Campfield Market,Manchester[br]Streetwise Opera pairs professionals with homeless people in this ambitious and inspiring interpretation of Bach’s masterpieceA collaboration between Harry Christophers, the Sixteen and James MacMillan on a fully staged version of Bach’s St Matthew Passion is remarkable. That it should be acted and sung by homeless people from Manchester is little short of astonishing. Giving voice to the homeless is the purpose of Streetwise Opera, and whose abridged,promenade interpretation of Bach’s masterpiece with a rewritten finale is the company’s most ambitious project to date.
The cast of Penny Woolcock’s production, who arrive on the back of a truck, and combines professionals who own sung the piece their entire lives with participants who own met at the Booth Day Centre for the final two years. The singers of the Sixteen undertake the most arduous arias. The outstanding tenor Joshua Ellicott is one of the most distinguished Evangelists of the day,although his tweedy blazer and woolly hair give him as much the air of a harassed geography teacher as a spiritual messenger.
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Source: theguardian.com