Touring Productions Garden of Vanished Pleasures

Garden of Vanished Pleasures

Finalist for Opera America’s 2022 Award for Excellence in Digital Opera
Showcased at Opera America 2024 New Works Forum

The gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end… Here is the Amen beyond the prayer.

DEREK JARMAN

If modern gardening has a patron saint, it must be English artist, filmmaker, and queer rightsactivist Derek Jarman (read more about Jarman here). As the AIDS plague took his friends one by one and he himself faced an increasingly uncertain future, he discovered his own form of hope, resilience, and solace in his garden by the sea.

Garden of Vanished Pleasures is a staged song cycle best described as an emotional journey inspired by the life and work of English filmmaker, artist, and queer rights activist Derek Jarman. Conceived and devised by U.K./Canadian director Tim Albery, “Garden of Vanished Pleasures” blends the works of two brilliant composer’s: Cecilia Livingston and Donna McKevitt.

Livingston writes deeply-felt songs of love and loss, and they chime perfectly with McKevitt’s heart-aching songs that use texts drawn from Jarman’s own journals. The texts cover a wide range of expressions, from longing and loss, to anger over society’s inequities – universal themes which continue to resonate even more so today.

Music: Cecilia Livingston and Donna McKevitt
Texts: Derek Jarman and Duncan McFarlane

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Albery and company have raised a masterpiece.

Opera Going Toronto

… Garden of Vanished Pleasures is a subtle burn, with muted colours and Albery’s signature stark aesthetic, but it unquestionably draws you in

Schmopera

… an absorbing eighty minutes which … will work for Jarman fans and others alike.

Opera Canada

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Duration: 81′ no intermission

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Media Library:

See more from the Garden of Vanished Pleasures media gallery

Reviews:
A Subtle Burn: Garden of Vanished Pleasures, SCHMOPERA

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