Toi Toi Opera is fast establishing a reputation as NZ’s most exciting and innovative pint-sized opera company. Join us in August at The Piano: Centre for Music and the Arts, as we present Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti (in its 70th Anniversary year), and two works by Samuel Barber – the one-act opera A Hand of Bridge, and Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for solo soprano.

The pieces are musically and dramatically complementary, providing an intimate and moving insight into the lived reality of middle-class American suburban life in the 20th century, and of just how far short it fell for many of the ‘American dream’ that they had been sold. In each instance, the audience is invited to delve underneath a picture-perfect cookie-cutter façade, as the protagonists grapple with their feelings of loneliness, emptiness and isolation, and question the meaningfulness of lives dedicated to the pursuit of ‘more’ and ‘better’.

Sexy, poignant, funny, and oh-so-relatable! This sparkling new production, designed by Christy Lassen, and with sumptuous costuming by Tina Hutchison-Thomas, will transport you back to the Golden Age of the 1950s.

Directed by Matthew Kereama, with Musical Direction by Rachel Fuller, the production stars some of New Zealand’s finest young operatic talent.

Find out more about our wonderful cast, creatives, musicians, and crew here.

A fully-staged production, sung in English, with chamber orchestra.