Opera in a clock shop - Sunday Times
This should be on TikTok — opera filmed in a clock shop
Grange Park Opera has put on Ravel’s L’heure Espagnole, a comedy about a clockmaker, Torquemada, whose wife cavorts with lovers when he goes out. As farce ensues, her gentlemen callers hide in her husband’s clocks. The opera’s five singers recorded their parts one day this month at Wigmore Hall in central London and spent last week miming while being filmed at the clock shop. The production is the brainchild of Wasfi Kani, the impresario who founded Grange Park Opera in 1998 and has put on more than 50 streamed shows since the start of the first lockdown.
Howard Walwyn Fine Antique Clocks in Kensington is the most unorthodox venue she has chosen. Kani, 64, plans to offer the opera free on Grange Park Opera’s website and YouTube. “We don’t make money, but we have benefited. When the world is silent, we’re the only people who are doing anything.”
