“We are taking opera out of the opera house, we are taking it to people via their interests. We are seeking alternative audiences for it, and we’re showing that it’s a flexible artform that can be relevant to society, now.”
Roxanne Korda, Infinite Opera
Infinite Opera is an innovative opera creation company based in Birmingham, directed by librettist Roxanne Korda and composer Daniel Blanco Albert. Formed serendipitously at a reservoir-side barbecue in 2017, their interdisciplinary creative practice evolves the traditional operatic genre through collaborative work with subject driven institutions, businesses and individuals. Recent achievements include: astrophysics opera The Flowering Desert — based on the discovery of TRAPPIST-1 by Dr Amaury Triaud, performed at ThinkTank Planetarium; Birmingham Opera Company commission [shut], based on real-life testimonies from small businesses in Birmingham; and the first ever “beer opera” — Besse — created in collaboration with craft breweries around the UK. Roxanne and Daniel both completed their PhDs at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as part of the Midlands4Cities doctoral programme.
From the 24-26th July 2024, Infinite Opera’s production of Besse takes place at Signature Brew, Blackhorse Road. Ahead of the production, we caught up with Roxanne and Daniel at Signature Brew to discuss mythologising beer, egalitarian collaboration, and performing in unconventional spaces…
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: We’re currently sat in Signature Brew, ahead of the performance of your upcoming opera Besse in the brewery later this month. Tell me a bit about how the concept for Besse came about, and the idea of creating an opera for a brewery?
Daniel Blanco Albert: We had an artistic residency at Grand Union, in Digbeth, [in] Birmingham. It was really cool working there. We had a chat with our residency supervisor, [who] ran the gallery at that time — and her research was into witchcraft. She said to us “Hey, do you know Oli [Webb] at Digbrew? You should go there and chat with him, maybe you can make a nice collab…” — so we went there, to the taproom [at Digbrew], ordered a beer, and said: hey mate, would you be interested [in doing] an opera about beer? And luckily, it was Oli, so he said “hell yeah!” That was the whole genesis of the project.
Roxanne Korda: We had a meeting with Oli — Digbrew, Grand Union, and us. Oli was really excited about doing an opera about women in beer. This was like five years ago; the whole craft brewing scene had fully exploded by that point. I think that was somewhere where women were starting to say “hey, we’re not fully involved in this” — so it was quite a good moment to bring [a] female narrative into the brewery (even though none of the brewers were women). -laughs-
I had also been interested in witches. I’d been researching them since I was a teenager, anyway. [I] had heard about how some witches had been killed for being brewsters. There’s all of this stuff on the internet about how the image of the witch comes from brewsters; which isn’t necessarily true — there’s quite a few different roles that women had [that] feed into what “typical” witches now look like — but there were definitely some things brewsters had that fed into that. So this is perfect: we can talk about these women, who were the people that brewed beer — and then reading up into it more, women were brewing beer for 7000 years before men were brewing beer. And nobody seems to know that, no-one tells you about that.
Daniel: This wouldn’t have happened if Oli wasn’t a fine artist. He studied fine art at UCL Slade, so he already had an interest in performing arts; he was trying to incorporate different concepts of fine art with the ethos of the brewery, so for him, opera meant something quite strong. I think Digbrew was such a special place to start something like this.
So would you see the development of Besse — at least in its initial incarnation — as a site-specific project?
Roxanne: It is site-specific, yeah. We call it subject-specific, because our other works are also built around audiences — or people that have specific interests — and the idea is that they should be performed in places that align with the subject. So Besse should always be performed in a brewery — or the furthest thing from a brewery would be like, a pub. -laughs-
Daniel: Because subject-specific encompasses site-specific. In this case, being subject-specific makes Besse inherently site-specific. It could be performed in a theatre, yes — [but] could it be with the ethos of the piece? Maybe not as much. Financially, it would be probably better for us to perform it in a massive opera house, but it would be difficult to convey the holistic approach that we are thinking in the design of the piece.
Roxanne: The venue is a collaborator in the piece, as well. It’s as important as the music, or the story; it’s as big a part of the audience’s experience, what they’re sitting in. It was really important for us, with all of our work, that we consider what venues go with what pieces.
Daniel: It’s having a holistic approach [to] the creation of opera; not considering only the subject, the music itself, or even the text, but how all of them dial in together. Where, how, when it’s performed — it’s all part of the composition. You’re kind of composing a full event.
Roxanne: We’re saying to people, “come and experience this story, this music, this subject, this space.” Whereas if you go to an opera house, you’re like “I am going to the opera” — you have a different expectation of what you’re going to visit, you have a different mindset to how you’re going to receive it. [We’re] also priming the audience a bit, by giving them these kinds of experiences — rather than a traditional theatre experience.
Daniel: Yes, it’s opera, but it’s different to “opera” as the genre, traditionally. Opera, in the end, is the conjunction of different practices put together — why not add in brewing as a discipline into the multidisciplinary art form that is opera?
That’s such a fascinating and refreshing approach to opera-making. How did this collaboration come about — how did you two meet and develop this model of opera creation?
Daniel: This story basically starts how every story starts: in a random place, [with] a random question. We met [at] a barbecue; we both were studying Masters at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire for a year, but we didn’t bump into each other. We had some beers, some food, we were chatting, and Roxanne said “would you be interested in composing an opera about physics?” — and I said “yeah, why not?”
Roxanne: And then two days later, Dani messaged me on Facebook and was like “when should we meet about composing this opera?”
Daniel: Well, that’s forward. -laughs-
Zyggy: So Roxanne: why an opera about physics?
Roxanne: I studied Physics and Philosophy in my undergrad, and then I was a physics teacher. [That] was still very much part of my mindset. I was still teaching while I was doing my Master’s, so it was still present — physics was still in my head, all of the time. It felt natural that I should be combining what I was doing with physics. I wanted to work with other people, I wanted to find composers to create work with; that was part of my mission when I came to the conservatoire.
The more that I was thinking about physics and opera… As I was starting to write the script, it became very clear the script was gonna be like a Baroque opera, with gods and humans being the different parts of physics that were being represented. The gods were like forces, and the humans were like particles. It all felt like it was falling into place: that physics could be described in these quite classical, mythological ways.
That’s such a wonderful idea — using human mythological tropes to make “hard science” accessible…
Roxanne: That’s the whole thing. The purpose is not necessarily to make the stories “human”, but then they always end up being ultimately based on human experience. I guess as it happens with most writers: it’s based on my experiences most of the time, as well. But if I can draw parallels between what’s happening in cutting-edge physics and the daily intricacies or microdramas in my life, then I’m sure that it’s probably got parallels to everyone else’s life, as well. That’s part of it: trying to show that there’s more accessibility to this topic than you first perceive — or the maths allow you to perceive.
Daniel: Even Besse mythologises stuff. In a way, we are mythifying the ingredients of beer.
In what ways does Besse put those mythologisings into practice — does that relate to ideas of brewing?
Roxanne: It’s kind of semi-based on the same concept; that the characters of Besse are also [representing] elements in the brewing process. You’ve got the key elements of brewing: yeast, malt, hops, water, and at the end there’s the alcohol.
Each character is representing one of those things. So Besse is the yeast. She’s been put in this condition, this society; her environment is not right for her to thrive, so she goes “wild”. Which is what happens to yeast — they call that wild yeast — when the conditions for brewing are wrong for the yeast; it destroys the yeast, and it also destroys the beer. The malt is the old woman, who is always “feeding” her with the ideas and ability to “go wild”. And there’s Camille — her husband — who’s the hops… he’s bitter. -laughs- And he gets removed halfway through the show.
Daniel: Spoiler alert…
Roxanne: And the water is the crowd — they get converted into alcohol, and they become deadly to Besse (the yeast). When I was writing it, I was like “I need a structure around which to form this narrative”, because there’s just so many different inputs. And I was like: well, I should do what I was always doing, right? Give characters meaning because of the subject.
Daniel: In a way, the opera [narrative] is a brewing recipe. And the opera itself is a beer.
Roxanne: It’s a bad beer. -laughs-
How would you say your creative practices have fed into working with external collaborators — such as with Signature Brew, or with physicists?
Daniel: I think it’s about being generous. I think the whole thing is about being generous. Of course, there’s always an element of egocentrism of “what you wanna do”, but when you generate a collaborative environment, it’s about generosity, and trying to understand each others’ needs. As part of our creative practice, we’ve become (unwillingly) producers; and when you produce, you realise that everybody has an agenda — in a sort of sense. Being able to read, and understand, what the expectations are of everybody, then you understand the role that you [have to do]: push forth, push back, give more, give less. For a collaboration to really work, you need to have an awareness of the needs of everybody, and not overpower anybody. Of course that’s the ideal — there’s always going to be a mess with that.
I think we found that in The Flowering Desert [for ThinkTank Planetarium], when we were working during the pandemic. There was a moment — a feeling from my own practice and perspective — when the piece felt like a mashup of different things put together. But eventually, we overcame that; especially when we were able to meet up more in person, and have more discussions. Especially when we [started] working with Leon Trimble on the visuals. Once each practice can inform, or can generate, little bits of information or ideas — anything to trigger a creative idea — I think the collaboration then is working much [more] healthily.
Roxanne, how does that external collaborative process work for you? I understand that The Flowering Desert was based on conversations with astronomer Dr Amaury Triaud and his experiences during the discovery of TRAPPIST-1…
Roxanne: I think it’s a little bit different with Jordan [Harris] from Signature Brew than it was with Amaury Triaud, and with Oli from Digbrew. With Amaury, we were talking to him as we were creating the work. That’s really important to me: to have the input of as many voices on the subject as I can find. Ultimately, we’re speaking for subjects that don’t speak — because they’re nonhuman, or dead. -laughs- Or we create fictional subjects, but they also relate to other people. I think it’s really important to me that I find many ways into that subject. Which is why the discussion with Amaury for The Flowering Desert was really vital. He gave us a whole afternoon where he told us everything about his experience of discovering it; he showed us the data, he expressed a lot of emotional sentiment towards the data himself. He discussed ways he would want to transfer the data into art, he showed us other artists he’d worked with that were working on exoplanets. It was really honest, and open; it really helped to guide and find that external input.
It’s not just the people we talk to. As with every writer and composer, there’s a lot of other research that goes into it. I’m always looking for other ways to access the topic: whether it’s through understanding other artists’ interpretations, how global cultures have accessed this topic, trying to read scientific material… Balancing the scientific material with a human emotional material, as well. With [Besse], I got a couple books about brewing — I read about brewing science — I also read texts people had written about family members [who] had been witches (that happened hundreds of years ago, but still!) As well as that, looking at poetry that had been written at the time about brewsters; wood-carvings and artwork that had been created about these women.
Daniel: A full immersion.
Roxanne: Trying to take a holistic approach. The idea with a lot of the work is, you’re almost trying to say that these objects have a consciousness that we can experience through theatre. If we’re gonna experience their consciousness, it would be disingenuous for us to do it through one person’s interpretation of it — so how can we find a way that creates the piece of the pie, that is the interpretation of that thing’s “consciousness”, a little bit larger? We’re never gonna access what it is to be a yeast, or what it is to be a proton, but we might be able to access a little bit more about what humans think it is to be that thing. Which might give us a closer link to it.
Daniel: The moment in which I realised that with the music in The Flowering Desert… it was the moment in which we started to look more at that human experience side. Looking at Amaury’s personal experience in the Atacama desert, understanding more [of] Roxanne’s poetry. The music started to shift, as well; from that point, I was more comfortable composing, and feeling I was more [a] part of the topic.
On a more recent note: you were also commissioned this year by Birmingham Opera Company to create a micro-opera — [shut] — based on community stories…
Daniel: The Brum Commission that eventually became [shut] — with my very biased opinion, the piece that we created was very great… but the topic itself is quite miserable. -laughs-
Roxanne: It was about bankruptcy. Obviously, Birmingham went bankrupt [in 2023], but before that, many businesses in Birmingham went bankrupt; Digbrew — who we were affiliated with — went bankrupt. And also, the country is bankrupt. It just felt like the massive thing that one should be talking about in that moment.
If you imagine someone whose entire world has fallen apart, their entire business has fallen apart, there’s so much pain involved in that; and we don’t really discuss it. It’s happened a lot, to a lot of people, and it’s not very easy to know how to talk about the way that people are feeling. It’s not just the people running the businesses; it’s the people who work there, so many people are getting affected. There’s a lot of anger in it, a lot of shame; the rug was pulled out from under so many people. None of it is very enjoyable to think about — that’s probably why people aren’t thinking about it — [and] it was quite depressing to write it.
Daniel: The music was based on drum and bass. So in my case, it was a little bit more exciting to work on; I was vibing in my home, while Roxanne was getting depressed… -laughs- In a way, drum and bass was a way of engaging not only with the Digbeth music scene — the clubbing scenes in Birmingham — but also to engage with mental health, as well. Engaging with that moment of overstimulation you get when you are so stressed; and trying to replicate that with drum and bass. Almost like all the issues, all the problems, all the to-do lists… It’s basically having a massive rave in your head.
Tell me more about the holistic approach you discussed earlier. What does that mean to you and your definitions of opera?
Roxanne: I like to describe opera as an ecosystem. You’re creating an ecosystem around the topic. It’s not about a “hierarchy” — it’s not a pyramid. To create an ecosystem is difficult; you have to remove the egocentrism, you have to make sure you are serving other peoples’ interpretations as well as your own. You need people to be engaged with you [and] what you’re doing. But I think that is an important aspect of creating art. It should be an ecosystem of the subject; that you come into a world that is just the subject. We are just little cells within the subject’s existence. That’s the aim: I don’t know if I’ve ever got anywhere near that…
Daniel: Opera — as an artistic, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary art form — is more of an ecosystem if all of that is treated in an equal way. The moment in which people think like “music first”, “libretto first”, then we’re starting to create these hierarchies already. But if everything is as interactive as possible, then opera can really thrive as that multidisciplinary art form.
Roxanne: Which is why it’s great to be able to come to Signature Brew. The fact that there are spaces like this, which offer opportunities to companies and artists like us to perform here, means they are also interacting with that ecosystem. Our country right now needs a lot more of this. The arts is in a really difficult place, and we might lose it if people don’t see that they also have ownership of it in this way. That it’s not just the director, or the composer; if you can make the venue, the audience, feel like they’re a massively important part of it… It’s really important to empower other people through your art, at the moment especially.
To both of you — what is it about opera, in particular, that serves as the medium for you to tell these stories?
Roxanne: I think in a way, it’s very practical. It’s the medium that I have probably understood the best. It’s quite structured; I like that there’s a form that I can work with. I’m working with archetypes in my characters, as well: there’s certain things in opera that mean certain things — the recitative, the aria, the ensemble, the chorus — there’s already a baseline there. It means that you can be quite poetic, as a writer, in the way that you express things. There’s space for metaphor, there’s a lot of space for subtext; which obviously exists in traditional theatre, but it exists the most in theatre where the text does so many different things — [like] Shakespearian theatre — because we’re so “far away” from the time it was written in. I feel like opera is like that, as well; I can write something, and then it can be transformed, and the subtext can be felt by the composer, the performer — so many other people. That’s quite exciting, as well.
Daniel: I really wasn’t an opera fan when I was growing up. It wasn’t part of my life. I come from a family that is not “musical” — none of them are professional musicians. There was a lot of music in my family, but not really [opera]. I’ve talked to so many artists who work in opera, and it’s like “yeah, opera was so amazing for me when I was a kid!” — and I knew it existed, but it wasn’t a big thing.
However, I started working a lot with theatre in Birmingham. There [were] no musicians in my family, but there was an interest in theatre, definitely. So I became more interested in integrating music for theatre; and eventually, that allowed me to work with so many different genres of music. I felt like I wanted to have more agency on how to express feelings, emotions, ideas — and opera seemed, at that time, like the perfect art form to think differently. To be very creative in how you compose, and create music; I found it very inspiring. You can say so many things without “saying” it. I found [that] I had so much more fun creating music that had that purpose; [with] dialogue, with poetics. Maybe because I didn’t have such a strong relationship with opera before, that made me think about opera in a “completely wrong” way — and that maybe allows me to do things differently; to engage with the genre from a different perspective, not rooted in tradition.
Roxanne: I think also, the fact that it is such a “traditional” genre, but the traditional aspect of it has become irrelevant. Again, it’s like Shakespeare: you can do what you want with it, it doesn’t really belong to anyone anymore. It’s not like you’re taking grime — which is a certain group of peoples’ recent style — I would feel wrong taking that. This is a genre that doesn’t belong to anyone, and if some people are trying to make it belong to them, that’s the problem with it, actually. That’s quite refreshing about it.
That’s why we’ve also had conversations about “should we be calling it opera?” — because of the stereotype, of the idea that there’s this gatekeeping. There’s a certain “museum piece” aspect to what opera is in some places. We don’t wanna engage with that. We wanna engage with “we should explode the opera house”. -laughs-
Daniel: One of the most beautiful experiences that we’ve had was in Digbrew, when we were doing one of the earliest performances of Besse. There was this guy that wanted to come to the brewery and have a drink, and [they were like] “oh, I’m sorry man, there’s an opera happening, you can have a can” — and we went there and said “pop into the opera, there’s a drink with the ticket, it’s half an hour” (we were performing only one act)… And then at the end of the show, he came to us and [said] “I didn’t imagine that opera was that cool.” His first operatic experience was an opera about beer, while having a beer, and then everything made sense. At least for me, that was quite beautiful.
Roxanne: That’s something that’s been really nice about Besse, in particular. Quite a few people have said that to us. It happened in Anspach & Hobday, it definitely happened a lot at Digbrew. [We had] personal friends, and friends of friends, who came and said that. It was a perfect time to get people to do something out of their comfort zones — because craft beer was so much within a lot of peoples’ comfort zones, at that time. If you wanted to go on a cool date somewhere, you’d be like “should we go to the craft brewery?” -laughs-
Finally: what do you think putting on Besse here at Signature Brew is contributing to the opera landscape in the UK?
Roxanne: It’s kind of doing what’s being asked of the opera landscape. -laughs- We are taking opera out of the opera house, we are taking it to people via their interests. We are seeking alternative audiences for it, and we’re showing that it’s a flexible artform that can be relevant to society, now. We didn’t aim to do that — but I think this show does do that.
Daniel: We are basically doing what the CEO of Arts Council England said opera should be doing. But we’re not getting any Arts Council funding for this one… -laughs-
Roxanne: I think it would be more important for companies to do more work in unusual spaces. Still, when I see images of opera being performed in churches or theatres, there’s a lot of backs of peoples’ heads with a lot of grey hair. -laughs- We need to try and boost the interest from younger people. It’s really important. Make opera something that people are thinking [about] like standup: “oh, I’ll go and see some standup, I’ll go and see an opera.” Make opera another fun thing to do out. Which it’s not, at the moment; but by bringing it somewhere like Signature, we are engaging with that audience, and hopefully showing them that it can be that.
Daniel: Something casual and normal.
Roxanne: Performances are special; theatre is so vital to our cultural landscape. It’s about going somewhere and being presented with an alternative world; the visceral experience of people performing at you. That’s really important to us. We kind of get that with Netflix, streaming, but you’re not that alive when you’re sitting on a couch watching a series. If you make the commitment to come to a location, see someone bearing themselves to you — there’s so much more living that happens in that moment.
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Infinite Opera’s performance of Besse takes place at Signature Brew from 24-26 July 2024 – learn more and buy tickets at:
Learn more about Infinite Opera and their practice at:
References/Links:
- Jessica Murray, ‘How Birmingham city council ended up in financial crisis: a timeline’ (2024), The Guardian
- Naomi DeSouza, ‘Birmingham brewery Dig Brew collapses in ‘terrible loss to city’’ (2023), Birmingham Mail
- Darren Henley, ‘We don’t want to bring down the curtain on ENO, but opera has to change’ (2022), The Guardian
