Northern Voices Opera Project
- Submitting institution
-
University of Salford, The
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 50887
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- November
- Year
- 2017
- URL
-
https://salford.figshare.com/collections/Northern_Voices/3804715/3
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The Northern Voices project, culminating in the 2017 performance of The Arsonists, represents four years of work in two phases. The first phase, funded by Arts Council England, comprising a series of workshops in 2013-4, developed methods whereby opera singers could adapt their singing techniques to the sounds of northern English accents. The second phase comprised the composition of a full-length opera (2 acts of 50 minutes), its rehearsal and performance by Heritage Opera and an ensemble of 13 players from the BBC Philharmonic orchestra as part of New Music Northwest, funded by the BBC Philharmonic and private sponsorship.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Northern Voices Opera Project
An interdisciplinary Practice as Research project which took place in 2014-5, and aimed to develop techniques whereby a Northern English accent could be heard in the operatic singing voice.
Context
Unlike theatre, operatic sung accents are dominated in the UK by an adapted form of Received Pronunciation; although some regional accents are occasionally used in Britten, for example, no Northern English accented opera has been written. Kathryn LaBouff (2008), for example, does not mention Northern English accents at all in her survey of regional accents in opera.
Methodology and Outputs
The project sought to create and test new material based on the speech patterns and rhythms of Northern English, and set four texts jointly developed by the composer and poet Ian McMillan.
The project consisted of a series of five workshops with singers, actors, poet Ian McMillan, sociolinguist Philip Tipton. It was funded by Arts Council England, and took place between July 2014 and March 2015. Evidence of this is to be found in: 1a summary video of phase one R and D project, including evidence of the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet 1b videos of the four songs created in this phase 1c scores in pdf of the songs
LaBouff, K., 2008. Singing and communicating in English : a singer's guide to English diction, New York: Oxford University Press.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -