"When Mark-Anthony Turnage announces a new opera, ears prick up. Few living composers have such a knack for turning the familiar into the unsettling, mixing spiky jazz-inflected rhythms with sly humour and aching lyricism. His latest project, The Railway Children, is taken from Edith Nesbit's classic Edwardian children's tale. Turnage and his librettist, the director-writer Rachael Hewer, have re-engineered the tale into a family-friendly Cold War thriller set in 1984. Think Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan dancing to Prince and Culture Club."
"The Railway Children premiered at Glyndebourne last night as part of the opera house's exciting Autumn Season, with an upcoming transfer to London's Southbank Centre. Until this year, Turnage was best known for his opera Anna Nicole, first performed in 2011, which told the salacious story of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. There was a previous family opera, Coraline, taken from the eponymous Neil Gaiman fantasy novel at the Barbican in 2018."
"Readers of a certain age will remember the charming 1970 film version of The Railway Children starring the 17-year-old Jenny Agutter as Bobbie, the eldest child, Sally Thomsett, who was 20, playing an 11-year-old, and the wonderful Bernard Cribbins as the stationmaster Mr Perks. The opera reunites audiences with the much-loved story of three siblings exiled to a country cottage after their father is mysteriously taken away."
Mark-Anthony Turnage composes music that turns the familiar into the unsettling, blending spiky jazz-inflected rhythms, sly humour and aching lyricism. The Railway Children adapts Edith Nesbit's Edwardian tale into a family-friendly Cold War thriller set in 1984, invoking images of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan dancing to Prince and Culture Club. The opera premiered at Glyndebourne and will transfer to London's Southbank Centre. Turnage's recent successes include Anna Nicole, Coraline and the highly praised Festen at the Royal Opera. The staging modernises characters and transplants the narrative to the pre-Glasnost era, leaning toward John le Carré-style espionage with echoes of the Georgi Markov case.
Read at www.london-unattached.com
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