Four: 30 Operas made in South Africa at Artscape Theatre

Cape Town Opera, in collaboration with the UCT Opera School and the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, presents an evening composed of four new home-grown operas. Four notable South African composers have teamed up with four acclaimed writers to create half hour works that are powerful and innovative, telling contemporary African stories in imaginative new ways.



This production develops the popular format launched in 2010 with Five:20 - Operas made in South Africa, and repeated in 2013 to sell-out acclaim in Two:30. Four:30 reunites many of the creative minds responsible for the 2010 project: directors Geoffrey Hyland and Marcus Desando, designer Michael Mitchell and conductor Kamal Khan. Fleur du Cap-winning costume designer Leigh Bishop joins the team this year.

Mrs Makeleni needs a passport. Her grandson was born and raised in the UK after her son emigrated, and she has never met him – indeed, she has never left South Africa. Now she wants to travel to his wedding, and must apply to Home Affairs for her first ever passport – a process which proves rather more troublesome than expected.

In a small village in Botswana, a devoted wife, Sethunya and her macho cattle farmer husband, Ntsimane, are unable to conceive. There is huge pressure on the couple to start a family. Sethunya is accused of not being able to bear children and is shunned by the community. She prays fervently to fall pregnant. ‘Miraculously’ she falls pregnant, and her prayers are finally answered - but years later it is revealed that Ntsimane is not the father of the child. In a male dominated world, and contrary to the community’s belief, it was in fact Ntsimane who was unable to have children and not Sethunya. So who is the father of this child? Blood of Mine is a poignant story of reality, tragedy, humour and pain.

In the late 1730s, an unknown East Indiaman smashed to pieces on the reefs of Lambasi Bay on South Africa's Wild Coast. The next morning the local inhabitants stumbled upon Bessie, a seven-year-old English girl huddled beside a rock on the beach. She was not the first to be shipwrecked on these treacherous shores. Many before her had starved to death and some had walked hundreds of miles to trading posts. But these locals chose to take Bessie home and bring her up as one of their own. She grew to be a woman of legendary beauty and wisdom, eventually becoming the Great Wife of a prince. So began the enduring legacy of a dynasty that extends to many of today's Xhosa royal families.

Anti-Laius reflects on violence in its different manifestations and the mythological story of King Oedipus is used to represent the strife between father and son; between creative person and opponent. French history and the recent Charlie Hebdo attack form the backdrop of the story narrated by a choir and two characters. The opera reflects on the death of Deon van der Walt, the famous South African tenor, who after his death is idealized as a pure operatic tragic character singing for a table in heaven.