Standing room only | 7 April 2012

Of all the operatic ventures that have sprung up in England in the past 20 years, Birmingham Opera Company may well be the most remarkable. Its artistic director is Graham Vick, who is well acquainted with opera at its most elitist — he was artistic director of Glyndebourne from 1994 to 2000. BOC is at the other extreme, in that productions now regularly take place in a disused steel foundry on the outskirts of the centre of Birmingham, and the aim is to involve as many local inhabitants as possible. Over the past few years there have been impressive performances of Verdi’s Otello (it was televised, and survived the scrutiny extremely well), Idomeneo and, most movingly to me, Ulysses Comes Home, a wonderful version of Monteverdi’s greatest opera.

This year, however, BOC is breaking new ground. Not only has it scored a coup in putting on the world première of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light), which will be given four performances in August (it lasts six hours); but it has just staged the première of Jonathan Dove’s new opera Life is a Dream, adapted by Alasdair Middleton from the play by Calderón.