PANDORA’S BOX
Composer – Stuart Hancock
Librettist – Donald Sturrock
Using the Ancient Greek legend as a starting point, the story is a contemporary satire on 21st century family life.
It asks the big question: What is existence all about?
In mythology, it was the empathetic Prometheus who gave Pandora the box that let out evil into the human world. In this opera, our hero is a salesman from Olympus Enterprises, whose novelty box releases Greed, Vanity and Envy into the tranquil life of the well-meaning Woakes family. His well-meaning gift creates domestic mayhem: friendships are broken and selfishness rules. There is resolution, but there are no easy answers. The action takes place on Mount Olympus and in the quaint English town of Middle Demos over the course of one turbulent day.
Meet our celebrated composing team
DONALD STURROCK
Librettist
After studying Modern History at Oxford University, Donald Sturrock joined BBC Television Music and Arts Department where he worked as writer and director, making over thirty documentaries, several of which won major international broadcasting awards.
Since leaving the BBC, he has continued writing and directing for television and live theatre.
His work includes seven opera librettos, mainly for family audiences, including the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr Fox at the Los Angeles Opera with designs by Gerald Scarfe, which Donald also directed. He has a long association with the work of Roald Dahl. He has made two television documentaries about the writer and adapted a number of his stories for the concert hall. His critically acclaimed biography, Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl was published in 2010 and shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. Love from Boy, a collection of Dahl’s letters to his mother, was published in 2016. Pandora’s Box will be his third W11 libretto, each time working with composer, Stuart Hancock.
STUART HANCOCK
Composer
Stuart Hancock is a composer of film, TV and concert music, best known for his scores to BBC’s ‘Atlantis’ and the animated movie adaptation of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’.
He studied at Downing College Cambridge and the London College of Music. Beginning his career as a studio commercial composer with a Soho-based music production company, he has built and maintained a varied career as a composer, arranger and conductor across all media.
Stuart has released nine soundtrack albums to date, all of which garnered rave reviews. Equally experienced in concert music, Stuart won a prestigious British Composer Award in 2015 for his ground-breaking collaborative concert work ‘Snapshot Songs’, premiered at the Barbican with a newly-formed community choir and soloists, youth symphony orchestra, rappers and drummers. Stuart released ‘Raptures’ in November 2019 – his first album of concert music, recorded with the BBC Concert Orchestra. It was warmly received across the classical music press, with BBC Music Magazine calling it “wide-eyed, big-hearted… a joyous hour of large, lyrical music”. Stuart’s Violin Concerto, the centrepiece of the album, was performed in February 2020 at London’s Cadogan Hall (with Jack Liebeck as soloist with Imperial College Symphony Orchestra).
In late 2014, Stuart took up scoring duties on the hit primetime BBC1 Saturday night fantasy drama ‘Atlantis’ and t. The Netflix retro comedy horror ‘Crazyhead’ followed in 2016, along with Stuart’s colourful orchestral scoring for the animated adaptation of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’ (from the makers of ‘The Snowman and the Snowdog’). ‘Bear Hunt’ premiered on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve and was the channel’s highest-rated programme of the year with over 8 million viewers, and Stuart now conducts live concert performances of the score-to-picture for family audiences internationally, with new London performances scheduled for November 2022.
Stuart’s latest music for film includes ‘Hiroshima: 75 Years Later’ (a feature documentary for the History Channel) and the forthcoming feature documentary ‘Disorder’ (directed by Bafta-winner Kate Blewett). He is currently finessing his score for the major new British animated feature film ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’, adapted from the popular Michael Morpurgo book of the same name. ‘Pandora’s Box’ will be Stuart’s third opera collaboration with Donald Sturrock for W11 Opera, following the successes of ‘Rain Dance’ (2010) and 2017’s pirate romp ‘Cutlass Crew’, which is set for its US premier in Boston in spring 2023.
www.stuarthancock.com