From The Observer, July 13 2008
Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent
Sunday July 13, 2008

The poet Seamus Heaney is to collaborate with his old friend and fellow Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott, on a new opera for the Globe Theatre in London this autumn.

The opera will be the first to be fully staged at the open-air Shakespearean venue and is being composed by the Trinidad-born composer Dominique Le Gendre. It will be based on Heaney's critically acclaimed work, The Burial at Thebes billed as an 'inspired partnership' between 'two giants of literature', the project will set the story in an ailing South American republic.

'Heaney's text is so pressing and so contemporary that it has real relevance to the dilemmas we face today, to questions of competing loyalty which recur everywhere in this story,' said Le Gendre, who is completing working on the score in Italy this weekend. This is the first time Heaney has given permission for an operatic treatment of one of his works, but Le Gendre believes the use of music is well suited to the telling of an Ancient Greek legend. Sophocles's original version would have been semi-operatic, combining sung and recited text.

The Irish poet said that he is looking forward to the 'huge enhancement' his work will get from the talents of West Indian Walcott, who is to direct the production, Le Gendre, and conductor Peter Manning, who has commissioned the ambitious work for his ensemble Manning Camerata. 'Their partnership is bound to produce work where the tragic note of the original Antigone will sound more deeply and the pity and the terror strike home more immediately,' said Heaney.

Walcott makes his British directorial debut with Burial at Thebes. It will be the first time he has directed an opera. 'The long friendship between myself and Seamus Heaney and the shared vision to bring one of the world's greatest stories to a musical setting offers a rare opportunity for a work of considerable importance and beauty to be seen and heard,' he said.

Le Gendre, who was the first female composer to be asked to write an opera for the Royal Opera House, is composer in residence with Manning Camerata. 'Peter Manning and I have dreamt of this for three years,' she said. 'The direction of Derek Walcott will guarantee the realisation of the vision we have.'

'Burial at Thebes' will have its world premiere at the Globe Theatre on Saturday, 11 October. It will be performed again the next afternoon before a national tour.