Talented young artist countertenor Ralph Thomas Williams approached us with a beautiful idea: to recreate an oratorio by Alessandro Scarlatti, La Giuditta, as a Barefoot Opera style physical theatre, movement based opera. 

Alongside Ralph, our fully staged version of the dramatic 1690 oratorio features two superb singers: Toshi Ogita and Ella Joy, with our great MD Laurence Panter at the keyboard. Laurence will be joined by bass clarinetist, Kathryn Titcomb.

The artist Jane Bruce, a long-standing collaborator with Barefoot Opera, will be creating magical visuals.

This production is supported by Hastings Jews for Justice. There will be a collection for Friends of Al Mawasi, Gaza, with which Hastings has a formal friendship link.

Thrillingly, in addition to a performance here in St Leonards, we will also be staging the opera at the  beautifully converted Theatre Basse-Passieres in Normandy.

Artist Biogs

Ralph Thomas Williams 

Ralph is a British countertenor active in opera, concert and choral singing around the United Kingdom, having finished his Masters degree with first class honours at The Royal Northern College of Music. Recent roles include Cupid in Blow’s Venus and Adonis with HGO, premiering The Host in Amir Mayar Tafreshipour’s The Red Room for Tête à Tête festival, premiering Isaac/Caspar in Luke Styles/Britten’s Awakening Shadow for both The Cheltenham and Presteigne Festivals. Ralph has also performed as soloist in Cantatas by Bach with The Liverpool Bach Collective.

Ella Joy

A soprano, Ella trained at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she was a Levenshulme Arts Scholar, resident artist with Opera North and recipient of awards from the Mbili and Kathleen Trusts. She has performed with Tête à Tête Opera, DEBUT Opera, UC Opera, KC Opera and the Conservatoire du 12ème in Paris, appearing at venues across London and Europe. A regular soloist with the Southend Bach Choir and Orchestra, she has also performed as an ensemble musician with the award-winning Lunar Consort and the Rodolfus Choir. 

Toshi Ogita

Originally from Japan, tenor Toshi Ogita has just graduated from the Royal Academy of Music. Previously, Toshi read MA History of Art & History of Music at the University of Edinburgh. During this time, he studied privately with Scott Johnson and was a choral scholar at Paisley Abbey. Subsequently, he sang for three years at Truro Cathedral. Toshi has performed the role of Malcolm in Verdi’s Macbeth for Duchy Opera and Tamino in a semi-staged performance of excerpts from Die Zauberflöte at Truro Cathedral. A keen recitalist, Toshi is particularly passionate about lieder. With pianist Tim Dean, Toshi has performed Schubert’s Schwanengesang and a selection from Schumann’s Myrthen.

Kathryn Titcomb 

Kathryn Titcomb is a clarinettist and bass clarinettist based in London having recently graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GSMD) with a Distinction in her Masters in Performance. There, she studied with Andrew Webster, Joy Farrall, Andrew Marriner and Robert Ault whilst supported by the David and Margaret Phillips Award. She has returned to GSMD this year as a Junior Fellow. Kathryn also holds a First-Class degree in Mathematics and Music from the University of Birmingham in 2021, where she studied clarinet with Jack McNeill.

Laurence Panter

A graduate of Cambridge and (post graduate) Trinity College London, Laurence has pursued a multi-faceted career as tenor, conductor, composer and arranger. Since 2022, Laurence has been MD, pianist and arranger for Barefoot Opera, leading successful tours of Rossini’s La Cenerentola (2022 and 2023) and Verdi’s La Traviata (2024). Previously, Laurence musically directed and/or accompanied a number of operatic productions from the piano, including Humperdick’s Hansel & Gretel (Opera in the Meantime – MD), Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti (Stage Left Project) and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Grassroots Opera – MD).

Jane Bruce

Jane completed a BA in Textiles at Camberwell College of Art and a post-graduate course in theatre design at Croydon College of Art and has since worked across a wide range of media, television, documentary and feature films, arts projects and opera as a designer. Jane paints portraiture and has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery as part of National Portrait Prize. Since 2001 she has worked with Radiator Arts, both as artist and project manager, creating large-scale theatrical performances that often take place in unusual sites. Jane has worked with Jenny Miller on a number of productions over a decade, including three of the Mozart/Da Ponte operas for Longborough Festival Opera, and Carmen for Barefoot Opera.

Background Information and Synopsis – La Giuditta

Alessandro Scarlatti

La Giuditta is a lesser-known score by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725). This oratorio is written in the style of a passionate Italian Baroque opera. The Book of Judith from the Bible forms the basis for the libretto. Scarlatti’s music is both energetic and deeply moving. As a composer, he represents the missing link between 17th- and 18th-century repertoire, bridging the gap between Cavalli and Handel. The 1697 version of La Giuditta is known as the Cambridge Giuditta, as the manuscript is kept in the Music Library of King’s College, Cambridge. The librettist was Prince Antonio Ottoboni, father of Cardinal Ottoboni.

Can revenge bring comfort? A brief synopsis.

Judith is trapped in a city besieged by Holofernes. She has lost her husband in the conflict. When the male leaders of the city decide to surrender, all her grief, her frustrating powerlessness, and her sense of honour come to the surface. Encouraged by her nurse, she ventures into the camp of the decadent leader Holofernes. Judith seduces him. When he falls asleep on her chest, she seizes the opportunity and beheads him. Judith gets her revenge—but does it bring her comfort? A timely question in an age where the call for heads to roll is often heard.

In more detail…

• Judith is locked inside the city of Bethulia. The city groans under a siege by the Syrians, led by Holofernes. Judith has recently lost her husband and is weighed down by grief. To her nurse and companion, she voices her frustration over the incompetent male leadership, which is on the verge of surrendering the city. Her Nurse says it likely won’t make a difference, but if the struggle has any meaning, Judith might as well take it on herself. Judith proposes going to Holofernes. She will cast off her mourning veil and use her femininity against the enemy. The Nurse warns her of the risks, but Judith is determined. The Nurse agrees to follow her, whether blessed or cursed by the heavens, which she invokes for support.
  
• When she arrives at Holofernes’ camp, Judith pretends to be a fugitive. Holofernes is not easily fooled and claims to see through her game. He tells her to return to Bethulia. Judith says he might as well cut off her head, as both friend and foe now despise her. Holofernes finds it difficult to resist her presence. Though he orders her to leave, he ultimately gives in to her performance. It is Holofernes—not Judith—who retreats.
  
• The two women reflect on what has happened. Judith encourages herself, and the Nurse imagines what lies ahead. When Holofernes returns, the women are startled, and Judith begins her seductive game. Holofernes praises their efforts. Judith, he says, will be more worshipped in Bethulia after his victory than the city’s current gods. Judith asks for mercy for her people and expresses admiration for Holofernes. He tells her not to mock him and invites her to sit. Judith replies that a non-person like her has no place beside a conqueror like him. Now Holofernes begs her for mercy in love. Judith lets Holofernes lay his head on her bosom and asks the Nurse to tell a story. The Nurse recounts the tale of Samson and Delilah and sings a lullaby. When Holofernes falls asleep, Judith sees her chance. She severs his head—but only succeeds on the second blow.
  
• Immediately after the beheading, Judith pleads for strength and light in the darkness. Together with the Nurse, she returns to Bethulia, expressing their relief. She displays the severed head of Holofernes and watches the enemy flee. Heaven fights and triumphs through the severed head in a woman’s hand. She declares she now wishes only to be a woman and a widow again. Finally, she warns the people: you will share Bethulia’s fate if you trust in God, and Holofernes’ fate if you trust in deceitful desires. Trust in heaven—but fear heaven too.

A Note from the Director and Designer on La Giuditta

Judith is an iconic character. That is, her person and her story resonate beyond any specific knowledge of the text, and instantly conjure up a picture of a woman either wielding a sword or holding up a bloody head, or both. At many points in European cultural history, her story fascinated and was re-told, from the rose window of Sainte-Chapelle, to the black paintings of Goya, in operas and plays – perhaps most recently Howard Barker’s play ‘Judith’. 

Did she exist? Scholars debate this and currently most view the Book of Judith, which is worth remembering as not being part of the Hebrew bible, as the first great historical novel.

Why is she compelling?  Some artists (think of Klimt) highlight her sexual power and allure.

Antonio Ottoboni, Scarlatti’s librettist, emphasises her spiritual commitment, her modesty even, that she has to abandon utterly to save her people from tyranny and death. 

How is she compelling now?

We are in a world of wars. We hardly need to mention the besieged cities whose fates indirectly and directly affect us. The Ukrainian cities on Russia’s borders, Gaza, El Fashar, Aleppo. Here in the UK the reality of what this feels like, and how we would ourselves react, is something we can hardly understand, still living in the shadow of the long post-WW2 peace the allies secured.  To re-discover and re-imagine a 17^th century musical art-work framing an individual woman’s response to the desecration of her home city, is the proposal of this production.

Re-discovery: we give Judith, her Nurse and Holofernes a contemporary world, but we do not specify exactly where this world is, to allow us to look at her story globally. So we have military references that are global not regional, our storytellers are operatives in Judo uniform – Judo being a practice that is non-military and found globally. We have invented Judith’s glamorous robes by imagining the Nurse constructing them from the torn fragments of the city under siege. 

A challenge in re-discovering this music is how to move our ears beyond a deep embedding of post romantic harmony. Since the 19^th century, we understand villainy and ‘evil deeds’ in terms of musical writing that is emphatically not the writing of a 17^th century score. This is completely true of virtually all music that accompanies anything we watch on Netflix, Apple, Amazon. We need to re-tune our ears to a more distilled, crystalline and structured sound world  which is the vehicle for this story about the realities of war.

Re-imagining: we have taken an oratorio, that is a story sung without scenic devising, and made it an opera – we are not alone here, this has been done in recent years even with, for example, Handel’s Messiah. We use non-authentic instruments – a keyboard, a modern bass clarinet and most importantly, we create abstract visual colours and images that our ‘operatives’ the artists can themselves deploy, and we see our artists take simple tools to do so – favouring the virtually obsolete overhead projector over film, for instance.

Questioning: In our view, all great art, and we hope you will agree this small oratorio is a beautifully conceived gem, opens our hearts and minds, and helps us to ask questions. The oratorio does not debate the outcome of Judith’s dilemma, but offers the humanity, the frailty and the vulnerability of all the players in her story for us to experience in live time.  Thank you for participating!