Swanhunter, Opera North

Chamber opera for children embarks on great north run

by Graham RicksonSunday, 22 November 2009

Andrew Rees as Lemminkäinen with Yvonne Howard as Lemminkäinen's MotherTristram Kenton

The violin figure which opens Jonathan Dove’s delightful Swanhunter evokes Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. The allusion is surely deliberate. Like L’Histoire, and in contrast to Pinocchio, Dove’s large-scale Opera North commission of two years ago, Swanhunter is a 70-minute, chamber-sized work designed for performance in small venues.

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