What are the causes of a new, modern misogyny? What are the effects? How can one 'romantic ideal' slip into something that crosses a line?

An Opera in English - for Opera-skeptics and lovers alike! A punchy, prescient, musical short film!

What is Faust et Hélène?

Faust Et Helene is an 18-minute short adapting Boulanger’s 1913 opera into an urgent, youthful and cinematic deconstruction of ‘the game’.

Set within a modern house party and with an English translation of the original libretto, we pull opera out of the theatre and into the chaotic world of social media, toxic masculinity, and the predatory trappings of over-eager men who "screen out" the pain that they cause.

My name's Theo, and I'm a young, emerging filmmaker. Whether it be in the service industry, a university setting, on set... in recent years, I've done as anyone my age would: talked, listened, discovered - like my life depended on it. A few months ago, a work colleague described the night out he had planned - how he was excited to be out 'on the hunt' - how women loved 'the games' he played. He joked: once he'd arrived, it wasn't a question of if he'd 'get the one he wanted', it was a question of when.

The thing is: this isn't rare. I wasn't surprised to hear this. It wasn't even a 'creepy' declaration; the way he'd said it, and how much I'd heard this rhetoric before... This was a well-liked, abundantly social person, and placing these quotes in a larger conversation, I've seen them shrugged off a hundred times... On my way home, I was simply struck by its banality as an outlook. While some would have you believe this was a feeling in decline, it seems to me back on the rise, in direct correlation with the wider social context: a predator in the White House, an offensive mounted against 'wokeness' - this is no longer the feeling of a few 'loser incels'.

There's evidence to support major shifts in thinking like this. A recent study by Kings College London showed that in a single year (2024-2025), 1 in 10 Gen Z men had decided they were no longer feminists. 57% of Gen Z men now believe women's equality has gone too far.

I wanted to create a work that explores the causes of this kind of thinking - while it's easy to gesture at social media with a broad, hyper-sexualized lens, it goes beyond this - to me, these 'social' spaces play into a misogyny-normalizing environment that finds power in both its frequency and its subtlety. Shepherding boys into men, and men into misogynists - leading this thinking to its logical endpoint - a 'fantasy' gone too far. 

The hard truth: I am a man who's experienced these spaces. As a teen, I too was immersed in media - social media - that consistently showcased to me and imbued me with a subtle misogyny, and while I was surrounded by the tools and the people to turn that around, others are not. Exploring these spaces is now a major creative drive. 

Then - creatively, I ran into an altogether different conundrum. Opera. A medium overflowing with a history that is so musically intriguing and more than a little daunting - but often laden with ... outdated ideas. Leif, an internationally experienced conductor and close friend of mine, was chatting with me off the back of a previous collaboration: and the ideas for a fresh libretto bounced onto the page.

But we need you to make the project come to life.

With your help, we're reworking a forgotten, rarely performed opera into a film that interrogates the romantic delusion driven by online cultures. 

The film's look:

Avant-garde deconstruction of digital cultures leads into house party naturalism, finally transforming into a monochrome fever dream... 

The mad, ghostly retribution of A Christmas Carol meets the youthful-evening-party aesthetics of Normal People. This is all supplemented with a spin on TikTok’s “core-core” aesthetic — digital chaos, montage that provokes confrontation, a diagnosis of cause while reflection on the effects takes place.

The film's sound:

With Leif conducting a 48 piece Orchestra and 3 singers with a wealth of professional experience, the aim is to use the distinct power that the form offers to enhance, not just co-exist with, the visual storytelling. 

French arias clash with brutalistic English candour.

And now, meet Faust Et Helene's lead creatives...

Leif Tse is a graduate of the Royal College of Music in conducting and an internationally experienced conductor and arranger, having worked with groups such as the Lithuanian State Orchestra, the Metropolitan Orchestra of Montreal, and more. Having previously trained as a baritone at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Leif has a special affinity with opera. Experience on stage has given Leif a deep understanding of theatre and dramatic pacing which is reflected in both his aptitude for opera conducting and his narrative approach to symphonic music. As the commissioner of this piece he is absolutely ecstatic to bring Boulanger's scoring to life with our own ecstatic flairing.

Theo Coleridge is a short film director and producer with a wealth of experience in bringing music to the screen - jumping off the back of his 2024 musical fantasy short Ren's Courage, which brought an original harp score to life in a similarly fantastical setting. Following the creative producing of 2025's what the hell, sure, an installation film work exploring social media's interaction with teenage and young-adult depression, he hopes to bring a modernist styling to the fantastical operatic mythos contained within...

Tomos Owen Jones is a Welsh Tenor and a 25/26 National Opera Studio Young Artist. After having graduated with a distinction in performing-composing from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Tomos has performed in a wide range of Opera spaces and festivals, in roles ranging from Lysander in Midsummer Night's Dream to Don Ottavio/Don Giovani. A practiced composer alongside his performance, Tomos is passionate about bringing new classical works to the fore, and has had his own work premiered by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, The National Eisteddfod, Atmospheres Festival Cardiff and Leeds Lieder. 

Myrna Tennant is a mezzo-soprano based in London. She trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she completed her Masters with Distinction under Yvonne Kenny. Described as ‘outstanding and extraordinarily expressive’ (Ham and High), Myrna’s opera highlights include the title role in Rossini’s La Cenerentola with Hampstead Garden Opera, 2nd Witch in Dido and Aeneas with Longborough Festival Opera, and Una Conversa in a filmed version of Suor Angelica with Grange Park Opera, with whom Myrna also performed the role of Employee alongside being a chorus member for Gods of the Game, a newly commissioned work for Sky Arts. Having experienced screen work before, Myrna is perfectly prepped for the subtle (well, as subtle as Opera can be) performance required for Faust Et Helene.

Alexander Semple is a Baritone studying at the Royal College of Music under Russell Smythe and a Drake Calleja Scholar. His repertoire includes Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, the Ferryman in Curlew River, Tarquinius in the Rape of Lucretia, and many more. This Summer, Alexander covered roles in the RCM’s Love, Conflict, Renaissance, appeared as a soloist alongside the BBC National Chorus of Wales for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, and joined Green Opera for the premiere staging of John Joubert’s Jane Eyre; In Autumn, Alexander is playing Harašte in an RCM production of The Cunning Little Vixen. Coming into this project, Alexander is excited to be premiering a fresh libretto and keen to explore film as a new medium within his professional experience.

Hopefully, reading this, you're as excited about the project as we are. But there's one major caveat - while we've received partial funding, we need to secure five thousand pounds more to round out production. Securing our locations, renting the proper equipment, paying our performers - filmmaking is a complex business. Whether it be five pounds or a hundred, your support makes the difference between a couple of great scenes and a brilliant film. This is an urgent, modern work in a world where filmmakers are scared to touch digital cultures with a ten foot pole. Together, let's break the mould.