Harrison Birtwistle's music theatre works have produced some of the most compelling moments in British culture.
The Corridor is a new collaboration with the poet David Harsent (his collaborator on Gawain and The Minotaur). It freeze frames the devastating moment when Orpheus turns back to look at Eurydice as they leave the underworld, and loses her forever. 'I'm obsessed with the myth of Orpheus' says Birtwistle ' I see The Corridor as a single moment from the Orpheus story magnified, like a photographic blow-up. I've thought of it as virtuosic, close-up chamber theatre, with the London Sinfonietta musicians in the action as well as the singers.'