William Spaulding, chorus director of the Royal Opera, takes on John Milton's epic alone in Paradise Lost, a one-night staging at Wilton's Music Hall on Tuesday 19 January 2027.
A one-man Paradise Lost is a considerable undertaking, and the billing does not underplay it: the production promises to strip the poem of its "academic dust" and treat Milton's density and rhythm as something to be heard and felt rather than decoded. Satan stands at the centre, the charismatic rebel whose magnetism has long made him the poem's most compelling figure.
The director is Keith Warner, an Olivier Award winner whose career runs to more than 150 opera, theatre and musical productions in twenty countries, from London and Vienna to Bayreuth, Tokyo and San Francisco. Spaulding comes to it from the podium, having conducted choruses and orchestras across Europe, and the staging draws on musicality and physicality as much as on the text.
The performance begins at 7pm and runs 2 hours 30 minutes, including an interval. Full-price tickets cost £11.50 to £26, with concessions from £9 to £23.50, booking now at Wilton's Music Hall.
It opens the new-year run of drama in Wilton's spring 2027 season.
