243: Roderick Williams, Ben Parry & Garth Bardsley

On Saturday 24 October, Britten Pears Arts stages the world premiere of My Father Cannot Speak: a seventy-minute opera scored for one singer and six instrumentalists, about a son trying to get his father to tell him who he is.

Baritone Roderick Williams takes the lead. Composer Ben Parry, for whom this is a first opera, has teamed up with librettist and director Garth Bardsley, both of whom have collaborated for more than twenty years. What began as a poem, about a museum that locks its doors, quickly grew into this compact, sometimes funny, often deeply poignant 70 minute exploration of inter-generational relationships and the confusion and clarity that emerges when an inciting incident brings about a sudden pivot.

I heard part of a rehearsal in the Britten Studio, then talked to the three of them for half an hour.

We talk about the title and whether its double meaning was planned (it wasn’t), how you build seventy minutes for six players, including an accordion that breathes, and a singer and what demands that places on him, and why the director of an opera tends to ask opera singers to be less operatic.

Tickets: https://www.brittenpearsarts.org/events/my-father-cannot-speak