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The Long Christmas Dinner / A Dinner Engagement

Guildhall School presents an opera double-bill

The Guildhall School’s opera department presents a double-bill of one-act operas with a distinctive culinary flavour.

Hindemith’s imaginative family drama The Long Christmas Dinner traverses 90 years in the lives of several generations of the Bayard family in New England. This subtle examination of American family life show births, marriages and deaths set against a backdrop of a rapidly changing society.

A gem of British comic opera, A Dinner Engagement is a comedy of manners set amongst the vegetables. Finding themselves in financial straits, Lord and Lady Dunmow prepare to host dinner for the Grand Duchess of Monteblanco and her son Phillipe in an attempt to marry off their troublesome daughter and thus solve their money problems. However, when dinner gets burnt, things go from bad to worse...

 

Promoted by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

The Long Christmas Dinner
Libretto by Thornton Wilder
Music by Paul Hindemith

A Dinner Engagement
Libretto by Paul Dehn
Music by Lennox Berkeley

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Watch: The Tale of Januarie - homegrown opera at Guildhall

'The Tale of Januarie' was the first opera to be written in Middle English and received its world-premiere in the spring term. Our cameras went behind the scenes and followed the action as the production brought together almost the entire School.
 

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