Tête à Tête Opera Festival Week 1 : Friday

The line-up begins, at 7pm, with Ergo Phizmiz's 'Gala', a puppet-opera inspired by Gala Dali's relationship with Jeff Fenholt, a young actor then playing the lead role in 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. It's followed, at 7.50pm, by Tom Smail's 'Soon', a voyage of discovery aboard a stranded Eurostar train. At 7.55pm there's Erick Flores's 'and the Crowd (wept)', an exploration of the emptiness at the heart of the celebrity dream, inspired by the life and death (in 2009) of reality TV star Jade Goody. At 9.15pm, an opera singer finds herself in Venice as the world is ending, in Lore Lixenberg's 'The End of Civilisation As We Know It'. The evening rounds off, at 9.20pm, with Pete Wyer's 'La Belle de La Bête'.