Leeds Opera Festival will push the boundaries of traditional opera this summer with an innovative new experiment, Opera Rave, led by Guest Artistic Director Emma Hill.

“Opera Rave is a reimagining of the opera-going experience,” comments Hill. “We’re taking elements of operatic singing and performance and attempting to blend them with beats-infused electronic music. We hope to create something that feels like an opera and a rave simultaneously.”

Joining Emma on the team so far are singers Milana Sarukhanyan and Kanchana Jaishankar, along with music producer Owly Beats. The team will experiment in the room, using the libretto and score for Bizet’s Carmen as the jumping off point for a week of research & development.

The project will pop up in a city-centre location in Leeds during the R&D week of 27 to 31 August. On Saturday, 31 August, the project’s work-in-progress will be shared at Howard Assembly Room. This forms part of Leeds Opera Festival’s Opera in Urban Spaces Day and precedes the festival’s headline production, Sherlock Holmes and The Sign of Four.

"If I can create a project where everyone contributes their art form and our audience members feel they have a new and exciting artistic experience, then the project will be a success,” says Hill. “Artistic experiments can go as wrong as they can go right, but everyone I’ve spoken to about Opera Rave has wanted to find out more about it. I’m grateful to Leeds Opera Festival for giving us this rare opportunity and platform to experiment and I’m excited to share our work with the people of Leeds.”

For more information, visit https://www.northernoperagroup.co.uk/operarave