'The Opera Group promises a great night out that will satisfy both the enthusiast and delight and entertain the newcomer... The starting point for everything we do is having a great story to tell... We always let our imaginations take flight, innovating both in the music and in the way we stage and design our productions too...We will show you something entirely new and attempt to refute the idea that new opera is elitist or difficult. And our commitment to producing operas for children and young people proves we don’t believe you need to know anything about either opera or contemporary music... We tour two new productions every year, visiting opera houses, theatres and festivals, sharing our passion for great opera with the widest possible audience.'

PMF involvement:

2006 - The Enchanted Pig - music by Jonathan Dove and words by Alasdair Middleton

2007 - The Shops - music by Edward Rushton and libretto by Dagny Gioulami

2008 - Street Scenes - music - Kurt Weill, book - Elmer Rice, lyrics - Langston Hughes
Winner of the Evening Standard’s Ned Sherrin Award for Best Musical 2008

2008 - Varjak Paw - music Julian Philips, lyrics Kit Hesketh-Harvey, based on the books by SF Said

2009 - Into The Little Hill - music by George Benjamin, libretto by Martin Crimp & Down by the Greenside
 - music by Harrison Birtwistle, text by Michael Nyman
The Guardian
'The mark of a successful opera is that the drama is heard in the music, as well as seen on stage. To this end, Philips enhanced the characterisation with a dizzying spectrum of familiar musical styles. With no loss of stylistic coherence, he drew in elements of Sufi music, close jazz harmony and swing rhythms, giving his young audience immediate access into the bristling social and territorial complexity of Varjak's world.

There were no surprises in the light-footed brilliance of Hesketh-Harvey's libretto - "Scared? You should be. You know why?/ You're gonna die" - and the single-set production by John Fulljames was economical and imaginative... Two of the toughest nuts - children's theatre and contemporary opera - had just been well and truly cracked.'

The Daily Telegraph
'A very young audience wriggled and giggled through the last matinee of John Fulljames's lively Opera Group production of Varjak Paw. Adapted by Kit Hesketh-Harvey from S F Said's stories, Julian Philips's opera is a jewelbox of musical quotes, with a cheeky patchwork of Rhinemaiden melismas woven into the Scratch Sisters' doo-wop trios, some sparkling coloratura for Sally Bones (Alinka Kozári), and delicious writing for woodwind.'
The Independent
4 stars
'Heroically playing all the parts in this pullulating scenario, soprano Claire Booth and mezzo Susan Bickley make a fine vocal match, greatly helped by the fact that Benjamin's word-setting is as expressive as Debussy's in 'Pelleas et Melisande'. The orchestral writing, meanwhile, responds with delicate precision to Crimp's terse and vivid poetry. Read cold, the libretto raises 'issues' – child-abduction, the politics of immigration – but in performance these are so muted as to be barely perceptible. Every piece of music leaves its own particular silence in its wake: the silence left after this work's last notes sounded was exquisite.

But this was only half of a brilliant double-bill which Opera Group is now taking on national tour: the other part is a revival of Harrison Birtwistle's rumbustious pastorale 'Down by the Greenwood Side', with Claire Booth playing the central character as a bag-lady. If John Fulljames's direction of the Benjamin – abetted by Soutra Gilmour's designs - is a model of refined restraint, his treatment of this semi-spoken parable of murder and miraculous rebirth (to Michael Nyman's libretto) is spirited and wonderfully coarse-grained – which can also be said of the orchestra and actors. Pip Donaghy makes the sleaziest Father Christmas I've ever seen.'

The Daily Telegraph
'Benjamin's score inhabits the text with absolute assurance: not a note is wasted, the dramatic pacing is impeccably controlled. The word-setting is always pellucid and sometimes lyrical, the orchestration (an ensemble of 15 includes bass flute, basset horns, contrabass clarinet, cornets and cimbalom) luminous, subtle and delicate. Most strikingly imaginative of all, however, is the way that Benjamin creates a world of sound, quite unlike any other... it left me both stunned and elated. A masterpiece, no question.

Into the Little Hill was preceded by Harrison Birtwistle's 1969 forceful and arresting one-acter Down by the Greenwood Side, based on Mummers' plays and folk rituals.Singing, acting and staging were excellent.'

Rating:
Into the Little Hill *****
Down by the Greenwood Side ****