Sawn-off Opera is a quirky, tiny-scale opera group based in Northern England specialising in the performance of sawn-off (very short!) operas by Irish composer Ailís Ní Ríain, Manchester-based micro-fiction specialist David Gaffney and theatre director Caroline Clegg.

You could describe our work as a curious mixture of music-theatre, opera and maybe even cabaret.  Our focus is on showcasing the best of new writing for voice, new forms of live literature and opportunity for classically trained young singers in based in the UK.

We have performed at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, the Royal Northern College of Music and performed a specially commissioned new opera live on The Verb on BBC Radio 3. Our work has been described as fresh, quirky, edgy, lively and bizarre.

Sawn-off Opera has recently been working on some new operas as part of a residency at Opera North and we’ll be premiering these new pieces later in 2012.