The Lion's Face

Evaluation of the Project

thelionsface — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:14:28 +0000

Premiering at the Brighton Festival in May, our world premiere production of The Lion’s Face toured the UK throughout the summer. As the project engaged with difficult and often personal issues related to the physical and emotional impacts of Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia, TOG organised a wide ranging set of associated activities to support the opera in conjunction with our venues, service providers, the Alzheimer’s Society and our partners at King’s College London. Alongside and throughout the process, we also engaged the services of the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham University to provide a thorough evaluation of our work and its impacts on our audiences. Karen Scott was the lead researcher and over the opera’s run she spoke to many members of our audiences and participants in our seminars and talks to understand their experience of the work.

Here are some of her initial thoughts:

“I elicited views from 65 audience members at eight performances (including previews) across five venues. Responses came from a variety of people including professionals, patients, carers and people with no personal connection to the issue of dementia but who were interested in new opera. There were also several people who had never seen an opera before…Overall, the response to The Lion’s Face can be described as very positive. It is clear that the majority of respondents felt the work reflected an accurate portrayal of the disease and its effects. Descriptions such as ‘so real’ or ‘true to life’ were commonly used…. The fact that the opera was raising awareness of the issue and that there was a clear representation of the distress caused by the illness was an important factor in the way that audience members dealt with their emotions. In this sense there was a validation of these emotions rather than an unnecessary provocation.

“Many people had never seen an opera before and a common reaction was that they had been very engaged by the work contrary to their expectations. Many people mentioned the libretto and appreciated the ‘clever’ use of double meanings to illustrate the confusion inherent in language for someone loosing their coherence….. most people felt that the opera dealt very well with the issue and was an appropriate and suitable medium. One couple, keen opera goers, felt that The Lion’s Face has ‘extended the scope of opera’. “

The full evaluation report from the Centre for Medical Humanities will be submitted in the autumn.

The Lion’s Face Reviewed on Bachtrack

thelionsface — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:04:30 +0000

The Lion’s Face: The name comes from the clinicial description of the Alzheimer face with features settling into “leonine impassivity.” Librettist Glyn Maxwell spent five years researching this opera about dementia and this shines through in his portrayal of the life of an Alzheimer’s patient in a nursing home.

Read the whole review here

Evening Standard interview with Elena Langer

thelionsface — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:29:01 +0000

Memories are made of this: How Alzheimer’s inspired an opera

by Jasmine Gardner

When composer Elena Langer first decided to write an opera about memory loss she had no interest in Alzheimer’s disease, other than that it might provide her with a useful artistic device.

You can read the whole article here.

The Lion’s Face Review in The Northern Echo

thelionsface — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:23:11 +0000

Where does the Alzheimer victim really go? The Opera Company’s expose of this seemingly unanswerable question takes us on a long walk though the landscape of dementia in this highly-original, award-winning docu-opera, The Lion’s Face.

Read the entire review here

The Lion’s Face Review on the Telegraph Blog

thelionsface — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:19:50 +0000

When Richard Wagner listed the ingredients – drama, singing, dance, design – for the gesamtkunstwerk that is an opera, I don’t think he threw in “issues”. But a century and a half later, issues are very much on the agenda. And last night the Brighton festival premiered a new opera, The Lion’s Face, based on the all too current issue of dementia.

Read the entire review here

The Lion’s Face Review on Whatsonstage

thelionsface — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:16:39 +0000

Operatic characters frequently lose their reason, notably in the works of the bel canto era. It’s usually a tuneful matter with the audience afforded the further comfort of knowing either that it will all come right in the end or that the delusion acts as a cushion against fatal violence. Elena Langer and her librettist Glyn Maxwell put an altogether darker scenario before us in The Lion’s Face.

Read the entire review here

Guardian Interview with Author Andrea Gillies

thelionsface — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:50:45 +0000

The raw horror of Alzheimer’s

Andrea Gillies thought she could care for her mother-in-law, who was gripped by dementia. It was a terrible mistake, says the Orwell prize winner.

Read the full article here

The Lion’s Face Review in the Independent on Sunday

thelionsface — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:42:39 +0000

John Fulljames’s Opera Group production of The Lion’s Face is dominated by Dave Hill’s magnificent Mr D: adrift in dementia, and the only character who speaks, rather than sings, over Elena Langer’s cat’s-cradle of figures for solo strings. The cheerful care assistant (Rachel Hynes) and earnest doctor (Benedict Nelson) cannot alleviate Mr D’s confusion or the weariness of his wife (Elizabeth Sikora). With her school shut because of snow, the care assistant’s daughter (Fflur Wyn) begins a relationship with Mr D, bringing resolution to a half-remembered incident from his childhood. Dementia resists the imposition of a narrative, but this is an accurate and sympathetic exploration of the disease.

Anna Picard
Sunday 30 May

Music and the Brain – Symposium at the Royal Opera House on sale

thelionsface — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:38:04 +0000

A fascinating afternoon session at the Linbury Studio, the Royal Opera House, has been confirmed for the 21st July.

You can attend this and have time to go for dinner before catching the opera later at 7.45pm. Read more and book here.

The Lion’s Face Review in the Daily Telegraph

thelionsface — Wed, 26 May 2010 09:48:16 +0000

An opera about Alzheimer’s was never going to be exhilarating, and one couldn’t recommend The Lion’s Face to anybody in search of a fun evening out. But there’s a fundamental honesty about the piece and an absence of sentimentality or melodrama which commands respect.

Glyn Maxwell’s text presents the simplest of situations. An elderly man (a spoken role) is floundering in the disease’s maze. His wife struggles to cope, helped by a briskly efficient carer. From the sidelines, a clinician tries helplessly to explain and comfort. The carer has an impatient and uncomprehending young daughter who attempts to lead her own childishly self-centred life, but who is drawn into a sort of a relationship with the elderly man. There’s no resolution or consolation, aside from the clinician’s uncertain assertion that sometimes he can see “a world beyond this long disease”. Meanwhile there is only a landscape of darkness.

Elena Langer’s score mimicks a world of mental chaos. Spare and quirky, sometimes sharply abrasive, sometimes sweetly melancholy, it moves through jerks in pace and shards of melody which appear to be on the verge of cohering into harmonic sense only to disconnect and disengage. It’s not easy to listen to, and it’s not meant to be.

The Opera Group has developed the project in collaboration with the Institute of Psychiatry. John Fulljames’ production, designed by Alex Lowde, has a quietly clinical clarity, and there is a movingly unhistrionic performance from the actor Dave Hill as the patient, ably supported by Benedict Nelson, Elizabeth Sikora, Rachel Hynes and Fflur Wyn. Nicholas Collon conducts a twelve-strong ensemble.

By Rupert Christiansen
25 May 2010