Inaugural Auroville Literature Festival has “some of the best international and Indian writers” participating, including Shreya Sen-Handley

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The inaugural Auroville Literature Festival, celebrating Indian freedom-fighter and philosopher Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary, organised with the Government of India’s Ministry of Culture, has “some of the best international and Indian writers and poets” participating, including author and librettist Shreya Sen-Handley, who features on their festival poster, alongside Booker Prize winning and other accomplished company.

Her two sessions include conversations about her latest book, bestselling ‘Handle With Care’ (HarperCollins 2022), longlisted for Times of India’s AutHer Awards’ Best Nonfiction Book 2023, and the acclaimed opera she co-wrote for Welsh National National Opera, ‘Migrations’ (2022), listed by both The Times and The Guardian amongst their best shows of 2022, and a talk with award-winning Australian novelist Jennifer Down.

The Writing of ‘Migrations’: Shreya discusses the stories in Welsh National Opera’s epic production alongside her co-writers

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Writers/Librettists Shreya Sen Handley and Miles Chambers join director Sir David Pountney in discussing how Welsh National Opera’s vast production ‘Migrations’ took shape. From writing the six interweaving tales, to bringing these tales to the stage and telling a universal story through opera. Please click here for the full five-minute film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpJQmacH0Qk&t=86s

In the run-up to its premiere, They also spoke on BBC Radio and television about it, and to various other national and international media outlets

Photo credit Olivia Rose Barns at Bromley House Library Continue reading →

Welsh National Opera’s ‘Migrations’, co-written by Shreya Sen-Handley, is in The Guardian’s 10 best concerts and operas of 2022

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An exceptional year for WNO’s artistic achievements…WNO musicians and chorus, the Renewal Choir Community Chorus, a Bollywood ensemble and a children’s chorus combined to create the teeming, heart-rending staging of Migrations: six stories by six excellent writers and one clever composer.

Read the full article here

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Families love stunning show ‘Migrations’ too, co-written by Shreya Sen-Handley: Weston Super Mum reviews Welsh National Opera’s 2022 production

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“The highlight was definitely the Indian Doctors, written by Shreya Sen-Handley, for a few reasons: the dancing and the change in style of the music with the addition of the sitar, the dark humour in the story, and the fact that (despite the darkness) this was one of the few lighter, more hopeful scenes in the production with the small glimpse of redemption and hope offered by the end of the scene…”

Read the story in full here

Photo credit: Olivia Rose Barns at Bromley House Library

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Six brilliant writers, including Shreya Sen-Handley, at the forefront of this collaborative giant: Opera Wire warmly reviews Welsh National Opera’s ‘Migrations’

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“Conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren, director Sir David Pountney, composer and jazz pianist Will Todd, and six brilliant librettists were at the forefront of the collaborative giant…

This work represents revolutionary operatic theater, using six librettists, two composers, four directors, and an appreciably large team of dedicated individuals and creatives. It could very well reframe how opera is created going forward. Instead of utilizing a singular story or plot, a unique “theme” drew each of the six meta-narratives together and helped form a cohesive parable told from multiple angles….

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The Guardian and Observer impressed by Welsh National Opera’s “captivating” ‘Migrations’, co-written by Shreya Sen-Handley

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“Take six stories, six librettists, an enormous cast including children and set it all to music. Stir vigorously. Add a flock of small birds, flapping, dancing and singing in search of their breeding ground. With an interlocking narrative crisscrossing history, from the pilgrim fathers to Bollywood, Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech and Indian doctors in the NHS of the 1960s, the African Caribbean slave trade in 18th-century Bristol, a new oil pipeline in rural Canada, English lessons for refugees and, for good measure, a space rocket, Welsh National Opera’s Migrations could have been an unholy mess. At its world premiere at the Millennium Centre, Cardiff, on Wednesday, it was anything but. Continue reading →