About the Company

Second Movement was founded in 2004 as a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 based chamber opera

Chamber opera

Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...

 ensemble performing unorthodox opera productions in unusual spaces in the UK's capital. It is a charitable organization with a mission to provide opportunities for talented young singers and professionals in non-standard operatic repertoire: several of its productions have been UK Stage Premieres. It has performed in venues ranging from an 18th century Mayfair

Mayfair

Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...

 chapel to a Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

 banana warehouse, as well as a Victorian music hall, Hoxton Hall

Hoxton Hall

Hoxton Hall is a community centre and performance space in Hoxton, at 130 Hoxton Street, in the London Borough of Hackney.A grade II* listed building, the theatre was first built as a Music hall in 1863, as MacDonald's Music hall. It is an unrestored example of the saloon-style...

. It also has regular recitals.

In October 2010 Second Movement presented its production of The Knife's Tears in the cities of Brno and Prague, Czech Republic.

Its two current Artistic Directors are Nicholas Chalmers and Oliver Mears.

Productions

2004: Mozart and Salieri

Mozart and Salieri

Mozart and Salieri is a one-act opera in two scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, written in 1897 to a Russian libretto taken almost verbatim from Alexander Pushkin's 1830 verse drama of the same name....

(Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...

)

2005: Trouble in Tahiti

Trouble in Tahiti

Trouble in Tahiti is a one-act opera in seven scenes composed by Leonard Bernstein with an English libretto by the composer. The opera received its first performance on 12 June 1952 at Berstein's Festival of the Creative Arts on the campus of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts to an...

(Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

)

2006: The Impresario (Mozart), The Medium

The Medium

The Medium is a short two-act dramatic opera with words and music by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Columbia University, its first performance was there on 8 May 1946. The opera's first professional production was presented on a double bill with Menotti's The Telephone at the Heckscher...

(Menotti)

2007: The Knife's Tears (Martinu), Rothschild's Violin

Rothschild's Violin

Rothschild's Violin is a one-act opera by Russian composer Veniamin Fleishman set to the Russian libretto by the composer after the short story Rothschild's Fiddle by Anton Chekhov....

(Fleishman

Veniamin Fleishman

Veniamin Iosifovich Fleishman, was a Soviet composer.While studying under Dmitri Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory , he began a one-act opera Rothschild's Violin based on Anton Chekhov’s short story about Bronza, a Russian country coffin-maker and violinist, and his combative relationship...

/Shostakovich), The Two Blind Men

Les deux aveugles

Les deux aveugles is a one-act bouffonerie musicale, in the style of an operetta, by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Jules Moinaux...

(Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

)

2008: Fade (Weisman), A Hand of Bridge

A Hand of Bridge

A Hand of Bridge, opus 35, is an opera composed by Samuel Barber with libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, is possibly the shortest opera that is regularly performed - it lasts about ten minutes. It consists of two couples playing a hand of bridge, during which each character has a short arietta in...

(Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

), Trouble in Tahiti

Trouble in Tahiti

Trouble in Tahiti is a one-act opera in seven scenes composed by Leonard Bernstein with an English libretto by the composer. The opera received its first performance on 12 June 1952 at Berstein's Festival of the Creative Arts on the campus of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts to an...

(Leonard Bernstein)

2010: The Three Wishes (Martinu) - scenes