Page 158 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

Violet opens at the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival, with two performances on 3 & 5 June. The
production embarks on a short tour this month, including dates at the Sherman Theatre on 8
June and Theatre Clwyd on 19 June.

Alice and I first met in 2014 at the Opera Creation Academy at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in
France, which was a week of discussing opera with composers, writers, and directors. Neither
Alice nor I had written an opera before, but we became interested in collaborating and started
exchanging our work. Alice sent me her plays –such as ‘Revolt She Said. Revolt Again’, and I sent
her some of my music.

Alice is the most extraordinary writer, and I knew that she would write superb text for music. She
has a real precision and concision in the way that she selects words. There’s a real tightness to
how things operate in her writing, but also a kind of unpredictability and things will take flight
into some dazzling imagery as well. For us both, it was important to trust one another – which is
why we exchanged our work before we started collaborating – so that we could work out how
each other’s brains work. I think that she trusts me as a composer and knows that I’ll be excited
by the words she gives me and that I can bring her words to life through my music.

Violet rehearsals/ Image Patrick Young