Published: 18 August, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR

THE Grimeborn Festival enters its second week at Arcola Theatre, Dalston, with performances of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw this Friday and Saturday.

Next, on Sunday, is a performance of Janacek’s evocative song cycle, The Diary of One Who Disappeared, about a village boy’s forbidden love for a gypsy girl.

This is followed on Monday and Tuesday by Barefoot Opera’s “re-working” of Handel’s Alcina – about love, magic and betrayal, which seeks to integrate singers and orchestra in a physical blend of opera, theatre, dance and improvisation.

An unusual double-bill on Wednesday twins a music theatre piece by Kim Ashton with performance artist Herve Goffings.

On Thursday, Mozart and Salieri compete for a prize offered in 1786 by Emperor Joseph II.

Coincidentally, the Mozart piece The Impresario is being performed by Garden Opera in Regent’s Park on bank holiday Monday.

Another double bill on Friday looks particularly interesting. Demon Lover is a new chamber opera “in development” by composer Jules Scott and writer Sue Curtis, the duo who brought the ground-breaking jazz opera Vice to Grimeborn last year.

This is twinned with The Francis Bacon Opera, another “work in progress” by Stephen Crowe, based on Bacon’s infamous interview with Melvyn Bragg for The South Bank ­Show that reveals the artist at his fiery, vulnerable and inebriated best.

The festival ends on Saturday, August 27, with contrasting chamber operas by William Walton and Gustav Holst.