Irma: An opera, opus XIIB
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In 1969 I made a sketch score of an opera, Irma (finishing it as man first landed on the moon). I always had in mind a full score, making it the operatic equivalent of A Humument whose source it shared.

Forty-five years later the Talfourd Press presented Irma in full, 120 pages in colour with libretto material and notated score, plus provocative instructions for director, dramaturge, designer and choreographer.

With the parent work A Humument approaching completion it seemed appropriate that its operatic offshoot should be brought to its originally envisaged form as a full score. Irma in its complete form reflects that experience by providing a recipe book for a stage event; with all the ingredients of traditional opera, dance episodes, drinking chorus, mad scene, erotic enactment, and the many variations on love and death.

(Netia Jones’s production diary for Irma, which took place on September 16 and 17 2017 at the at the South London Gallery, is now available to read online.)