Dart’s Love

Synopsis

The River Dart is delighted as the Swimmer returns for another dip, but is aghast as he is joined by a new Girlfriend. The River drowns the Girlfriend in a fury, and the Swimmer leaves, vowing never to return.

Notes

Winner of Best Stage Work, British Composer Awards 2014

This opera draws on my deep love of outdoor and cold water swimming – whether river, lake, sea or tarn. I passed on Roger Deakin’s watery odyssey around Britain to librettist Tamsin Collison who came back with a brilliant story based on the old Devon legend ‘River Dart, River Dart, every year thou claims’t a heart,’ and then-recent floods in the South West of England. I composed much of this at, and in, Brockwell Lido in South London: working out the time signatures of swimming strokes, blowing bubbles under water and imagining the gasps of newbie swimmers as they encountered the cold.

Dart’s Love was commissioned by the Tête à Tête Opera Festival and premiered at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith in August, 2013.

Dart's Love is available to buy as a Full Score, Vocal/Piano Score and an Instrumental Parts Bundle.