Graduate student composer Max Gibson along with collaborator Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambaksh (Librettist) will see the premiere of their short opera Leonard as part of Jewellery Quarter Festival in late July. The work was commissioned by the Birmingham Opera Company in the United Kingdom. 

Leonard tells the story of a working-class Irish immigrant to Birmingham in the 1950s. It is a celebration of love, a contemporary look at fate, and a frame of grief. Through memory and fragments Leonard explores how fleeting moments can dictate the arc of a life. It engages through his lens and the perspectives of those dear to him how livelihood is affected by the spaces, choices, and relationships that abound around and through a life. At its heart it’s an individual finding their way through both belonging and not. It pays tribute to the composer’s grandfather.

The opera will premiere with two performances on July 22. 

Founded by opera director Graham Vick and conductor Simon Halsey, Birmingham Opera Company is a professional opera company based in Birmingham, England, that specializes in innovative and avant-garde productions of the operatic repertoire, often in unusual venues.