A new opera. Made in Jersey, by Jersey.

Raise Your Voice, Jersey! is a bold and collaborative project to create a brand-new opera rooted in the voices, stories, and spirit of our Island. Led by Jersey-born mezzo-soprano Georgia Mae Bishop and produced by ArtHouse Jersey, this isn’t opera as you might expect. Together with a stellar team of professional artists, we’re working to reimagine opera as something playful, relevant, and community-powered created through a shared creative process where everyone has a part to play.

At its heart, this project is about making space for young people aged 18–30 to tell their stories, explore Jersey’s history and identity, and help shape a production that speaks to the now. Opera has always been a way to tell big, human stories, and we believe Jersey’s young people have big, important things to say.

What’s happened so far?

In July and November 2024 we held creative composition workshops… Over two weekends in March and April 2025, we welcomed a fantastic group of young collaborators to ArtHouse Jersey’s Greve de Lecq Barracks. Together, we dived into storytelling, improvisation, and writing exercises to explore what kind of opera we could make together.  

Themes emerged around identity, work, resistance, escape, local heroes, and the natural world, from the tension of Island life to the myths and oddities embedded in Jersey’s landscape. We’ve started shaping ideas for characters, scenes, and music that will form the foundation of the opera to come.

What’s next?  

Through this summer and into autumn, the creative team continues to develop the opera with the Creative Director & Librettist Georgia Mae Bishop writing the book, Composer Charlotte Marlow creating the musical score, Stage Director Cecilia Stinton creating the visual identity of the show, and Head of Music Ash Beauchamp undertaking choral preparations. The full production will premiere in March 2026 at Jersey Opera House, featuring a chorus of community performers alongside a professional cast and creative team. We will be launching an open call for performers towards the end of the year. If you would like to hear when this is live, please e-mail Producer Robyn Cabaret on robyn@arts.je.

But it’s not too late to get involved! If you missed the workshops or have more to say, we’d love to hear from you…

Want to try your hand at it?

To give you a flavour of the creative process, here are a few creative prompts that we used in our workshops. Use them as writing, drawing, or musical tasks, whatever helps you express an idea.

Download the Raise Your Voice, Jersey! Creative Tasks.

If you’d like to share something with us (from a line of text to a response to one of these tasks to a full idea) please e-mail Producer Robyn Cabaret on robyn@arts.je. Your voice could still help shape the opera.