Professor Shirley J. Thompson OBE composer and artistic director is touring her opera Women of the Windrush around the UK throughout June, July and beyond to mark the 75th Anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush’s arrival in England.
The opera is one from Professor Shirley J. Thompson's groundbreaking series, Heroines of Opera, and portrays inspirational narratives from the lives of a variety of women settlers who travelled to the UK from the West Indies from the late 1940s through to the early 1970s. This was the period in which persons from the West Indies were invited by the British government to assist in the rebuilding of post-war Britain.
Based on Professor Thompson’s original award-winning film, Memories in Mind: Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories, archive film and video projection interweave the compelling stories from a cricketer’s wife, a student nurse, a concert pianist and a new bride who all relate their experiences of arriving and settling in England.
The versatile English National Opera British lyric soprano, Nadine Benjamin, embodies the essence of the Windrush experience in this operatic re-imagining of the composer's earlier film.
Thompson’s wider series, Heroines of Opera, focuses on the narratives of iconic and influential women in history, breaking the convention of weak characters and femme fatales prevalent in the operatic canon.
Thompson is a prominent composer and artistic director who has massively influenced and contributed to several spheres of music and the arts. She was named as “one of the most inspirational women of colour” by the Metro newspaper and one of her most recent achievements is that she was personally commissioned by His Majesty King Charles III to compose music for the Coronation in May 2023.
In 2018, she was awarded an OBE for her services to music at Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II’s New Year Honours Awards, and in 2019 she was awarded a Professorship of Music at Westminster, becoming the first person of African heritage to be made a University Professor of Music in Europe. She is Head of Music Research at the University
Professor Thompson said of the opera tour: “I am very proud to have ignited the celebration of the Windrush Generation in 1991 when I made the original film, Women of the Windrush, nearly 30 years before the global celebrations started in 2018! I am very excited about the responses to the production with many venues wishing to stage the opera.”
Opera Magazine called the opera “A gripping work…celebrating human community and resilience.”
BBC Music Magazine said it was “excellently performed, mind-stretching (music)…there are fascinating sounds aplenty.”
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