Alma Deutscher, Cavalli at Glyndebourne, Election 2017

Available for over a year

Presented by Tom Service. The composer and violinist Alma Deutscher was born in 2005, started composing aged 4, and wrote her first piano sonata when she was 6. Her first piece for symphony orchestra, Dance of the Solent Mermaids, and an opera, Cinderella, had their first performances in 2015. Tom meets Alma at her home in Surrey to find out more about her musical journey, and listen to her improvising at the piano. As a new production of Hipermestra, a rarely staged opera by Cavalli, opens at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Tom heads to the gardens of the Sussex opera house to meet the conductor William Christie and director Graham Vick, finding a dynamic partnership working on an operatic ideal. And Tom looks at the main parties' cultural policies in the run-up to the UK general election.