C E Gray photographed by John Palmer Clarke
Photograph courtesy of The Sedgwick Museum

The Barrington Hippo

A new opera for children and adults by Kate Whitley and Sinéad O'Neill.  This project is a collaboration with the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.

This fossilised hippo is part of the ‘Barrington Beds’ find, a collection of bones found in a village near Cambridge and dating from the most recent Ice Age.  The Barrington Beds provide evidence that warm intervals occurred during the last Ice Age (c.120,000 to c.10,000 years ago).
 
Our short opera will tell the story of how hippos came to live at Barrington, how they died out, and how the fossilised hippo was discovered and brought to the Sedgwick Museum, where it can be visited today. 

The story of the hippo lets us explore the life of an individual, the passage of generations, cycles of ice, geological time, and our changing climate. 

Composer Kate Whitley (pictured above leading a schools workshop) is acclaimed for her original work with children and schools.  Here is a video about Paws and Padlocks, her children's opera at Blackheath Halls, April 2017.

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Supported by The Golsoncott Foundation, The Hinrichsen Foundation, The RVW Trust, The Radcliffe Trust, and the UK Friends of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

​Cambridge City Opera Ltd is a not-for-profit organisation                                                    Registered in England and Wales, Company No: 07954358