This exciting collaboration between Cornwall’s Miracle Theatre and English Touring Opera featuring Ben Luxon and local community choirs is a heady mix of epic theatre, multimedia magic and top notch singing!

Miracle Theatre Company is one of the South West’s foremost touring theatre companies with a reputation for producing entertaining, intelligent and funny theatre. For 32 years, they have been touring to the far flung corners of Cornwall popping up and performing their shows, mainly for one night only, in unexpected places. this March and April Miracle is ringing the changes with ‘Tin’ a large scale collaboration with English Touring Opera (ETO), commissioned by the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site.

Miracle Director Bill Scott “Tin is the most ambitious Miracle show to date and has had the longest gestation. It was 15 years ago that I saw a photo taken in 1911 of three actors posing outdoors, dressed for their parts in Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio. It could have been Miracle Theatre a hundred years ago! These characters invaded another story that I was writing, based on a Victorian novel, Tin, which was about a real-life share swindle at a Cornish tin mine.

In my story a travelling troupe of opera singers arrive in a town (St Just in Penwith in all but name) to give a performance of Fidelio and find themselves, embroiled in a local banking fraud. Although the story is partly about the collision between the two very different worlds of tin mining and travelling theatre, at its heart ‘Tin’ is a love story.”

The production has acast of ten professional performers (twice the usual number for a Miracle show!) including regular Miracle actors and singers from English Touring Opera (ETO). Following a large outreach and participation project, led by ETO, they will also be joined by a vibrant ‘village chorus’ recruited from schools and community choirs from across the region.

ETO's Artistic Associate Tim Yealland says: For ETO this partnership with Miracle is perfect from every point of view, not least because it allows us to work alongside Cornwall's most vibrant theatre company; it also lets us tap into the deep roots of Cornwall's powerful singing tradition.

As well as a rousing section of Beethoven’s Fidelio, ‘Tin’ also contains music specifically written for the play by Cornish composer Russell Pascoe, who ‘tested’ his new work on one of the participating male voice choirs based at Richard Lander School.

Completing the impressive cast line-up is famous Cornish baritone Benjamin Luxon CBE. Ben gave up performing opera due to hearing loss and moved to America to focus on his acting career. His highly anticipated return to the Cornish stage sees him play the pivotal character ‘East.’

This epic production will be staged in various locations across the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Deborah Boden, WHS Co-ordinator, explained why they have invested in this project.

“The Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Cultural Events Programme aims to increase awareness and appreciation of Cornish Mining culture and all of its aspects. For us the most poignant and powerful way to bring the World Heritage Site to life is to tell the stories of the people who created the globally important places within it – otherwise they are just a pile of stones. Projects like ‘Tin’ explain aspects of the mining industry from the perspective of the 19th Century communities, and from the viewpoint of the people themselves, and bring the audience closer to the emotions, and therefore the realities, of the lives of those who have shaped the Cornwall that we live in today”

‘Tin’ tours to four venues in Cornwall, opening on the 20th March at the new Heartlands site in Pool for 14 performances. It will then take residence on one of Cornwall’s most westerly cliff-tops, in a large geodesic dome in front of the historic Count House at Botallack Mine for Easter Week (2nd to 9th April). Devon is next stop at The Wharf, Tavistock on 11th and 12th, before returning to east Cornwall at Sterts, Liskeard, between 17th and 21st April. The tour reaches its grand finale at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro on 23rd & 24th April.

To book your tickets, visit the Miracle Theatre website.