John Casken’s vividly theatrical setting of a racy Cleopatra story by D.M. Thomas, based on a Pushkin tale, is given alongside Ross Lorraine’s Not More Lovely, inspired by Poe’s haunting story The Oval Portrait, and Jean Hasse’s The Fall of the House of Usher, a new score to accompany the classic Watson and Webber silent film, together with Kagel’s vampiric MM51/Nosferatu and Ryo Noda’s virtuosic Mai for solo saxophone.

In the 2000 years since her death, the image of Cleopatra has been recreated over and over again, each time in a form that fits the prejudices and fantasies of the age that produced it. John Casken’s Deadly Pleasures sets an intriguing story about Cleopatra by Pushkin, completed by the novelist and translator D.M. Thomas. Cleopatra offers a night of love to any man, but on one condition...

Edward Rushton’s ‘colourful, strange, multilayered and slightly absurd’ On the Edge is a boldly innovative, cross-genre project, set in the Swiss Jungfrau region. The scenario weaves in the terrifying booming sounds that herald an avalanche, a light-hearted philosophical discussion of the purpose of sport and a Swiss folktale.

Accompanying a rare showing of the cult 1927 Dada film Ghosts Before Breakfast is a new score specially commissioned from Jean Hasse, who has also composed original music for the classic German Expressionist film version of Poe’s story by Watson and Webber. The programme also includes Mauricio Kagel’s film collage MM 51, which quotes Murnau’s classic silent Nosferatu: a short, sharply humorous piece of musical theatre – funny, slightly sinister and utterly mesmerising.

Johanna Lonsky (pictured) is the narrator in this programme featuring new works by John Casken and James Francis Brown

In the 2000 years since her death, the image of Cleopatra has been recreated over and over again, each time in a form that fits the prejudices and fantasies of the age that produced it. John Casken’s Deadly Pleasures sets an intriguing story about Cleopatra by Pushkin, completed by the novelist and translator D.M. Thomas. Cleopatra offers a night of love to any man, but on one condition...

Grieg’s spine-chilling melodrama Bergliot, based on a story of treachery and vengeance from the Nordic sagas, has been specially arranged by Edward Rushton. A ghostly story of faithful but doomed love is set memorably by Liszt in his melodrama Lenore.