The Alternative Queen's Speech: an opera in the making

13 September 2022
Ruth Moore
Rehearsal image - a woman faces away from camera towards a singer. A stage with a weaver and a reader is visible in the background.

A new film has been launched today, taking viewers behind the scenes of a project by Jeanne Pansard-Besson and Cheryl Frances-Hoad with Professor Fiona Macintosh.

In June 2022 a group came together for a three-day residency in the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building at St Hilda's College, Oxford. The composer, director/librettist, two singers and a student actor, together with researchers from Classics, English, Modern Languages and Music, and students from the Cheney School, Oxford, developed the next stage in a collaborative project. The residency further developed work towards a new 90-minute opera entitled The Alternative Queen's Speech, based on Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad (2005). This film documents those three days.

Professor Fiona Macintosh (Classics, Oxford) secured funding and support from the TORCH Knowledge Exchange Innovation Fund for this project, along with APGRD and St Hilda's College. Find out more: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/2021-22-the-alternative-queens-speech