Content area
Full Text
A whole opera is being put on specially for four free performances this weekend. Terry Grimley investigates.
Double trouble: Richard Halton and Margaret Preece in rehearsal.
Asoprano is warming up her voice to a piano accompaniment when a young man comes in and shoots himself dead. What's going on?
You won't have to wait long to find out in Stephen Oliver's tragicomic opera A Man of Feeling, which runs for just 20 minutes from beginning to end. Suffice to say that the soprano and the young man have a history which is laid bare in flashback.
Bearing a mysterious dedication to opera critic Rodney Milnes ("whose fault it is"), A Man of Feeling is one of a large number of miniature operas by Oliver. It was first performed in 1990, when the part of the young man was sung by baritone Oz Clarke,n ow better known as a television wine critic.