Vernon PROMS, an annual music festival celebrating classical music, is a glimmer of solace amid a smoke-filled summer during a pandemic.
“Because of this pandemic year and the fiery pandemic year, it’s the most emotionally involved music-making,” said Natalia Polchenko with Vernon PROMS.
“The artists are super emotional and the audiences are almost crying. I have never felt this gratitude from them.”
Even with a few hiccups due to new COVID-19 restrictions in the Central Okanagan and evacuation alerts due to wildfires, the month-long music festival featuring medieval music, jazz, classical and more has still gone on.
“It’s not a celebration this year. We are just trying to help people to have a little bit of reprieve.”
For co-directors Antony Knight and Alex Allen, Vernon PROMS is their debut stage for their opera, Oh Alfred!.
“It’s about the character Latimer, the clairvoyant, being asked to visit the wedding of his brother and give a vision as a wedding gift, but there is a little bit of sibling rivalry going on and he decides to give a fake vision that ends up being trip and it is not a happy one,” said Alex Allen, co-director and librettist.
The opera is loosely based on the novella Behind the Veil by George Eliot and has been adapted many times to be in line with public health restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“I’ve written it all in quarantine,” said Antony Knight, composer and co-director.
“I wrote it for an orchestra, a big cast of singers with a chorus of singers, as well — like a full sort of opera can production. But unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that because of COVID so we kind of scaled it down which was the first sort of change, so we’re just doing it with piano and a few singers.”
Oh Alfred! will be staged on Aug. 15 at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre and admittance is by donation. Masks are required and social distancing protocol must be followed.
For a full schedule of events, visit www.vernonproms.ca
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