Art meets opera: Tim Benjamin’s Madame X at RNCM

Composer Tim Benjamin’s new work, Madame X, is an ambitious work which explores the necessity of art, and the relationship between money, power and the arts. The story details an impoverished immigrant couple striving to make a living out of protagonist Masetto’s artistic gifts, but their efforts are thwarted by a corrupt agent and two vulture-like aristocratic collectors. The tale descends in to one of revenge as Tim Benjamin pays homage to Handel and the revenge plays of the Jacobean era. Leads Tom Morrs and Laura Sheerin have their talents nurtured at the RNCM as did the composer whose previous major works have led to much critical acclaim – his work Emily, in particular, which tells the story of Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette and martyr who fatally stormed the Epsom Derby in 1913. Madame X explores the crossover between art and opera as well as questions of purity in art and the power in which finance holds over creativity.

Thu 25 Sep, RNCM, 124 Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9RD, Tel: 0161 907 5200, times vary, £12 www.tickets.rncm.ac.uk