ENO Lockdown Aria

Lockdown around the UK prevents us from coming together to enjoy most workshops and performances. It also forces us to keep the doors of our home, the London Coliseum, closed for the moment; but it doesn’t stop us from wanting to share stories.

Storytelling is at the very heart of what we do at ENO and this summer, we’re calling on young people across the country to help us create a new aria.

So, if you are keen to take on a challenge and are aged 25 or under then read on!

So, what is an aria?

An aria is when a single character shares their inner emotional world and thoughts with the audience in a song.

It is an incredibly powerful way of exploring big complex emotions.

And what do we want you to do?

We’d love you to give us an insight into your inner world across the last few months of lockdown and looking ahead into the summer.

Using the starting point: The Way I See It, can you help us make an aria?

Generally, we see arias sung on stage but we’re not here to set rules, so feel free to get creative!

You might want to…

write a few lines of prose of your own aria; compose some music to be sung by a singer as an aria; film a video of you singing your aria; take a photo of a painting of what your aria would be; make a series of storyboard images; record a sound world for your aria; or create your aria as a poem; and these are just a starting point!

Once you’ve created your submission for our aria, please share it with us online and tag #TheWayISeeIt #ENOLockdownAria.

Over the summer we will repost submissions we get on our channels, getting your work seen by our international following.

The challenge closes on 1 September 2020.

Then what happens?

A selection of aria submissions; alongside submissions from other partners will be shown in an Arts Council England digital exhibition on Google Arts & Culture as part of The Way I See It, in October 2020.

We will also use submissions to create an amazing piece of operatic art called the Lockdown Aria, to be premiered at ENO.

This will interweave the stories from individuals around the country, expressing the experience, hopes and dreams of young people in this extraordinary time.

We will DM you to ask you to email us the original files, and to get you to fill in a permissions form for the submissions to be used in the digital exhibition on Google Arts & Culture.

The practical bits

Please upload your aria to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or Twitter, using the hashtags #ENOLockdownAria #TheWayISeeIt.

• Twitter: @E_N_O
• Instagram: @englishnationalopera
• Facebook: @englishnationalopera
• TikTok: @englishnationalop

Submission requirements

• Videos should be 60 seconds or less.
• Images should be high reso if possible, at least 1 or 2GB.
• We will need to gather consent for everyone featured in your images/videos for us to be able to use these so will require you to complete a form for this
• By tagging us you agree to let us share the content on ENO social channels (Instagram, twitter, Facebook or TikTok). We will only be able to repost content that is in keeping with our online content policy.

Need a bit of inspiration?

Here’s a playlist of some of our favourite arias to get you thinking.