AWARD-winning British composer, Emily Hall’s new work, Folie à Deux will receive its UK theatrical premiere in Hampshire this weekend.

Presented by Mahogany Opera Group on Saturday at Winchester Discovery Centre, the project is unique in that it has been conceived as both a concept album and a piece of theatre.

Folie à Deux is a collaboration between Emily Hall and Icelandic lyricist, writer and long-time Björk collaborator, Sjón.

It is a sonic voyage into the shared psychosis known as ‘folie à deux’, where a delusion is transmitted from one person to another.

The narrative centres around a couple whose idyllic life on a quiet hillside changes irrevocably as an electricity pylon is constructed outside their house.

The man starts to believe that the pylon has a special power over him. His delusion passes on to his partner, and as their madness takes hold, sparks begin to fly.

Hall’s intricately crafted songs are woven together for two singers (Swedish voice artist, Sofia Jernberg and Icelandic tenor, Finnur Bjarnason), an acoustic harp and a specially created electro-magnetic harp in this modern folk tale.

This newly created instrument uses vibrating magnets to evoke an underlying electronic presence representing the pylon – the third character that presides over this story.

Against a backdrop of responsive light and sound, the result is a hauntingly beautiful soundscape which takes its influences from many musical idioms ranging classical, jazz, pop and folk.

The idea for the piece came out of a conversation Emily Hall had with psychiatrist, Dr Lisa Conlan, who works at the Maudsley Hospital in South London, about a rare psychotic syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another, known as Folie à Deux.

Emily then teamed up with Icelandic wordsmith, Sjón, to put the piece together.

Emily Hall said: “I was very taken with the idea of folie à deux as it seemed to be an exaggeration of many real life relationships, where one half of the couple dominates the other.”

Part staged performance, part concept album, Folie à Deux is a lyrical and intense investigation into love and loneliness within a relationship.

  • Here is the short video of Dr Conlan talking about the condition: youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRNhI0WThE.