Exposure
Nicola Warner text
Nicola Warner is a musician and emerging writer/performer from Hertfordshire. She is a CRIPtic Arts Associate Artist under the mentorship of Jamie Hale. Her poetry has been published in FLARE, t’ART, broadcast across the East of England on BBC Upload and is due to feature in an upcoming edition of TYPE! Nicola read Music at the University of Manchester where she studied cello with Simon Turner and orchestral conducting with Mark Heron. She studied cello as a postgraduate Leverhulme Trust scholar under the tutelage of Joely Koos at Trinity Laban before her studies and career were interrupted by ill health.
Zhenyan Li music
Zhenyan Li is a London-based Chinese composer and Dizi (Chinese flute) player whose music is shaped by the traditions of East Asian theatre. Drawing on its storytelling of contrast, ambiguity, and illusion, she brings theatrical sensibilities into her compositions. Her works have been performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Lucerne Festival, and the Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival. Recent commissions include the City of London Sinfonia, Beijing Music Festival, Tangram Collective, and CoMA Ensemble. She has also collaborated with the Architectural Association, London Film School, SOAS University of London, percussionist Beibei Wang, and conductors Martin Rajna, Naomi Woo, and Jessica Cottis.
Another Day
Sarah Forbes text
After studying singing as a postgraduate at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Sarah Forbes went onto become Co-Artistic Director of HurlyBurly Theatre, creating and performing in multisensory theatre shows with classical singing at their heart for 0-2s and their grown-ups. Sarah has toured extensively with the company including to Sydney Opera House, Southbank Centre and Polka Theatre. Sarah began writing in 2023 with the opening of her memoir about the death of her parents shortlisted for both the First Pages Prize and Creative Future Writers’ Award as well as being awarded funding from Arts Council England to further develop her writing.
Elif Karlıdağ music
Elif Nur Karlıdağ is a Turkish-British composer whose music flows between the musical languages of her intercultural background, shaped by a fascination with multidisciplinary projects, community engagement, and stage productions. She creates bold, evocative musical environments that span opera, film, and installation. Her work draws on a wide spectrum of influences from Synthian language to live electronics, crafting pieces that explore themes of belonging, marginalisation, and transformation. Elif has received commissions from English National Opera, Philharmonia and the Three Choirs Festival, and her music has been performed at major venues. Each work builds its own sound universe, often emerging through collaboration with artists in theatre, film, and the visual arts.
Maelstrom
Romanne Walker text
Romanne Walker is a French-Australian writer and emerging director based in London. Romanne is interested in dramatic writing and good scripts, poetry, playful dramaturgy, and using new technology and musical language to tell human stories.
Vinicius Motta music
Vinícius is a Brazilian-British composer, arranger, performer, and educator based in Birmingham. In his works, he explores the nuances of timbre, aleatoricism, and performers’ independence within a collective. His works have been performed and recorded by esteemed ensembles, including Quatuor Bozzini, Orchestra of the Swan, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, he founded Birmingham Game Music Ensemble, where he arranges video game music for chamber orchestra performances and recordings, fostering new audiences in classical settings. He was awarded the Musicians’ Company Silver Medal in 2024, as well as the Countess of Munster Postgraduate Composition Award during 2024/25.
Olivia Clarke music director
British/Irish conductor, BBC Music Magazine Rising Star and “name to watch” (Observer) Olivia Clarke was English National Opera’s Mackerras Conducting Fellow and Assistant Conductor to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Olivia has recently made debuts with the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Welsh National Opera and Royal Opera and returned to the CBSO, Philharmonia, and Glyndebourne. This season Olivia will conduct Carmen at ENO and the adventures of Nils Holgersson at Komische Oper Berlin. As an advocate for progressive opera making, Olivia is delighted to be working with RFO to support the opera voices of the future.
Finn Beames director
Finn Beames is a theatre maker and Oedipa’s artistic director. He is the writer, composer and director of Quiet Songs, a new work for actor, string quartet and swords (Barbican, 2024, as winner of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award). He is also writing a new musical about pole dancing in the Cotswolds, supported by Bristol Old Vic and commissioned by Audrey Productions. In 2015 Finn won the Genesis Future Directors Award with his production of Man: Three plays by Tennessee Williams at the Young Vic, and later held the Lina Bo Bardi Fellowship at the British Council for his research into theatre and architecture in Brazil and the UK. In 2019, he created a large-scale installation on the site of a medieval priory in Gloucester, exploring the history of mental healthcare through full-body marbling, dance and choral singing. For Oedipa, Finn is a founder as leader of the Aphasia New Music Group.
Claire Shovelton creative producer
Claire is a London-based creative producer, consultant and mentor in the performing arts with over 35 years in theatre, opera, dance and classical music including the Barbican, the Young Vic, Riverside Studios, operafactory, the Royal Ballet and Opera, Sadlers Wells, Early Opera Company, Britten-Pears Arts and the commercial West End. Much of what she does currently is new work, as Creative Producer for CHROMA; Tête à Tête opera company; Second Movement and the award-winning Finn Beames & Company. Consultancy work includes disabled-led theatre company Graeae and Citizens of the World, the UK’s leading refugee choir.
Abigail Toland creative director, Second Movement
Abigail created rough for opera, Second Movement’s platform for new opera in 2011. From 2022 the series has a particular focus on supporting disabled composers and librettists and their new work. Producing includes 12:42 (in partnership with the National Opera Studio) and Opera-tic – a digital opera in 15 scenes co-created by composer Michael Betteridge and a group of adults with Tourette Syndrome with film by Alisdair Kitchen, shortlisted for the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Society Impact Award, and the Aphasia New Music Group, a music making programme for adults with Aphasia, in partnership with Oedipa and in collaboration with the UCL Communications Clinic. From 2021-2023 Abigail was Chair of the Board of Trustees of OperaUpClose.
Julia Chou-Lambert baritone
Julian was a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving first class honours in music, and completing postgraduate studies at RAM with distinction. He is a DEBUT Horizon artist and Pegasus Opera mentee. Operatic roles include Papageno at Rhosygilwen, Boris Johnson in Cummings & Goerings for Tête à Tête, Mr. Bear in Peace at Last for OperaUpClose/ENO, Hildebrand/North Wind in The Enchanted Pig for Hampstead Garden Opera, Papageno at Berlin Opernfest, Nardo in La Finta Giardiniera for Hand Made Opera, Marco in Gianni Schicchi for Cambridge Music Festival, and Dream Sweeper in his work The Lingerer for ENO mini-opera finals.
Suzie Purkis mezzo
Ella Taylor soprano
Described in the Guardian as having ‘a voice of tempered steel, wrapped in a warm velvet cloak’ Ella Taylor is a soprano with a passion for performing contemporary music and works by women and gender non-conforming artists. Winner of the Second Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier awards, they are a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and the National Opera Studio. They have sung for opera companies across Europe including the Royal Ballet and Opera, English National Opera, Staatsoper Hamburg and Dutch National Opera. Ella is delighted to be back at Rough for Opera.
Ben Michaels cello
Ben Michaels is a British cellist based in London. He is passionate about chamber music and is committed to supporting the creation of new music, particularly that written for solo cello. His debut solo album ‘for cello, by cellists’ will be released by Delphian Records in 2026. He might equally likely be found making chamber music, performing on baroque cello or walking his dog, Shafran. Before exploring his passion for music, Ben studied Biochemistry at Clare College, Cambridge.
Chihiro Ono violin
Born in Chiba, Japan and based in London, Chihiro is a Japanese classical trained violinist and violist. She has performed with ensembles including Apartment House, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, London Contemporary Music Festival Orchestra (UK), Ensemble Modern (DE), Klangforum Wien (AT), and Ictus Ensemble (BE). Chihiro is also a composer producing pieces for live-performance, radio, film and theatre. In 2024, she was selected for Sound and Music’s In Motion Composers programme.
Jo Turner bassoon
Eirill Alvilde Falck translator, Note 615 on “The Scream” by Edvard Munch
Eirill Alvilde Falck is a writer and translator. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine, and the anthology Best Literary Translations 2025. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, where she was subsequently a Zell Fellow. She was a 2020-2022 Iowa Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa. She is the recipient of the John Wagner Prize and the Hopwood Award. Eirill is the co-founder of MQR: Mixtape, an imprint of Michigan Quarterly Review.
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