“Ensemble Fantômas ... can do it all”
Current Project: THE RED ROOM
THE RED ROOM is a chamber opera in one act, based on a memorably disturbing short story by the great Iranian writer, Sadegh Hedayat. Set in Iran in the 1930s, it takes place over a single night. Two strangers meet in the provincial town of Khansar. One offers the other a room for the night. But this is no simple act of hospitality, and for the frightened Guest, his Host may be a monster, a madman, or a man whose secret inner life has separated him from the rest of humanity. The Red Room is infused with a kind of Gothic Existentialism, and the ghosts of Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka influence this timeless tragedy of alienation and rejection.
THE RED ROOM is the second collaboration between leading Iranian/Danish composer Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour and UK-based librettist and playwright Dominic Power. It received its UK première in September 2022 at the Cockpit Theatre in London, as part of the Tête à Tête Opera Festival, and the Danish première in August 2023, at Teater Nordkraft as part of the Aalborg Opera Festival.
Ensemble Fantômas are a London-based multi-disciplinary company dedicated to the production and performance of new opera
REVIEW
18. 08. 2023 - The Red Room Opera, Teater Nordkraft, Aalborg, Denmark
It was the London-based opera troupe Ensemble Fantomas that was responsible for the performance. Fantomas can do it all: scenography, direction, choreography etc. and soloists and musicians are well-acclaimed. The Red Room was also inciting and insistent, very well-formed and well-executed.