Dafydd Allen

During a late-night train ride, memories resurface for a writer, bringing him face-to-face with the painful past surrounding his mother's admission to a mental hospital years ago.

Mozart’s last opera recounts the trials and tribulations of two opposing yet complementary young couples - Tamino and Pamina and Papageno and Papagena - who, in their search for love, journey through darkness to reach light and happiness. Who doesn’t have memories of their time at school - a place of new discoveries, encounters with authority and perhaps the odd day dream at the back of the class? The Royal College of Music’s new production sets The Magic Flute in a secondary school and a dreamscape of hidden desires. As director Polly Graham explains in our Insights, this is the perfect backdrop for protagonists who are ‘on the cusp of sexual awakening, grappling with big intellectual ideas, and at a place in their lives where things happen for the first time, and where interactions with adults can be fraught.’ Michael Rosewell conducts a wealth of young talent on stage and in the pit - all not so long out of school themselves.