Navigate the Blood
Opera (2018)
a NOISE Opera production
Music by Gareth Williams & Admiral Fallow
Libretto by Sian Evans
Directed by James Robert Carson
A collaboration between Gareth and Scottish indie-folk band Admiral Fallow, Navigate the Blood pushes the boundaries of opera in new creative directions.
Navigate the Blood follows the story of Bob and Lena, a husband and wife running a small independent distillery in rural Scotland. Their son Liam disappeared in mysterious circumstances three years ago. Living and working with them is a young Polish woman named Agata. She wants to modernise the distillery by making gin as well as whisky. Into this situation comes Elijah, a young man with a strange, other worldly presence. Elijah looks and moves very like the lost boy...
More info at noiseopera.com
The opera is set in the world of whisky and gin manufacturing and toured distilleries across Scotland throughout November 2018.
Watch a preview of 'Where are you going?' from Navigate the Blood on BBC Radio Scotland's Classics Unwrapped on iPlayer
Reviews
"It was a collaboration waiting to happen – between that notoriously conservative, highbrow, expensive art form called opera, and the popular, mobile, but equally tradition-rooted world of indie-folk. ‘Indie’ means independent, freewheeling, omnivorous music drawing on pop, jazz, classical, world, you name it. When marries to ‘folk’, it fuses the armoury of pop (drum kit, electric guitars and keyboards) with stringed instruments, lyrical soul and ‘ethnic’ vernacular."
Opera Magazine
“Between an array of beautifully lit copper pots and pipes on one wall, and a stack of casks on the other, was a line of musicians and singers giving it their all, and an audience seemingly entranced.“
Scotch Whisky.com
★★★★
The Times
★★★★
The Herald
★★★★
Opera Magazine