Poetry in motion

Henrietta Bredin talks to Peter Manning about taking risks and creating opportunities

There is an almost palpable forcefield of energy around Peter Manning. You expect a crackle of static to explode when he shakes your hand or wraps you in an enthusiastic hug. Concertmaster of the Royal Opera House orchestra, founder of the eponymous Manning Camerata chamber orchestra and now music director of Musica Vitae in Sweden, his relish for a challenge, for fresh stimuli, is voracious. He is a violinist, a conductor, and now a galvanising producer and artistic director. His current, most pressing preoccupation is with a fabulously multi-layered and ambitious project, the performance of a new opera he has commissioned, for the Manning Camerata to play. It is based on Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes (itself based on Sophocles’ Antigone), with music by Dominique Le Gendre, to be directed by the poet Derek Walcott, at the Globe Theatre in October.