Ayrshire Opera Experience, described as Scotland’s fresh new opera company, present a special performance for this year’s Viking Festival. The group have teamed up with the renowned storyteller Andy Cannon to produce a new opera that has been specially written for this year’s Viking Festival. The story was created from a series of workshops with pupils from St Mary’s Primary School in Largs. The pupils worked with Andy to put together a story that will now be told through storytelling and songs. On the evening the same pupils will perform along side professional opera singers and Andy.

The second offering of the evening ‘The Descent O’ Orpheus Tae The Underworld’ will see the audience transported to the weird and wonderful life of the circus in a new Scots Language version of the opera: The Descent of Orpheus to the Underworld by Charpentier. Fresh from their sellout performance at The Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in August, AOE are now preparing the production for the Largs Theatre.

The story is as follows: ‘Roll up! Roll up! Come and see the characters of the circus bring this greek myth to life as never before. The story, based on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice follows a young hero on his journey to hell and back. Charpentier’s score is brimming with beauty, drama and heart felt emotion and is performed by some of opera’s rising stars.’ Scots may not be the obvious language for an opera performance, but David Douglas, a tenor and the creative force behind The Ayrshire Opera Experience feels it works very well.

He said: “Operas are performed in the native languages of countries all over the world. Therefore when performing an opera in Scotland, I felt that the use of Scots would work; it would bring it to life in an entirely different way for both performers and audience.” Ayrshire Opera Experience was formed in association with the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in 2014, their first summer school project culminated with a performance of a Scots language production of Charpentier’s Acteon, which then followed on with a spring tour. The company has continued to develop and grow, becoming the first company to present an operatic performance at the globally respected Robert Burns Humanitarian Awards in 2015.  Andy Cannon is one of Scotland’s leading storytellers and was a founder of Wee Stories Theatre where he created productions including Labyrinth, Treasure Island and Arthur, Story of a King. Andy has also worked as Artist in Residence at Platform in Glasgow and with Macrobert in Stirling. Andy was the Creative Director of Performance for the Glasgow 2014 opening ceremony.

The performance takes place at 7pm on Thursday the 3rd of September in The Barrfields Theatre, Vikingar, Largs. Tickets are £10 & £8 and can be purchased via www.ayrshireoperaexperience.co.uk or the Vikingar box office on 01475 689777