Singing from the stands: Football fans to swap chants for arias in new opera
Opera inspired football fans through Pavarotti’s rousing renditions of Nessun Dorma in Italia 90 - and now it's the turn of the terraces to inspire opera.
A new English work will sport the world’s first chorus composed of football fans, and supporters will be able to join the cast and swap ribald chants for the classical repertoire.
The chosen “footy fan chorus” will feature in the aptly 90-minute-long work Gods of the Game
A Football Opera, newly commissioned by Sky Arts, after being given a crash course in the basics of singing arias.
Unlike performers in the Anvil Chorus in Il Trovatore or the Humming Chorus in Madama Butterfly, the football fans will sing en masse in a stadium, and their filmed performance will be projected on stage when the show opens at Grange Park Opera.
Producers have advised that fans willing to sing in the vast ensemble - which will be performing a medley of familiar tunes from both opera and the terraces - should “watch this space”, as arrangements for the singers and the stadium are made in time for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The opera comes after the announcement last year of a breakaway “Super League” of Europe’s richest teams which was abandoned following condemnation by fans, and its plot centres on two fictional footballing icons taking on the avarice and corruption of the sporting establishment.
Phil Porter, writer and librettist of Gods of the Game, said that work was “very much inspired by the drama of international football”.
In true operatic fashion, myths and deities will feature heavily, with figures from the footballing pantheon called upon to help the lead characters overcome “all-powerful” sporting executive - a villain created for the stage.
Mr Porter told the Telegraph: “The opera imagines a world in which the world’s greatest ever footballers – from Pele and
Maradona through to Messi and Ronaldo – exist as gods, watching over the global game.”
There will be footballing equivalents for the archetypal characters often portrayed in opera - with macho toughs inspired by the likes of hardmen like Roy Keane, and tortured geniuses modelled on figures like George Best.
The full cast is yet to be announced for the work which goes into rehearsals in Autumn ahead of the World Cup in November, and producers are planning further announcements on recruitment for the “footy fan chorus”.
It comes as Sky Art seeks to move into commissioning work outside of TV, and God of the Game will feature first as an on-stage opera, and before a filmed performance is broadcast.
Phil Edgar-Jones, director of Sky Arts and entertainment, said: “One of our aims at Sky Arts is to move beyond TV from time to time and help create work that lives in the real world, so we’re really excited to bring this brilliant idea to the stage with Grange Park Opera.
“Football is laced with all the drama you need for operatic treatment – heroes, villains, rivalry, joy, despair.”
Wasfi Kani, CEO of Grange Park Opera in Surrey, has admitted she has “never watched a football match”, but told the Telegraph the new football-inspired work “has everything, it has those timeless characters we see in opera”.
She added that club identities will be kept neutral to keep the work universal, and while the opera is in English, the country seeking to secure hosting rights for the fictional World Cup could be any footballing nation.
God of the Game director Kwame Kwei-Armah said the combination of opera and sport was a “ marriage made in heaven” adding they were “both full of passion, drama and charismatic stars”.
The Sky commission Gods of the Game: A Football Opera will open in the Theatre in the Woods at Grange Park Opera, Surrey, on October 6 before airing on Sky Arts, Freeview and NOW.
