Royal Opera House: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Oxford, 1862. A summer afternoon. Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, and his socially ambitions wife are about to host a garden party at the Deanery. Lewis Carroll, a lecturer in mathematics and friend of the Liddell family, entertains the three young Liddell daughters, Lorina, Alice and Edith, by reading a story and performing magic tricks. When Jack, the gardener’s boy, brings in basket of roses, Alice’s mother – always persnickety about appearances, -- rejects the red one as being out of place among the white ones. Jack and Alice are friends. He gives her the discarded red rose and in return she gives him a jam tart that she has taken from a passing tray. This leads to disaster: Alice’s mother seizes on it as a pretext to accuse Jack of theft and dismiss him. The clock strikes four. Guests arrive and the party begins. Alice is devastated to see Jack leaving the house in disgrace. Lewis Carroll consoles her by offering to take her photograph. He disappears beneath the camera cloth and, to Alice’s surprise, emerges as a White Rabbit. When he bounds into his camera bag and vanishes, Alice follows him and falls, and falls… falls further… and finds herself alone and lost. “What a strange place Wonderland is.”

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