We will be returning to Wilton’s Music Hall, and also to IF Opera (formerly Iford).

Oscar Straus’s 1908 opéra bouffe is closely based on George Bernard Shaw’s classic anti-war play Arms and the Man. Shaw did not approve of his play being turned into an operetta and forbade any of his dialogue or his characters’ names being used. It was a very bad business decision on his part as The Chocolate Soldier, a worldwide success, subsequently earned a vast amount more for its writers than Shaw’s celebrated play ever did. Now that Shaw’s work is out of copyright, Opera della Luna have created a new version of the show, restoring

much of Shaw’s witty dialogue, and re-instating his original characters. It was given in a rehearsed reading two years ago at Wilton’s and Opera magazine reported that it was brilliantly judged and executed. Timing and tone were spot on, and the musical numbers – in a new orchestral arrangements by James Widden, nattily conducted by James Ham – were confident and classy, the conversational idiom suave.

A new fully-staged production; the first in the UK since 1940, when its run at the Shaftesbury Theatre was cut short when the theatre was bombed.

Director: Jeff Clarke
Conductor: James Ham
New orchestral arrangement: James Widden
Designer: Nigel Howard.