Bahaa El Ansary and Sophie Rashbrook
about the show
Schokolade tells the story of two young music students who stumble upon an abandoned room and an old piano. To their surprise, the piano speaks to them. Curiosity leads them to learn the story of how a bewitched boy became trapped within the instrument. Taking opera to new audiences, the live stage performance will involve various technical components such as audio processing sensors.
Bahaa El Ansary (Egypt)
Bahaa El-Ansary is a composer and improvisor from Egypt, born in Cairo, 1991. He studied composition at The Academy of Arts in Cairo, Conservatoire de Bordeaux, Conservatoire de Boulogne-Billancourt. In 2019 he obtained a Master of Arts in Opera Making & Writing from the world-renowned Guildhall School of Music & Drama in association with Royal Opera House.
Bahaa had been a Composer-in-Residence of The Royal Opera House & Shubbak Festival, Summer 2017, and a Composer-in-Residence with Ensemble Le Balcon at Fondation Singer-Polignac in Paris, 2019-2020.
One of the young voices who play a part in shaping Egypt's cultural future.
BBC Radio 3
Sophie Rashbrook (UK)
Sophie Rashbrook is a writer, librettist, opera dramaturg and surtitler, and a former fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 2019-20, where she received a Distinction for the Opera Makers MA.
Recent writing projects include commissions for: Garsington Opera, the Royal Opera House, and Welsh National Opera. An excerpt from her play, ‘Ralph: The Life and Adventures of an Enemy Alien’, was performed at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House in September 2019.
Formerly Dramaturg at Welsh National Opera, she holds a first-class degree in Russian and French, and an MPhil in Russian Studies, from Cambridge University. She speaks fluent French and Russian and spent a year playing the cello at the St Petersburg Conservatoire.