Dark Nights

Keeley Forsyth – HAND TO MOUTH TO

’A compelling and tense performance, where memories flood and plague the present’.

As with Keeley Forsyth’s previous works, Hand To Mouth To sets out to build an enveloping sound world that oscillates between challenging and comforting its audience.

The starting point for this production was the EP HAND TO MOUTH. Forsyth accompanied by long time collaborator Matthew Bourne, crafted a subtly contemplative collection of stripped back songs, focusing primarily on the minimal ingredients of the voice and piano. What manifested between the two friends is a beautifully considered investigation of restraint and space.

For HAND TO MOUTH TO Forsyth has invited new collaborators into the process of recontextualising the songs into an alternate live form. Acclaimed French author Jean Baptiste Del Amo (The Son Of Man, Animalia, Fitzcarraldo Editions) has provided a specially commissioned short story titled The No-End House, that he wrote in response to the EP. We now find the song suite interspersed among Del Amo’s prose. A piece charged with distressing memories, human frailty and regret.

What results is an experiment between song and theatre monologue, between concert and play, where new causalities and associations are made between Del Amo’s narrative and the song cycle. Additional musical accompaniment is provided by cellist Colin Alexander who has developed elements of Bourne’s original score. The narrative passages are accompanied by a dark ambient backdrop of drone and field recordings, supplied by composer Ross Downes, that surrounds and places Forsyth’s narration within an unsettling and atmospheric sound world.

Elaine Mitchener – LATE JOYS

Elaine Mitchener is a contemporary vocalist, movement artist and composer whose expansive practice spans improvisation, contemporary and experimental music, and dance.  

Curated by Mitchener, LATE JOYS brings together a creative troupe of performers, spanning voice, instrumentation and movement, to present a not-quite after-the-show for the curious and curiouser. This ’alt-variety evening’ unfolds as a sequence of provocations, encounters, interventions and happenings, inviting audiences into a playful and unpredictable shared experience. 

Her debut solo album, SOLO THROAT, released in May 2024 on Café OTO’s OTOROKU label, has been described as ’an uncompromisingly imaginative approach to text that does credit to the power of the human voice, as well as the mind that pushes it on to previously unheard paths’ (Jazzwise). 

The Royal Opera launches Dark Nights, a new research and development series in the Linbury Theatre showcasing one-off performances by leading vocal innovators and experimental composers. Celebrating boundary-crossing new music, the programme explores the theatrical possibilities of the human voice. 

Dark Nights offers artists the opportunity to present intimate, explorative performances to our audiences. There are five Dark Nights scheduled throughout the season, each with a different artist at the helm. 

Join us for the entire series and experience a full programme dedicated to bold, imaginative music beyond the mainstream.