Philip Venables

A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross

Tag: Dutch National Opera

New opera announced: We Are The Lucky Ones

I’m delighted to announce our next opera, We Are The Lucky Ones.

The opera is commissioned by Dutch National Opera, and it will premiere at the Opera Forward Festival in Amsterdam on 14th March 2025. I am writing it with Ted Huffman and playwright Nina Segal. It will be my first opera with orchestra, conducted by Bassem Akiki. We have a stellar cast: Claron McFadden, Jacquelyn Stucker, Nina van Essen, Helena Rasker, Miles Mykkanen, Frederick Ballentine, GermÃ¡n Olvera and Alex Rosen.

The press release says: “We Are The Lucky Ones tells the story of a generation. It is based on interviews with more than 70 people in Western Europe who were born in between 1940 and 1949. It is the story of people who started out life with little, who experienced ever-improving living standards and are now leaving behind a world where such growth is no longer sustainable. Their memories form a collective time capsule of the past eighty years, told as one continuous life story in music theatre form. Following individual experiences and societal changes over the decade, the opera raises crucial about the relationship between the private and the political, the impact of our choices and what truly matters in the end.”

Tickets will be available in August.

20 March 2024
Press images of Denis & Katya in Amsterdam by Milagro Elstak

Some production images from the Dutch National Opera production of Denis & Katya, March 2022, on the enormous main stage of the opera house in Amsterdam, as part of the Opera Forward Festival. The singers Inna Demenkova and Michael Wilmering, with cellists of the Residentie Orkest The Hague. Direction by Ted Huffman, Music Direction by Tim Anderson, Sound by Simon Hendry, Video by Pierre Martin, Design and Lighting by Andrew Lieberman. All images by Milagro Elstak. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.

5 November 2022
5 stars for Denis & Katya in Amsterdam

The Dutch premiere of Denis & Katya took place on Friday at Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, as part of the Opera Forward Festival. It was performed by Inna Demenkova and Michael Wilmering, with cellists of the Residentie Orkest The Hague. Here is a selection of excerpts of press reviews for the production (machine translated), including a five-star review in Dutch newspaper, Trouw.

“All this comes together ingeniously in a great contemporary chamber opera, which is as oppressive as it is impressive…Â Wilmering and Demenkova were chillingly ‘real’ in their increasingly desperate contributions.Â They both sang the catchy music with great empathy and with robust voices.Â It is a top production.” — Trouw (5 stars)

“Denis & Katya stimulates thinking: about opera and about social media and its impact…. Opera cannot get much more topical.” — NRC Handelsblad (4 stars)

“Huffman and Venables very sensitively refuse any illustration of what is happening.Â They tell instead of show.Â The two actors, Michael Wilmering and Inna Demenkova, constantly change roles at an epic pace.Â The music of four cellists does no more than portray the emotional situations or to imitate the typing of text messages with beeps.Â The piece is as accessible as it is shocking.Â The result is a kind of “Peter and the Wolf”for teenage online natives.”Â — Frankfurter Allgemeine

“The rapid alternation of music, solo singing, written and spoken text, live and electronically produced make the disturbing events and their tragic climax an emotionally comprehensible, gripping media event…. the audience’s attention is constantly challenged for over an hour.Â Only after the prolonged applause at the end of a fortunately above-average young audience is there an opportunity to emotionally process the almost unbelievable, but easily understandable plot in every phase of escalation. Can opera really be that topical?” — Bachtrack (4 stars)

(Photos by Milagro Elstak for Dutch National Opera)

15 March 2022
Denis & Katya announced at Dutch National Opera / Opera Forward Festival

Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam have announced that they will make a new production of Denis & Katya in the Opera Forward Festival 2022. The Festival features a range of new operatic each year in March in a range of venues in Amsterdam. The cast is yet to be announced, but the production is a collaboration with the Young Artists Studio at Dutch National Opera.

31 August 2021