Karolaoke

Karolaoke & Opera Erratica

Christmas is all about traditions.

Traditions like hanging decorations; eating too much; baking mince pies; visiting Christmas markets; ice-skating; and watching operas inside East London warehouses before singing Christmas carols and Mariah Carey hits with the backing of a 13-piece stage band.

Now, some traditions are easier to uphold than others.

Like eating too much. That’s easy.

However now – thanks to Opera Erratica and The Coveryard – upholding the tradition of attending a multi-instrumental, operatic Christmas performance and carol sing-along in a warehouse is easy too, because they’ve kindly wrapped up all of those ingredients for you and placed them in a festive gift package called Karolaoke, which works like this:

Act 1, The Cultural Bit: You’ll arrive, drink too much mulled wine and then sit centre stage as Opera Erratica perform an immersive 8-piece choral and instrumental cantata of David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion around you. On the one hand you’ll feel proud of yourself for expanding your cultural horizons in this way, and on the other hand you’ll feel drunk from the wine.

Interlude: You’ll exit through a side door, slipping outside to enjoy a little more mulled wine (and other festive beverages like “beer”) under the stars. When no one’s looking you’ll gargle your drink and do voice training exercises in preparation for…

Act 2, The Sing-along: You’ll make your way into a totally new room adorned with cushions, cozy couches and soft lamp lighting, where you’ll immediately spot a 13-piece stage band preparing to play classic Christmas carols and festive pop-songs. They’ll start playing, and lyrics to each song will promptly be projected on to the walls, allowing you the opportunity to either sing along or sit back, lap up the atmosphere and invite your neighbour to pull a Christmas cracker.

There’ll be a joke in there somewhere.

NOTE: Karolaoke is happening over two evenings: 11th and 12th December 2014. 

Opera Erratica & The Coveryard | 117 Wallis Road, Hackney Wick, E9 5LN

Enjoy interesting pop up experiences? Check out The Nudge’s guide to the best London pop-ups.