Between Worlds

Between Worlds, the highly anticipated operatic debut from Tansy Davies to a libretto by Nick Drake, opened at London’s Barbican Theatre on April 11, 2015. A bold and highly individual response to the events of 9/11, the opera—commissioned by English National Opera—brings Davies and Drake together with acclaimed director Deborah Warner. A disparate group of individuals is trapped high up in one of the Twin Towers, caught between earth and heaven, life and death. As the work progresses it opens out to a universal panorama of human beings in extremis. Drake’s libretto deftly weaves together a wide variety of texts, from actual communications sent on the morning of 9/11 to passages from the Latin Requiem Mass.