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Help bring four new *Pawn Queen* arias to life in performance and create a film to attract support for the opera’s full production.
Pawn Queen is a new English-language chamber opera conceived for intimate performance. Set in southern India, its story explores identity, desire, exploitation and moral awakening.
I am John Frederick Tatlow, an Oxford-based librettist and Artistic Director of Everyman Opera. For many years, I have developed original opera for close-quarter performance—work in which audiences encounter singers, music and dramatic storytelling at unusually close range.
Pawn Queen is being created with composer Spyros Syrmos, who has already composed four arias from the libretto. The next step is not a full production, but a focused, semi-staged presentation of those arias before a live audience in Oxford.
Five singers will perform with piano and selected traditional Indian instrumental colour. The staging will be deliberately simple, allowing the available resources and the audience’s attention to remain concentrated on the voices, music and dramatic relationships.
The presentation will be professionally filmed and recorded. An edited promotional film will then enable us to introduce Pawn Queen to opera companies, producers, venues, patrons and funding organisations with the resources to help develop the complete work for the stage.
Our £8,000 target will contribute towards performers’ and musicians’ fees, a music director and pianist, traditional instrumental musicians, cultural consultation, rehearsal and presentation space, sound and technical support, professional filming and editing, travel, administration and a modest contingency.
Four arias have already taken Pawn Queen from the page into music. This campaign will put that music on its feet and give the opera the strongest possible opportunity to take its next step towards the stage.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 1st November 2026 at 8:00pm