With an improvising company it’s not about commissioning work and dramaturgy because, well, it’s all made up,” says David Pearl, artistic director at Impropera – an operatic improvisation group he co-founded in 2000.
“It’s about developing and sustaining the ensemble over time, creating the conditions where people feel secure to take the kind of risks that improvising opera on the spot entails.”
For the past few years, Pearl has been running Muso, where his troupe of singers and musicians delivers an improvised 75-minute performance to a small audience in an intimate museum setting.
With tickets costing from £5 to £10, the performance involves the cast taking the audience on an exploration of the museum, telling stories about certain artefacts and treasures from the collection. The players interact with the audience, inviting them to share their ideas and ask questions.
Evocative surroundings “It’s a combination of a music concert, comedy show and a Night at the Museum experience,” Pearl explains, saying that he got the idea for improvisational opera in a museum from a chance encounter with University College London (UCL) academic Chiara Ambrosio. “She mentioned there were some great hidden collections at UCL, including the wonderfully evocative Grant Museum of Zoology. It sounded intriguing and the rest is ‘natural history’.”
Supported by a grant from UCL Grand Challenges and development funding from the Arts Council of England, Muso has been allowed to blossom, and is halfway through a run of six shows this year.
“UCL saw the work that we were doing with the Grant Museum – bringing the collections alive, pulling into the university a range of people who would never normally go there and involving them in the creative process,” Pearl says. “This was very consistent with their own UCL Culture programme and so they decided to support our work. Our current tour couldn’t be happening without them.”
As Pearl says, improvised opera is very different from traditional performances and so preparation is different too. Usually, the group arrives early to spend some time at the museum, soak up the atmosphere and chat with the staff.
Expressing reactions “We always promise we’ll rehearse, but usually this degenerates into playing around and mistake making – which, funnily enough, is perfect preparation for improvisation,” he says. “This is a balancing act, though, because while you want to respect the location and connect with the genius loci, being too prepared can be death for improv.
“The audience love that we know as little as – or less than – them. Our job is to express the audience’s reactions to objects, not our own, but we do have a guest academic on hand to correct us and tell the audience what it’s really all about.”
The experimental opera group has performed at London’s British Museum, Grant Museum of Zoology, and Horniman Museum, among others. From Impropera’s original set-up, Pearl (tenor), Susan Bisatt and Morag McLaren (sopranos), Anthony Ingle (musician and musical director) and Peter Furniss (clarinet, recorder and saxophone player) all remain. Niall Ashdown, Louise Crane, Phillip Pellew, Fiona Finsbury and pianist and flautist Yshani Perinpanayagam complete the group that delivers the Muso events.
Pearl is open to seeking more museum partners, mentioning Dean Veall, an educator at Grant Museum, who has become the de facto producer and is helping promote Muso to other potential locations. “We didn’t know how this would be received – that’s the wonder and terror of improv. However, a couple of years into the experiment, museums are asking for more and audiences are growing. As long as they are asking for Muso, we’ll be there, singing museums to life!”
Read more from this issue of Spa Business magazine
Industry Opinion: Waterparks
More water leisure operators are investing in becoming more accessible, writes WWA's Aleatha Ezra
Industry Opinion: Zoos & Aquariums
Species survival expert Bill Robichaud shares the trials of the saola and what zoos are doing to save this near-extinct creature
Interview: Bob White
Bob White, COO of Village Roadshow, on
weathering a dip in attendance and keeping
his eyes on investment and expansion
Inclusivity: Open to All
Kath Hudson reports on some inspiring
initiatives to help include people who
face physical, social or economic
obstacles to visiting attractions
Heritage: Lofty Ideals
Westminster Abbey is getting an attic
conversion of sorts. We found out more
Waterparks: Under the Weather
Meet the team who helped bring
Epic Waters to fruition – an undercover
Texas waterpark on an epic scale
Profile: Andreas Andersen
IAAPA’s new chair Andreas Andersen sat
down with Tom Anstey to talk about industry
growth, sustainability – and queueing
Theme Parks: Think Big
Liseberg CEO Andreas Andersen reveals
details of the park’s €200m expansion
Themed design: The Story Builders
Disney’s Joe Rohde and Scott Trowbridge
and Universal’s Thierry Coup reveal the
secrets of their trade – well, some of them!
In the fast-paced world of fitness and wellness, where high-intensity workouts push us to
our limits and the sweat pours, the importance of efficient recovery cannot be overstated. [more...]
With an improvising company it’s not about commissioning work and dramaturgy because, well, it’s all made up,” says David Pearl, artistic director at Impropera – an operatic improvisation group he co-founded in 2000.
“It’s about developing and sustaining the ensemble over time, creating the conditions where people feel secure to take the kind of risks that improvising opera on the spot entails.”
For the past few years, Pearl has been running Muso, where his troupe of singers and musicians delivers an improvised 75-minute performance to a small audience in an intimate museum setting.
With tickets costing from £5 to £10, the performance involves the cast taking the audience on an exploration of the museum, telling stories about certain artefacts and treasures from the collection. The players interact with the audience, inviting them to share their ideas and ask questions.
Evocative surroundings “It’s a combination of a music concert, comedy show and a Night at the Museum experience,” Pearl explains, saying that he got the idea for improvisational opera in a museum from a chance encounter with University College London (UCL) academic Chiara Ambrosio. “She mentioned there were some great hidden collections at UCL, including the wonderfully evocative Grant Museum of Zoology. It sounded intriguing and the rest is ‘natural history’.”
Supported by a grant from UCL Grand Challenges and development funding from the Arts Council of England, Muso has been allowed to blossom, and is halfway through a run of six shows this year.
“UCL saw the work that we were doing with the Grant Museum – bringing the collections alive, pulling into the university a range of people who would never normally go there and involving them in the creative process,” Pearl says. “This was very consistent with their own UCL Culture programme and so they decided to support our work. Our current tour couldn’t be happening without them.”
As Pearl says, improvised opera is very different from traditional performances and so preparation is different too. Usually, the group arrives early to spend some time at the museum, soak up the atmosphere and chat with the staff.
Expressing reactions “We always promise we’ll rehearse, but usually this degenerates into playing around and mistake making – which, funnily enough, is perfect preparation for improvisation,” he says. “This is a balancing act, though, because while you want to respect the location and connect with the genius loci, being too prepared can be death for improv.
“The audience love that we know as little as – or less than – them. Our job is to express the audience’s reactions to objects, not our own, but we do have a guest academic on hand to correct us and tell the audience what it’s really all about.”
The experimental opera group has performed at London’s British Museum, Grant Museum of Zoology, and Horniman Museum, among others. From Impropera’s original set-up, Pearl (tenor), Susan Bisatt and Morag McLaren (sopranos), Anthony Ingle (musician and musical director) and Peter Furniss (clarinet, recorder and saxophone player) all remain. Niall Ashdown, Louise Crane, Phillip Pellew, Fiona Finsbury and pianist and flautist Yshani Perinpanayagam complete the group that delivers the Muso events.
Pearl is open to seeking more museum partners, mentioning Dean Veall, an educator at Grant Museum, who has become the de facto producer and is helping promote Muso to other potential locations. “We didn’t know how this would be received – that’s the wonder and terror of improv. However, a couple of years into the experiment, museums are asking for more and audiences are growing. As long as they are asking for Muso, we’ll be there, singing museums to life!”
Read more from this issue of Spa Business magazine
Industry Opinion: Waterparks
More water leisure operators are investing in becoming more accessible, writes WWA's Aleatha Ezra
Industry Opinion: Zoos & Aquariums
Species survival expert Bill Robichaud shares the trials of the saola and what zoos are doing to save this near-extinct creature
Interview: Bob White
Bob White, COO of Village Roadshow, on
weathering a dip in attendance and keeping
his eyes on investment and expansion
Inclusivity: Open to All
Kath Hudson reports on some inspiring
initiatives to help include people who
face physical, social or economic
obstacles to visiting attractions
Heritage: Lofty Ideals
Westminster Abbey is getting an attic
conversion of sorts. We found out more
Waterparks: Under the Weather
Meet the team who helped bring
Epic Waters to fruition – an undercover
Texas waterpark on an epic scale
Profile: Andreas Andersen
IAAPA’s new chair Andreas Andersen sat
down with Tom Anstey to talk about industry
growth, sustainability – and queueing
Theme Parks: Think Big
Liseberg CEO Andreas Andersen reveals
details of the park’s €200m expansion
Themed design: The Story Builders
Disney’s Joe Rohde and Scott Trowbridge
and Universal’s Thierry Coup reveal the
secrets of their trade – well, some of them!
People taking GLP-1 weight loss medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound
may be losing weight, but they’re also becoming less physically active, according to new
research presented at the ENDO 2026 annual meeting of the Endocrine Society
Abu Dhabi-based investment firm Mubadala Capital has made a binding, fully financed
€1 billion
offer to acquire Pierre and Vacances SA, the European holiday resort operator behind the
continental European Center Parcs business.
Global retreat trade show, Synergy The Retreat Show, has launched a resource called The
Source, which hosts an open-access online Transformation Series programme.
The Standards Authority for Touch in Cancer Care (SATCC) charity has announced its first five-
day Living with Cancer and Beyond retreat, which will be held at Carden Park Hotel and Spa in
Cheshire, UK, between 1 and 5 September.
Patmos Aktis, a Luxury Collection Resort and Spa, has opened in Greece, with a renovated and
rebranded wellness offering called Ansana Wellness and Spa.
The Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, an Autograph Collection property in Hawaii, US, has opened its
22,000 sq ft indoor-outdoor Spa at Mauna Kea as the final step in the property’s overall
renovation, which has cost more than US$180 million (€166 million, £140 mill
The UK spa review and discovery platform for consumers, the Good Spa Guide, has announced
it will host the Good Spa Guide Awards 2026 during an event on 16 November at Sopwell House
Hotel in St Albans, UK.
Eighty-four per cent of consumers now say wellness is a top priority in their lives, with this
percentage increasing year on year, according to a preview presentation of McKinsey’s Future of
Wellness 2026 research report.
Mass protests have been taking place since Monday 1 June in Albania over the development of
a luxury resort by Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.
Global Wellness Day (GWD) marked its 15th anniversary on Saturday 13 June 2026, with the
theme: #JoyMagenta – a celebration of the healing qualities of simple gestures and activities
that spark joy.
In the fast-paced world of fitness and wellness, where high-intensity workouts push us to
our limits and the sweat pours, the importance of efficient recovery cannot be overstated. [more...]
