Next year will mark Clonter’s 50th Anniversary, and we want to make sure it is the best year yet, but in order to make it to 50 we need your help. Any funding raised will help us be able to celebrate Clonter’s 50th Anniversary and continue to provide a nurturing and supportive place for emerging talent to flourish and entertain our audiences for generations to come.
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The Magic Flute
22, 23 (Mat), 25, 27 and 29 July
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Papageno at the Cheshire Show
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Lee Bisset’s Best Wishes for The Magic Flute
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Behind the Scenes – Photo Album
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Rehearsals – Photo Album
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If you are still undecided about if to come to the Magic Flute this summer, Clonter offers you a reimagining of ‘One of the most popular and significant operas in the repertoire’, in the hands of its very eminent director for this production, Michael McCaffery, who has directed this opera several times before, but now wishes to present you with something quite new and fresh.
‘Commentators have assumed that the combination of dialogue and singing makes it something of a hybrid and have treated it as a sort of high-end pantomime’. Michael McCaffery wishes to change this perception.
‘For several reasons, this is very definitely a version of The Magic Flute. The translation attempts to balance music and speech in a way that works best for the story and moves the action along. There are, of course, casualties and many will regard the omission of the second act Trio as the unkindest cut of all. I struggled with that but found it hard to justify dramatically as well as in terms of running time. The “masonic element” has also been reduced, partly because it requires a far-larger ensemble than is feasible here and partly because, in my view, it muddies the plot. In choosing what to retain, I hope I have done justice to author(s), composer, performers and to you’.
Whilst Clonter has staged the Magic Flute before in 2005, it was not it’s own production, but the Royal Academy of Music’s, so this is a first. Also a first is the use of projections and many other special effects, making this as immersive as Clonter has ever been.
Come and see, and make up your mind.
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Sarah Luttrell – 3rd Lady
Irish mezzo-soprano Sarah Luttrell is an honours graduate of the TUDublin Conservatoire and a recent graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where she was the recipient of the ‘RCS Trust Postgraduate Scholarship’.
Sarah has performed with Irish National Opera, Lyric Opera Company, Blackwater Valley Opera Festival and Northern Ireland Opera. She has sung various roles in Opera Scene Concerts, most recently; as Giove in Cavalli’s La Calisto, Sesto in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo and Erika in Barber’s Vanessa. Sarah has also fulfilled the role of Mrs Nolan in a run of shows of Menotti’s Opera The Consul, with TUD’s Opera Society. Sarah joined the Wexford Opera Festival last year as a young artist, where she performed the role of Zibaldona in the Irish Premiere of Alma Deutscher’s opera Cinderella. Sarah also joined Clonter’s production of Papageno’s Quest debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022.
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