oboeinsight

When the former Conservative cabinet minister Sir George Young famously said: “The homeless are what you step over when you come out of the opera,” a debate was sparked at the shelter where a young opera critic, Matthew Peacock, worked as a volunteer. “A discussion began about what homeless people needed and wanted. It wasn’t blankets and housing: they wanted to show the public what homeless people can do. It was about restoring pride,” he says.

From that conversation grew the company Streetwise Opera – which, with Peacock as its founding chief executive, now has a string of critically acclaimed productions to its name. And this week, the story has turned full circle, as Streetwise and a host of other homeless or ex-homeless performers take over the Royal Opera House.

The event, With One Voice, is part of the London 2012 festival – the first time that homeless people have been given a platform at an Olympic Games. Instead of being, in Peacock’s words, “overlooked, made unwelcome, or, worst-case scenario, moved on”.

RTWT

… hmm … or maybe Classipop? That might be a bit better. You tell me!

I just read this article and I really want to listen to the list of tunes, now!

Call it stealing, call it paying tribute. Call it whatever you want. Artists have been mining the past for as long as people have been making music.
Handel, Mozart and Beethoven weren’t just geniuses. They were also pros at recycling their own work and composing variations on that of others.
What’s newer is the extent of the borrowing and the sense of equality looking backward promotes, the notion that the borders between genres really are and should be porous. Today, more than ever, we really can all be friends through music.