World premiere at Trinity Buoy Wharf (August 2004)
Streetwise Opera’s ground-breaking production Time Flows was inspired by the house where both Handel and Hendrix lived on Brook Street, London (now the Handel House Museum). Time Flows (A Handel and Hendrix Experience) brought together arias and duets by Handel, Hendrix songs and new music woven together with a libretto by Christina Jones. The promenade performance took audiences on a magical and colourful journey spanning two centuries alongside two hopeful lovers and their guides in the awesome warehouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London’s Docklands.
Participants from Streetwise Opera’s regular programmes in four London homeless centres performed alongside professional musicians from the London Handel Festival, led by Laurence Cummings.
‘There is abundant testimony to the wonders Streetwise Opera has worked in restoring morale and self-respect. Long may it thrive.’
‘If Streetwise Opera confounded the sceptics with their astonishing production of Britten’s Canticles in 2002, their latest venture will almost certainly have reversed the tide of critical opinion. This is a tale about a company drawn from London’s homeless…about how one fleeting moment of grace can make the kind of community art that purists sneer at into something of equal aesthetic and social value.’
‘Delightful… hilarious… admirable and inspiriting enterprise… the homeless performed with such dedication and delight.’
‘The concept sounds like the sort of worthy enterprise you’re automatically kind about, but there’s been no need for special pleading; critics have wept and raved. It shows us that the homeless are people like us.’
‘Three successive shows that [have been] brilliantly imagined, strikingly original and deeply touching. No patronising, no pretending and no compromise. It was fantastically impressive.’
© 2022 Streetwise Opera | Telephone: 020 3987 7535 | Email: info@streetwiseopera.org
Charity number 1092931 | Company number 04370521
