Illuminations - Aldeburgh Festival

Inspired by the hyper-sensual surrealism of Rimbaud’s poetry set in Britten’s song cycle Les Illuminations, director Struan Leslie creates a newly-commissioned staging fusing music and contemporary circus performance.

‘I have long wanted to create a theatre work with this music’, says Leslie. ‘Now I have found the means to do it. Theatre or dance were always too limited a vocabulary to convey this vivid world. Circus is the key to unlock it.’

Britten’s voluptuous musical settings take flight on the back of Rimbaud’s extraordinarily evocative verse, a spectacle of extremes, a world of febrile fantasy, a parade of grotesques and lurid, erotic imagery.

For this new work soprano Sarah Tynan joins an ensemble of international circus performers and Aurora Orchestra in a programme that includes Britten’s Les Illuminations and Young Apollo, Debussy’s String Quartet and music from John Adams’s Shaker Loops.

Pre-performance talk: Illuminations 6pm