Hidden Lovers
What did she sacrifice for love?
A new chamber opera by Janet Oates, to a libretto by Simon Pettifar based on a memoir of Guy de Maupassant. Opening the Tête-à-tête opera festival 2025, this show is a dark contemplation of tensions between privileged idealism and realism.
22nd September 2025
The Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone, NW8 8EH
Buy your tickets HERE!
about the opera
Hidden Lovers is a fully fledged chamber opera written for this year's Tête-à-tête opera festival, with professional cast and community chorus, accompanied by string trio and auxiliary instruments.
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Poet Simon Pettifar has drawn upon a mysterious extract from the memoirs of Guy de Maupassant to create a dark journey from naivety to disillusioned experience.
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A Traveller is drawn to rediscover the rural idyll of simple content and loving self-sacrifice of the people he encountered years before in his innocent wanderings through the French countryside. His hopes are crushed when he is forced to confront a reality in stark contrast with his privileged complacency and is exposed to the darkness of life.
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Composer Janet Oates explores unusual instrumentation, a dream-like chorus and richly complex music, set alongside folk tunes from the Provençale area of the opera’s mise-en-scène. Exciting young director Alex Gotch invites you to come with us on the Traveller’s tense journey from naivety into darkness.
we are happy and grateful to be supported by the Vaughan Williams Foundation
Tête-à-tête: The Opera Festival
We make, and help others to make opera, with love, for anyone.
With a playful yet pathfinding approach, our sights are set far into the future, scanning the vast unexplored possibilities of what opera could be. Artists and audiences embark on adventures with us that can touch them forever in a way they’ll never forget. As we travel together, we always listen and observe, taking the greatest care of each other.
Though our work often happens under the radar, it’s now hard to find artists working in new opera who haven’t grown, at least a little, under our wing and so now carry something of Tête à Tête with them.
We’ve commissioned, produced and premiered over 100 operas, giving work to many hundreds of opera makers. We’ve also hosted, mentored, and empowered others to make almost 600 new operas in our annual Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival.
