The Sea — an opera about Palestine

The Sea from writer and director Irum Fazal and composers Laila Arafah and Elif Nur Karlıdağ is a modern opera about Palestine, with sung and spoken English and Arabic intertwined with European and Middle Eastern instruments. The Sea holds up threads of human story against a backdrop of devastation: a little girl cannot find her mother, and her mother searches for her every day. Loss, memory and hope drive us towards the water's edge as we search for a moment of peace.

Feargal Hylton’s musical direction creates an atmospheric journey of longing, where what is barely noticed swells to acute sensation and back again. A dream of thought, half-thought and imagined past confronted by unbearable reality is told to us by Palestinian sopranos Dima Bawab and Nour Darwish, tenor Mark Bonney and chamber orchestra, conducted by Gabriella Teychenné.