The Sloans Opera
Revealed in comic and moving scenes the characters include a recently engaged couple, a crooked landlady, a jukebox, a loyal wife and a hanged pianist. The accessible music beautifully expresses the vivid emotional life that continually flows through the pub.
The Sloans Opera offers a unique Glasgow experience that you will remember for a lifetime. Written and conducted by Gareth Williams with libretto by David Brock, and directed by James Robert Carson.
“…the whole project is a well sung, well played pleasure that puts opera ‘in yer face’ with impressive flair and professionalism.”
Mary Brennan, Glasgow Herald
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“In its original setting, the experience is electric.”
Kelvin Holdsworth, Opera Britannia
About The Sloans Opera
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Premiering as part of the Merchant City Festival 2011, “The Sloans Project” – an inspiring new opera by Gareth Williams – has won great acclaim from audiences, press and media. Since then, it has been revived by NOISE numerous times, in Canada, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. It was selected by Creative Scotland to be part of it’s Made In Scotland Edinburgh Festival showcase during August 2013. BBC news, The Herald Scotland, The Times and The Scotsman have all reported on this groundbreaking piece of music theatre; an opera that fuses the line between audience as spectator and participant.
The opera’s home is the vibrant venue of Sloans Bar and Restaurant, Glasgow’s oldest pub, situated in the heart of the city centre and set over three sumptuous floors. Sloans is situated amidst winding lanes of jewellery shops and is often the place to which newly betrothed couples come to celebrate their pledge to spend their lives together. Sloans has played host to many weddings, birthdays, christenings, ceilidhs and wakes. Taking this rich history of life experience, Gareth Williams and librettist David Brock, decided to base an opera upon these stories.
This tale of life’s cycles of love, marriage, birth and death is based upon letters sent in by the public, for whom Sloans has played an important role at key moments in their lives. This opera belongs to the people of Glasgow as it is THEIR story. Members of the public, for whom Sloans is part of their personal history, have contributed their stories in interviews. These personal stories have become a part of the performance.
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From the first sound of glasses ringing the opening chord of the opera to the last heart wrenching scene, the audience, transfixed, travel through each room of the pub as the stories unfold.
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NOISE would like to thank the PRSF, DADA PR, Sloans Bar and Restaurant, Scottish Opera, Glasgow Life, Merchant City Festival and their wonderful cast and creative team for the success of “The Sloans Project”.