MEDIATHEK

Dart's Love: a wild swimming chamber opera was commissioned by the Tete a Tete Opera Festival in London to close their 2013 festival. Composer/performer Kerry Andrew has an obsession with wild swimming (ie swimming outside, in rivers and lakes) and has a strong artistic interest in myth and folklore. Librettist Tamsin Collison found a way to combine these in a text inspired by the traditional rhyme 'River Dart, River Dart, every year thou claim'st a heart' with recent flooding in the South-West.

The synopsis is simple: the River Dart is in love with a man who swims regularly in her, until his flighty girlfriend comes along one day. The River rises in jealousy and drowns her, and the man swears never to return.

Kerry is a composer and singer who works in experimental classical and choral music, folk, jazz and electronica. She is interested in combining a mixture of non-operatic and operatic voices. The River - played by three female voices - has an unusual vocal character (lots of extra-vocal sounds, folky and straight). Her instrumental textures (for an ensemble comprising clarinets, electric guitar, piano and percussion, played by CHROMA) include wine glasses, bubbling bass clarinet, playing the strings of the piano with beaters, and with sounds influenced by minimalist rock, Japanese music-theatre and folk. While composing the opera, she visited her local unheated pool every day while composing to gather sounds to inspire her.

Bill Bankes-Jones and Tim Meacock used evocatively simple design (falling rice for rain, swings for the River) and cheeky, dark direction (the musicians placed onstage as part of the action, a va-jazzling, selfie-taking Girlfriend).

The opera had two sold-out shows and was reviewed thus: 'A glorious, desperate love story with a dark twist… a magical highlight of the Tete a Tete Festival… Sighs, kisses, gulps, rustles, laughs and yawns emanate from the trio... The music is stunning, full of gorgeous harmonies... The imaginative range of Dart‘s Love is truly exhilarating' (five stars, One Stop Arts)

And: 'Andrew’s writing for the river was dazzling. The piece opened with little fragments and wisps, of spoken, of melody, of percussion. The river… was a combination of rhythms and timbres which built into a highly seductive flow of sound… this was magical, full of wit, humour and miraculous orchestrations… Andrew [showed] a dazzling combination of wit and technique in her depiction of the river. (Planet Hughill)