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Tom Service joins the Canadian-American singer, songwriter, and composer Rufus Wainwright during rehearsals in London for his new musical Opening Night. Based on the 1977 John Cassavetes film, Wainwright is collaborating with director, Ivo van Hove, and actress and singer, Sheridan Smith, to depict the mental and creative survival of the protagonist Myrtle Gordon. He tells Tom about the project’s serendipitous genesis, his love of song, and why only now he’s approaching the genre.

The historian Suzanne Aspden and baritone and director Thomas Guthrie join Tom at His Majesty’s Theatre on the Haymarket in London, home to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera for the past four decades, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the premiere of Handel’s opera, Giulio Cesare at the former King’s Theatre built on the same site. They discuss Handel’s entrepreneurship, the opera’s popular acclaim, and the financial and operational challenges still faced across the world of musical theatre.

During a break in auditions for their new musical, Why am I so single, Tom travels to Vauxhall to meet Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow - the creatives behind the smash-hit musical retelling the tale of the six wives of Henry VIII, Six: The Musical. He hears about the development required to take a musical from idea to stage, and learns more about the National Youth Music Theatre’s work to support the next generation of musical theatre stars.

And, Music Matters travels to Stratford-upon-Avon to speak to find out more about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s staging of BEN and IMO – a new production by playwright Mark Ravenhill and director Erica Whyman which explores the creative relationship between the composer Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst as they prepare the opera Gloriana for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Composer Conor Mitchell describes the approach he took to writing the music which accompanies the play, and the actors Samuel Barnett and Victoria Yeates are joined by director Erica Whyman to share the insights informing their characterisation of these two complex figures and the musical endeavour they embark on together.