On the Axis of this World

Produced by Cambridge City Opera for Tête-à-tête: The Opera Festival 2014 and Cambridge Science Festival 2016

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On the Axis of this World imagines the echoes and fragments that might comprise the dreams of the Antarctic continent. It is a meditation on time, landscape, and scientific exploration. The similarities of the artist and the scientist are thematised, as the audience imagines a human being, dwarfed by the enormity of time and existence, looking at the world and saying quietly ‘I am here, and this is what I see.’

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Directed by Sinéad O'Neill 

 Composed by Matt Rogers

Verbatim text compiled by Sinéad O'Neill 

from the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-13,

courtesy of the Scott Polar Research Institute

Design by Flora Robertson

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Cast

Baritone Nicholas Crawley

Counter-tenor Magid El-Bushra

Actor Gary Merry

Accordion Bartosz Glowacki

Cello Corentin Chassard

Clarinet Tom Jackson

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Photography by Claire Shovelton