The Music Troupe returns to the Anthony Burgess Foundation with a new opera by Manchester-based composer Joy Ingle.

An Iron Age hill fort in rural Dorset. Fifteen year-old best friends Viv and Daisy are waiting for a ghost. With so much beyond their control, Fort has always been their stomping ground, their escape, at the edge of the future and the past. But when the ghost turns up, the girls feel something starts to shift…

Fort is a new opera adapted from the play of the same name by Tabitha Hayward, which was recently staged at Theatre503 and long-listed for the Bruntwood Prize 2022.

The performers

Soprano – Daniella Sicari
Mezzo-soprano – Lucy Gibbs
Accordion – Alise Silina
Director – Walter Hall

About The Music Troupe

The Music Troupe was founded in 2014 by the composer Edward Lambert for the performance of new, small-scale operas. Since then, the group has performed across the country including London, Brighton, Yorkshire, and Berkshire, and regular appearances at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival. This is The Music Troupe’s third visit to Manchester, following Masque of Vengeance in 2023 and The Duchess of Padua in 2024.

Raised in Dorset and now based in Manchester, Joy Ingle is a composer and sound artist whose work is rooted in folk traditions, landscape and archival practices. They graduated with an MMus in Critical and Experimental Composition from the University of Leeds in 2022 and have gone on to have their work performed at the Berwick Music Series, Cafe OTO, the Clapham Omnibus and elsewhere. Fort is their first opera.