BBC Concert Orchestra 2026-2027 Southbank Centre Oracle: a new opera by David Buckley

The BBC Concert Orchestra and its Associate Conductor Jérôme Kuhn bring David Buckley’s powerful new opera, Oracle, to the UK for the first time, and mythologically-inspired curtain-raisers by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Dobrinka Tabakova.

‘What is invoked cannot be controlled’: divine ambiguity collides with algorithmic certainty in Oracle, Buckley’s dazzling operatic satire of AI (and what lies beyond). Bees buzz, wasps sting, but the hive mind of AI has its own agenda – weaving a future that only the boldest would dare to predict.

What if there’s more to consciousness than algorithms and neural networks? What if the Greek gods, silent for centuries, are watching the tech bros and waiting for their moment to speak again?

These are the questions asked by Oracle, a new opera from composer David Buckley and writer Stephen Plaice.

The setting is the Californian tech industry, the story, an everyday 21st-century tale of self-proclaimed genius spiralling terrifyingly out of control.

Introduced tonight by the composer himself, and conducted by Jérôme Kuhn, who gave the world premiere of Oracle just last year, this UK premiere concert staging features the BBC Concert Orchestra and specially conceived visuals.