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REVIEWS
Muso (at Grant Museum of Zoology)Reviewed – 8th March 2018★★★★★
“I’ve never seen an historian cry with laughter before”
An evening with a difference! Impropera have teamed up with scientists to create a wonderful merger between bonkers improvised opera and fascinating, fun science talks. The event took place at the Grant Museum of Zoology, part of University College London. The museum is full of all kinds of specimens including a fossilised pterodactyl, several tapeworms and a walrus penis bone. It’s one of those largely unknown London curiosities that are definitely worth a visit, even without the entertainment. When we arrived we were given a glass of wine and invited to wander round and enjoy the museum for a while. And then the fun started.
See full review at Spy In the Stalls.
“Lost for Words”
Describing this evening of improvised 'opera' leaves your critic almost lost for words; fortunately, being lost for words is clearly not something that troubles the multi-talented team that brings this farrago of musical mayhem to the Michael Tippett Centre. The premise is this: four singers, male and female, and a piano accompanist (male) will take an audience on a roller-coaster ride through the world of opera and classical music by asking said audience to provide suggestions for musical styles, settings, and personnel which they will on the spot turn into brand new songs, tunes, and eventually an entire opera before your very eyes. And ears. A tall order, you might think. Well, not to the battery of extreme musical and comedic talent that these five represent.
The evening never flags, start to finish: even if you don't get the multiple musical in-jokes it is always hysterically funny. These boys and girls are so fast on their feet with their genuinely witty, instantly made-up songs in rhyme, in tune and in whatever musical style the audience suggests that it takes the breath away. The grand finale in the second half, the once-only opera 'The Squishy Dentist of Glasgow' (don't ask) even has non-threatening audience participation in which tonight's crowd enthusiastically joins as chorus (improvised lyric of course); your critic even has a (very brief) solo. This is virtuoso stuff.
If ever they are in your area don't miss them; it will be one of the most rib-tickling evenings of original musical comedy you're ever likely to see. And of course, you'll be safe in the knowledge that literally no-one else will have seen anything like it.
Review by John Christopher Wood, Bath Chronicle, 2015
“I’ve never seen an historian cry with laughter before”
An evening with a difference! Impropera have teamed up with scientists to create a wonderful merger between bonkers improvised opera and fascinating, fun science talks. The event took place at the Grant Museum of Zoology, part of University College London. The museum is full of all kinds of specimens including a fossilised pterodactyl, several tapeworms and a walrus penis bone. It’s one of those largely unknown London curiosities that are definitely worth a visit, even without the entertainment. When we arrived we were given a glass of wine and invited to wander round and enjoy the museum for a while. And then the fun started.
See full review at Spy In the Stalls.
“Lost for Words”
Describing this evening of improvised 'opera' leaves your critic almost lost for words; fortunately, being lost for words is clearly not something that troubles the multi-talented team that brings this farrago of musical mayhem to the Michael Tippett Centre. The premise is this: four singers, male and female, and a piano accompanist (male) will take an audience on a roller-coaster ride through the world of opera and classical music by asking said audience to provide suggestions for musical styles, settings, and personnel which they will on the spot turn into brand new songs, tunes, and eventually an entire opera before your very eyes. And ears. A tall order, you might think. Well, not to the battery of extreme musical and comedic talent that these five represent.
The evening never flags, start to finish: even if you don't get the multiple musical in-jokes it is always hysterically funny. These boys and girls are so fast on their feet with their genuinely witty, instantly made-up songs in rhyme, in tune and in whatever musical style the audience suggests that it takes the breath away. The grand finale in the second half, the once-only opera 'The Squishy Dentist of Glasgow' (don't ask) even has non-threatening audience participation in which tonight's crowd enthusiastically joins as chorus (improvised lyric of course); your critic even has a (very brief) solo. This is virtuoso stuff.
If ever they are in your area don't miss them; it will be one of the most rib-tickling evenings of original musical comedy you're ever likely to see. And of course, you'll be safe in the knowledge that literally no-one else will have seen anything like it.
Review by John Christopher Wood, Bath Chronicle, 2015
“The Perfect Operatic Pick Me Up”
"Four fearless comedians, a pianist happy to improvise in the style of anyone from Scarlatti to Steve Reich, a quick-witted clarinettist, and a well-lubricated audience, sorry, chorus. It is safe to say that if you don't enjoy mildly saucy Radio 4-style puns, have never marvelled at the skill of the Whose Line Is It Anyway? team, have a horror of audience participation, and can't tell your Purcell from your Piazzola, Impropera's current show is not for you. If, however, Humphrey Lyttelton is your hero and Josie Lawrence your pin-up, I cannot recommend Made Up highly enough.
This Wednesday saw the first (and last) performance of The Porous Head-Hunter of Buenos Aires: the zarzuela-esque culmination of an evening in which David Pearl improvised a Schubert lied about a lost yak, Susan Bissatt bade a bel canto farewell to her dog, Niall Ashdown delivered a simultaneous translation of Morag McClaren's magnificent performance of a hyperbolic Prokofiev aria on a dust-buster, and all four improvised a contrapuntal chat-up line in the style of Handel, accompanied brilliantly by Anthony Ingle and Peter Furniss... The perfect operatic pick-me-up."
Anna Picard, The Independent
“Brilliant Ingenuity”
“Rising to the audience’s every challenge, the company quickly weave a plot of brilliant ingenuity, embroider it with musical parody and bring wonder and joy to all.”
Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“A New Art Form”
“A new art form sparks into life.”
The Journal, Salisbury
“Hugely Entertaining”
"It's a hugely entertaining musical show. Anything can happen: the keynote may be manic surreal comedy, but it can also suddenly turn dark or weird. It's also fascinating to watch the singers throwing the hot potato from one to another, providing an object lesson in seat-of-your-pants thinking. Such riotously good fun that even I lose my inhibitions."
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph
“Indescribably Funny”
"Indescribably Funny. Opera is long overdue this improvisational going-over – especially when it is done with the love and care of impropera. The better their improvisation, the harder it is to believe it was actually improvised. This is not about musical pastiches but built on emotional authenticity, realness and complicity. You would have to be a real snob to think it was indecent to make fun of the opera format in this way."
Swedish Daily News (Dagens Nyheter)
"Four fearless comedians, a pianist happy to improvise in the style of anyone from Scarlatti to Steve Reich, a quick-witted clarinettist, and a well-lubricated audience, sorry, chorus. It is safe to say that if you don't enjoy mildly saucy Radio 4-style puns, have never marvelled at the skill of the Whose Line Is It Anyway? team, have a horror of audience participation, and can't tell your Purcell from your Piazzola, Impropera's current show is not for you. If, however, Humphrey Lyttelton is your hero and Josie Lawrence your pin-up, I cannot recommend Made Up highly enough.
This Wednesday saw the first (and last) performance of The Porous Head-Hunter of Buenos Aires: the zarzuela-esque culmination of an evening in which David Pearl improvised a Schubert lied about a lost yak, Susan Bissatt bade a bel canto farewell to her dog, Niall Ashdown delivered a simultaneous translation of Morag McClaren's magnificent performance of a hyperbolic Prokofiev aria on a dust-buster, and all four improvised a contrapuntal chat-up line in the style of Handel, accompanied brilliantly by Anthony Ingle and Peter Furniss... The perfect operatic pick-me-up."
Anna Picard, The Independent
“Brilliant Ingenuity”
“Rising to the audience’s every challenge, the company quickly weave a plot of brilliant ingenuity, embroider it with musical parody and bring wonder and joy to all.”
Jeremy Kingston, The Times
“A New Art Form”
“A new art form sparks into life.”
The Journal, Salisbury
“Hugely Entertaining”
"It's a hugely entertaining musical show. Anything can happen: the keynote may be manic surreal comedy, but it can also suddenly turn dark or weird. It's also fascinating to watch the singers throwing the hot potato from one to another, providing an object lesson in seat-of-your-pants thinking. Such riotously good fun that even I lose my inhibitions."
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph
“Indescribably Funny”
"Indescribably Funny. Opera is long overdue this improvisational going-over – especially when it is done with the love and care of impropera. The better their improvisation, the harder it is to believe it was actually improvised. This is not about musical pastiches but built on emotional authenticity, realness and complicity. You would have to be a real snob to think it was indecent to make fun of the opera format in this way."
Swedish Daily News (Dagens Nyheter)
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