'Innocence' is a beautiful, thought-provoking, relevant and timely new Australian Opera. With music by composer Anne Cawrse and a libretto by Adam Goodburn (Singular Productions), Innocence is based upon the award winning novel Time's Long Ruin by Stephen Orr.
Innocence is a story about grief and ambiguous loss. It talks to concepts of family, connection, community, growing up and what helps or hinders people when moving through tragedy. It is an intensely moving exploration of both the pain and the hope that follows the unimaginable.
Innocence has been developed with the support of Arts SA and the State Opera Company of South Australia. A semi-staged production was held at the Opera Studios, Adelaide in 2016. Some images taken from the showing can be seen below. A highlights video is available upon request.
The premiere of Anne's orchestral arrangement of Suite from Innocence was presented by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at the She Speaks festival of women composers in Adelaide on June 19th, 2021.
Brett Allen-Bayes of Limelight wrote:
From here, there was the world premiere of a generous suite from Anne Cawrse’s forthcoming opera, Innocence, a work on which she has worked for eight years. And if the suite is anything to go by, then the wait and travail has certainly been worth it. Presented with a quartet of fine vocalists (Desiree Frahn, Teresa La Rocca, Adam Goodburn, who is also the work’s librettist, and Joshua Rowe), here was a highly enjoyable half hour of attractively appropriate music. Based on a real tragedy set in local Croydon, Stephen Orr’s novel Time’s Long Ruin proves to be the stuff of ‘suburban’ opera in a genre which runs from Bernstein to Koehne. The costumed singers delivered heartfelt, knowing performances with incredibly clear diction and the audience responded rapturously to this premiere. So let’s hope that Innocence is soon taken up by Australia’s professional companies.
Read the full review of the concert in Limelight.
For further inquiries regarding any aspect of this opera, please contact Anne here.
For further inquiries regarding any aspect of this opera, please contact Anne here.
"Times Long Ruin' for Piano (2013) was composed as a brainstorming exercise in the early stages of writing the opera. Many of the themes present in this piece play pivotal roles in the musical journey of 'Innocence'.
A perusal copy of the first two pages of the score can be found here.