Devised and performed by Nola Rae and Michael Popper

From an original idea by Nola Rae

With thanks to Aranka Sestak

Directed by John Mowat
Design Matthew Ridout
Music by Giacomo Puccini and W. A. Mozart

If music be the food of love, is opera love’s indigestion?

Nellie Pasta’s Opera Cocktail, set in a dingy dressing room under a second rate opera house stage, is a study of two misfits who meet in confusion and end up in a farce.

Hapless Nellie Pasta (Nola), a dresser to a tetchy door slamming diva, carries out her backstage routine with dreamy incompetence until an insult too far makes her seek revenge.

George Biscuit (Michael), opera fan and eccentric, wants the diva’s autograph and finds himself waiting for her in Nellie’s messy realm. Fantasy grips him.
When he encounters Nellie in person, he believes she is his diva and Biscuit’s joy knows no bounds. Nellie’s only thought is to escape Biscuit before she is found out and if she sings, she will be.

It could lead to murder......opera style.

A cocktail of confusion. A panic of Puccini.

A taste of Tosca. Gone for a song.