We started in 1991 and Opera Circus has had many phases of its life, changes made with so much inspiration from artists and others with whom we work and surviving National and Global challenges.

TCFT, an Opera Circus long term project, has taught everyone a huge amount and its reach has affected our performance work as well as our relationships. Thank you to everyone who has been part of the journey to date and to all those who have committed themselves to our future. (See more information below)

We are working on several major programmes including co-partnering with Teatro L’Albero in Matera and Senza Spine in Bologna through the Fondazione of Matera 2019, Italy’s City of Culture next year. We are working together to create a new collaborative community opera, called The Silent City. Get Close to Opera, an Erasmus+ research project run by Matera Hub looking at informal education in opera with Belgium, Greece, Spain, Italy and the UK. The Giufa Project with Glyndebourne Education, Battle Festival, Arrischianti, Italy, Setubal Festival of Music, Portugal and Crisis Classroom, using the TCFT process to look at new ways of working with the arts and young people, in particular the exploration of inclusion and migration.

We are part of the working pilot process with Leeds and Bournemouth University called Changing the Story. More information on this below.

The Artistic Director, Tina Ellen Lee, has been working with some of the advocates for the greater acknowledgement of Culture and the Arts in Europe, in particular Culture Action Europe, in Rome as part of Belonging and Becoming December 2017, in February 2018 at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on The Artist as Citizen and in Brussels in April 2018 looking at Social Inclusion in the EU with Voices of Culture. In September 2017 the Discussion Document will be delivered and shared widely…it will be on this web page.

Making progress through dialogue is so much slower than dictatorship but we have noticed that changes are being made from our first meeting with Salzburg Global Seminars in 2014, “Building Peace Through the Arts” to the workshop led by Alain Ruche with the European External Services in Brussels.

There is news about Naciketa, the beautiful new opera with music by Nigel Osborne and poet/writer Ariel Dorfman. We are waiting for a final confirmation before we launch the public journey to performances in 2020. More soon – some information on the Naciketa page on this web site.

There is a new web site on its way, but until we have the thinking and funding in place, we will be using this blog to share our progress this year.

Opera Circus has been in the privileged position of having the photographer and film maker Robert Golden record most of its work since 1991. An archive of beautiful imagery and storytelling that has partly made us who we are today. Robert has also been at the core of the artist/facilitators team, teaching film making, photography and the art of story telling through images. He has helped to deepen the political thinking in TCFT and become a mentor to numbers of young artists. If you scroll down on this blog page you will find our Vimeo Gallery which contains most of the films made about the work of the company. RobertGoldenPictures