The Mother

Music: Laurence Osborn
Text: Theo Merz
 

A mother and a son, a son and a mother.
Things had to be this way and couldn’t be another.

Leon dreams of changing the world with his radical philosophy but the explosive, suffocating, mutually destructive relationship he has with his mother leaves little time for anything or anyone else.

The Mother is an adaptation of the absurdist play Matka by Polish writer Witkacy (Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz). Indebted to Eastern European theatre, it is a bitingly satirical and explosive response to the traditions of opera. Osborn plunges the audience into an anarchic, surrealist world through taut, intense music that draws on Weill, Birtwistle, and Romitelli, alongside mainstream pop influences.

THE WORLD PREMIERE (STAGED CONCERT VERSION)
POSK, LONDON
25 APRIL 2018

The Mother: Lore Lixenberg
Leon: James Hall
Dorothea: Lindsay Bramley
Father: Geoffrey Dolton
Sophia: Rebecca Bottone
Academic and De Proud: Andrew Dickinson
Theatre Owner and Modesta: Daniel Norman

Staging: Frederic Wake-Walker
Lighting: Sylwester Łuczak
Conductor: Jamie Man
Repetiteur & Pianist: Yshani Perinpanayagam 
Orchestra: CHROMA

Developed through Various Stages by Mahogany Opera with support from Arts Council England, Tony Mackintosh & Criona Palmer, Britten–Pears Foundation, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and the London Community Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Foundation, Polish Cultural Institute and RVW Trust.

Artwork: Dominic Robertson

Footage from development through Mahogany Opera's Various Stages programme in 2015: