Royal Opera House Announces WOOLF WORKS and LA BOHEME as Part of #OurHouseToYourHouse

The Royal Opera House has announced two new broadcasts, as part of its #OurHouseToYourHouse series. Both Woolf Works and La boheme will be broadcast for free online.

Woolf Works

Online premiere: Friday 26 June 2020 at 7pm BST

Virginia Woolf defied narrative conventions to depict a heightened, startling and poignant reality. Wayne McGregor's ballet triptych Woolf Works was inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf and has an original score by Max Richter. It was created for The Royal Ballet in 2015 and met with outstanding critical acclaim, going on to win McGregor the Critics' Circle Award for Best Classical Choreography and the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production. The Observer described it as 'a compellingly moving experience'; for The Independent it 'glows with ambition... a brave, thoughtful work'; The Guardian concluded that 'it takes both McGregor - and the concept of the three-act ballet - to a brave and entirely exhilarating new place'.

Woolf Works re-creates the emotions, themes and fluid style of three of Woolf's novels: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves. These inspirations are also enmeshed with elements from her letters, essays and diaries such that Woolf Works expresses the heart of an artistic life driven to discover a freer, uniquely modern realism. It brings to life Woolf's world of 'granite and rainbow', where human beings are at once both physical body and uncontained essence.

La boheme

Online premiere: 3-15 July 2020

Richard Jones perfectly captures the blend of tragedy and comedy in La bohème, and provides an acute analysis of Puccini's young would-be artists and their lovers, the soulful Mimì and spirited Musetta. Spectacular designs by Stewart Laing evoke both the poverty of the bohemians' attic home and the splendour of Paris's shopping arcades on Christmas Eve.

Puccini's score is one of his most beautiful, with highlights including Rodolfo and Mimì's introductory arias and love duet in Act I, ebullient music for the chorus and soloists in Act II, and Mimì's poignant death scene, over which the composer himself wept. La bohème received its world premiere at the Teatro Regio, Turin, on 1 February 1896, and its Covent Garden premiere the following year. It is currently one of the best-loved operas worldwide, and the opera most performed at the Royal Opera House.

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