Tenebrae
Image credit: © Sim Canetty-Clarke
This concert will be approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes in duration, with no interval
Encore
In the run up to Christmas, Wigmore Hall welcomes groups of various kinds, specialists in various repertoires, all intent upon celebrating the festive season in style. Tenebrae launches the season with a wide selection of carols for all tastes.
About Garth Bardsley
Award-winning opera director, Garth Bardsley studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and at the Royal Northern College of Music. He made his operatic debut with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and was a soloist for various opera companies. He has extensive experience in musical theatre and starred in the West End productions of Jerry Herman’s The Best of Time and as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. As a director, Garth has produced for numerous leading conservatoires and international festivals. His production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream won the Manchester Theatre Award Best Opera 2016. His first book, Stop the World - The Biography of Anthony Newley, was serialised in The Daily Mail, and garnered 5* reviews from the national press.
He has written several plays and, as a poet and lyricist, collaborates with British composer Ben Parry. Their numerous works have been performed and broadcast across the UK and America including the RAH, Christmas at Kings, Sage Gateshead, Washington DC’s National Cathedral and The Kennedy Center. Their Christmas pop song I Wrote You a Christmas Love Song has been recorded by the Royal Air Force Big Band and National Youth Choir of Great Britain and was broadcast worldwide in December 2019.
Garth also writes with American composer Gregory Wanamaker - their choral work, Laude!, was broadcast on PBS across America and Canada. Garth’s 90-minute radio drama, Jubilee! starring Simon Callow, Sophia Nomvete and Sam West was broadcast on Radio 3 earlier this year. Garth is currently working with Ben Parry on a major one-man opera, My Father Cannot Speak, set to premiere in 2026.
Writing A Christmas Conversation and this collaboration with Nigel Short and Tenebrae has been an especially enjoyable and rewarding experience.