Two One-Woman Operas In One

A pair of scintillating one-woman operas are performed together at the Charing Cross Theatre as part of one unmissable double bill. Katherine McIndoe takes centre stage in The Seven Deadly Sin and The Human Voice, one after the other, under the direction of Alejandro Bonatto. Musical direction for The Seven Deadly Sins comes from Adrian Salinero, while Elspeth Wilkes is on MD duties for The Human Voice. Together they form an extraordinary pairing, as if featuring the same character at different life stages, with threads tied between explorations of womanhood, aspiration and heartbreak.

Seven Deadly Sins

Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins reflect brilliantly on the time and place of its writing, with the jazz music of the '30s and the cabaret of Weimar Republic-era Germany both on the table stylistically. The satirical piece follows Anna, whose personality has been split into two, as she travels through America attempting to earn money to send back home. The moral powers at play force the two sides of Anna to suppress who they really are, treating their natural emotions and human desires as "sins".

The Human Voice

Composed in 1958 by Franc Poulenc after the 1930 play by Jean Cocteau, The Human Voice centres around a heartbreaking final phone conversation between a woman and her lover, who is soon to be married to someone else. Poulenc's score beautifully captures within music the natural rhythms and inflections of normal human speech, adding a disarmingly relatable feeling to the emotional anguish it portrays.