This Digbeth First Friday Infinite Opera will lead two performances/workshops exploring the past, present, and future cultural heritage of Digbeth in Grand Union Gallery. These will act as a starting point for their upcoming operatic endeavour for summer 2026, a multi-site community performance.
Workshop 1 – 5pm – 6pm
Workshop 2 – 6.30pm – 7.30pm
For the last month, Infinite Opera have been speaking to the Digbeth day and night working force. They have gathered informal impressions of the current state of the area and discussed transience, nostalgia, and present and future worries and hopes. Infinite Opera want to keep this discussion open to everybody that engages with Digbeth in any manner, willing to inform the development of their new work in the most empathetic, inclusive, equitable, and collective way as possible.
In this event, librettist and singer Roxanne Korda, alongside pianist Melissa Morris, will perform some initial exploratory Digbeth-inspired bits of song and poetry, as well as some excerpts of Infinite Opera’s previous work ‘[shut]’. These will work as a stimulus to spark honest conversations about the area and the different cyclical processes of change that happened in the past, and that are happening right now.
This is an opera-making workshop. Participating in it means that anything said or discussed may be used by Infinite Opera as inspiration in the making of the new work. For ethical reasons they will not use any real names, stories or direct transcriptions of anything discussed in the workshop in the piece. Infinite Opera want primarily to create an open space for discussion. All the participants in the workshop will be credited in the piece. Taking part in the workshop means you consent to this.
This workshop will kickstart a series of opera-theatre making workshops throughout 2025 and 2026 in the lead to the final operatic work. Infinite Opera aim to invite the Digbeth community to participate as singers and actors. If you would be interested in participating, please do let anybody from Infinite Opera or Grand Union know.
This event is the result of an R&D project for the creation of a new operatic work funded by Hinrichsen Foundation and supported by Grand Union.
Find out more about Infinite Opera hereOpen accordion
Infinite Opera is an innovative small-size experimental opera creation company based in Birmingham. They understand the concept ‘opera’ as an evolving and relevant artform. The term ‘infinite’ reflects their approach to performance making, evoking a constant re-engagement with our changing realities, and placing the audience as an active participant in an empathetic presentation of different aspects of our world. To do so, Infinite Opera work in both a site and subject specific framing, focusing the creative process through in-depth explorations of topics via multiple viewpoints. Their practice is by nature interdisciplinary and collaborative, working closely with businesses, institutions and professionals from different practices.
Infinite Opera is codirected by the librettist Roxanne Korda and the composer Daniel Blanco Albert.