A New Opera Emerges: The Last Machine Breaker

When a new theatrical production asks the singular question: Will technology be our salvation or our downfall? Then AI leaps to mind as a suitable subject, doesn't it? It seems that everybody and everything is on the AI bandwagon. But an opera? That's new.

In The Last Machine Breaker, composer Ben Crick, writer Kamal Kaan and director Alex Chisholm take a good hard look an AI and draw parallels with the early nineteenth-century Luddite movement, where textile workers went so far as to destroy weaving machines in a desperate attempt to protect their livelihoods. For them the rapid loss of work, income and status was insurmountable. We still feel the echoes of the devastation this caused as our fears for an AI-dominated future are sweeping over us all.

This opera is about the Luddites and about now: who gets to benefit from technology and who gets to pay? Ben and Kamal’s piece tells an important Northern story – pushing forward what opera can do, and who gets to experience it.Alex Chisholm, Director
In Crick and Kaan's opera, we meet Eva, a capitalist, an entrepreneur and the creator of Adam, a humanoid AI capable of thought, emotion, and desire. But as Adam awakes, we are drawn back to 1813 and the world of skilled cloth worker George Mellor and his pregnant wife Mary.

I’m from Huddersfield. I’m steeped in this story from my youngest memories. This is all activity that happened within walking distance from when I was born.Ben Crick, Composer
With some beautiful video (by video designer Mic Pool) projected on windows behind Adam and Eva, the action moves seamlessly between 2030 and 1813, and with that device the historical parallels are drawn.

One of the opera’s performances will take place at The North of England Centre for Music & Arts in Marsden considered the birthplace of the Luddites, where the machines, and the massive sledge hammers that broke them, were made.

Oboe - Anna Powell
Cello - Tom Collingwood
Violin - Christopher Jones
French Horn - Matt Crossley
Percussion - Polly McMillanPerformed with just two singers (Daisy Mitchell as Eva and Mary, Neil Balfour as Adam and George Mellor) and a mini-orchestra of 5 players, the ensemble roused the emotions, as all good operas should. Ben Crick does not pretend to be Puccini; there are no hummable tunes in the piece, but the music, the videography and the excellent vocal performances combine to tell the cautionary tale with a rawness and honesty that a jolly sing-along could not.

This is an excellent new opera that uses the plain speaking of Yorkshire to directly address a critically important political issue. Could this be a template for operas to come? I do hope so.

The Last Machine Breaker is touring: Saturday 15 November The Warehouse, Holbeck, Leeds and Sunday 16 November Marsden Mechanics, Huddersfield