4 Events on Tuesday the 21st of October, 2008

If Opera singers are always talking about themselves, the same might be said of the works they perform: Tutti in maschera is an opera…..about opera!

• Carlo Pedrotti

• IN JOKES AND OUT-TAKES

• (Sung in Italian with English Surtitles)

In this updated telling of Pedrotti’s masterpiece, the action is set in Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War It’s a time when lots of theatrical artists are touring around the devastated countryside of Italy looking for work, hungry for glory and fame—or just plain hungry!—but things are looking up for one particular group of singers: a wealthy foreigner has come to Venice to recruit his own opera company. His criteria for casting the main female roles, however, comes under suspicion, and there’s another problem too: when the entire impoverished company is invited by the unscrupulous impresario to a masked ball at La Fenice (Venice’s famous opera house), how will they come up with the necessary sumptuous costumes?

The traditional weekday lunchtime appointment remains one of the defining features of the Festival. Individual Festival singers will have the chance to shine in their own piano-accompanied solo numbers, performed (sometimes with the help of an instrument of their own) for a select audience in St. Iberius Church. Prepare for about fifty minutes of pre-prandial bliss.