The Last Tape

Gare St Lazare Ireland

Judy Hegarty Lovett, director

Mark Padmore, singer

Conor Lovett, actor

Elaine Kelly, conductor

Izumi Kimura, pianist

Ellen Jansson, pianist

Mel Mercier, sound designer

Morgan Dunne, sound engineer

Kelly Jehanno, stage manager

Megan Riordan, line producer

Maura O Keeffe, associate producer

Marcel Mihalovici The Last Tape  Rearranged by Andrew Synnott  [Irish Premiere]

Text/libretto by Samuel Beckett

The Last Tape is a new hybrid adaptation of Marcel Mihalovici’s chamber opera in one act, with a libretto by Samuel Beckett, based on his play Krapp’s Last Tape. The elderly Krapp, before making his annual birthday tape recording, listens back to a previous tape, revisiting the supposed highlights of the year just ended. Now approaching the end of his sixty-ninth year, he listens to a recording made half a lifetime earlier and confronts the choices that led him to privilege some parts of his life over others. In this final tape, he weighs the cost of those decisions.

This work-in-progress redux presentation, shown in advance of its Irish premiere at Kilkenny Arts Festival later this year, marks the twenty-sixth Beckett production directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett and her third collaboration with singer Mark Padmore. Padmore is joined by pianists Ellen Jansson and Izumi Kumara, under the direction of Grammy-nominated conductor Elaine Kelly, performing Andrew Synnott’s new arrangement of Mihalovici’s original score. Actor Conor Lovett joins Padmore in the role of Krapp.

With The Last Tape, Gare St Lazare Ireland continues its ongoing interdisciplinary exploration of Beckett’s work, combining music, theatre and the visual arts. The production offers a rare opportunity to encounter one of Beckett’s two operas in a developmental form.