2024 – CMHMD are planning an original opera by the Composer Howard Moody
This plan will allow CMHMD to create a contemporary, hugely topical, and unique piece of work that will promote the cause, message, and profile of CMHMD far beyond anything we have previously achieved
The Arts, creativity, and tolerance matter now more than ever before. Based on our previous work and successes CMHMD is planning a new bold, initiative for 2024 further extending our aim to provide education and training regarding the Holocaust and other genocides to promote human rights, religious and racial harmony, and equality and diversity to children, young people, and the general public through the Arts.
Our plan is to commission an original opera by Howard Moody, Composer, inspired by the story of David Nott, (synopsis below) to be performed initially at CFT and then to tour regionally with an intergenerational community group. Our role as commissioners will be credited wherever and whenever it may be performed in the future.
Impact/difference
Supported by a year-long educational programme for schools including workshops, film screenings, and involvement in the opera itself.
Commissioning a new musical piece will take us to a new level, creating new opportunities for our inter-generational community that we haven’t yet been able to provide.
It will allow us to strengthen and enhance our engagement and education programmes to grow our audience reaching a wider, more varied audience, touching more people.
Around the opera and its development, production, and performances develop and enhance our educational provision and build long-lasting partnerships with local schools.
Introduce children to opera as a powerful medium for storytelling and imprinting a strong and lasting message.
Oakwood School Teacher Quote
“The children were gripped by the performance and this was extremely pleasing as being an opera, a genre many of them are not used to seeing, it was so lovely to see their focus and interest in how the story was told.
Thank you for highlighting us to your performance. I myself have personal connections with the Jewish history and the holocaust, as my father’s family escaped Poland during the second world war. Some successfully to Britain and South Africa, but others very sadly were murdered by the Nazis in camps. Thus the performance had real resonance for me – so strong and powerful in its delivery, especially with the music, soloists and orchestra.”
Calling – outline synopsis
‘Calling’ reflects a community torn apart by war. It is inspired by civilian accounts from contemporary war zones, as well as David Nott’s experience of working as a foreign aid surgeon since the early 1990s.
Government militia and fanatical terrorists put civilians under constant attack. Wounded innocents are only saved by the generosity and skill of the few remaining local doctors led by Noor, who masterminds the creation of secret surgical shelters in the bombed-out remains of the city. He is supported by Lukas, a highly-skilled foreign aid surgeon who has volunteered to work in a city from which most of the skilled workers have fled.
Selini helps the wounded to the shelters. Her brother has been arrested for spraying graffiti on the city walls and she campaigns for his release whilst risking her own life digging survivors out of the bombed rubble and transporting them to Noor’s surgery.
Noor and Lukas give all their patients an equal right to treatment, including terrorists who hold them at gunpoint. Lukas cannot value his own life above that of his orphaned patient and continues to operate on her during a bomb attack. Selini’s brother and his friends are released but at a time when it is clearly too dangerous to stay. Lukas helps his patients to the border before returning home. Meanwhile, Noor and Selini decide to stay, pledging to die together on their own soil.
c. Howard Moody, May 2021
