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Community opera in a youth training prison

Opera from the experience of prison

O Tempo is a community opera, created with young inmates, family members, former inmates, residents of Leiria and prison service staff.

O Tempo is a community opera, created with young inmates, family members, former inmates, residents of Leiria and prison service staff.

On the face of it, opera would be of little interest to young men in prison, especially if their heritage is rooted in other cultures. But for years the Sociedade Artística Musical dos Pousos (SAMP) has been working with the inmates of a youth training prison in Leiria, central Portugal, to produce opera and other artistic work.

SAMP’s work is deeply humanist, and the opera project was intended to bring together people normally kept apart by prison life.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

The inmates were at the heart of the co-creation process, but SAMP also wanted to involve their relatives—parents, partners and even children—as well as prison staff and people in the local community.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

Co-creation Stage is a web-based tool that enables performers in different locations to connect in real time. In Portugal, it was used to connect artists performing at the prison with others in a concert hall 150 km away.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

Thirty young inmates performed alongside four professional singers. Half were on stage, with the rest projected onto the back walls of the set and forming a kind of Greek Chorus.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)
SAMP’s work is deeply humanist, and the opera project was intended to bring together people normally kept apart by prison life. O Tempo (Somos Nós)
The inmates were at the heart of the co-creation process, but SAMP also wanted to involve their relatives—parents, partners and even children—as well as prison staff and people in the local community. O Tempo (Somos Nós)
Co-creation Stage is a web-based tool that enables performers in different locations to connect in real time. In Portugal, it was used to connect artists performing at the prison with others in a concert hall 150 km away. O Tempo (Somos Nós)
Thirty young inmates performed alongside four professional singers. Half were on stage, with the rest projected onto the back walls of the set and forming a kind of Greek Chorus. O Tempo (Somos Nós)

First, the community—inmates, relatives, prison staff and local artists—co-created a completely new opera, drawing on their own experience on both sides of the prison walls. Working with three composers and a librettist, they used the myth of Ulysses and Penelope to create a moving and powerful meditation on the experience of separation and the life choices that can produce it.

Secondly, they used a new digital web platform to combine live performances from different locations, thus virtually passing through the walls separating them.

They have performed Mozart with a lot of success, in the prison and in the Gulbenkian concert hall in Lisbon. The Traction project gave them an opportunity to do something radically different.

The result was an opera of great originality, that was as moving as it was beautiful.


The three composers and the librettist spent weeks in music and drama workshops with inmates at the Leiria Youth Training Prison before they wrote anything.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

The interaction of professional and non-professional artists challenges everyone, sparks new ideas and insights, and generates novel forms and alternative meanings.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

Together with SAMP, the inmates created the community opera.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

In Leiria youth prison, inmates performed with their relatives at key points in the opera.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

O Tempo (Somos Nós) told a philosophical story of separation, temptation and imprisonment in which the married lovers stay faithful and are reunited at the end.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

Community opera produce wonderful experiences for audiences and performers.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)

The introduction of non-operatic musical languages such as gypsy rumba, rock and rap became a natural enlargement of the palette.

O Tempo (Somos Nós)
The three composers and the librettist spent weeks in music and drama workshops with inmates at the Leiria Youth Training Prison before they wrote anything. O Tempo (Somos Nós)
The interaction of professional and non-professional artists challenges everyone, sparks new ideas and insights, and generates novel forms and alternative meanings. O Tempo (Somos Nós)
Together with SAMP, the inmates created the community opera.O Tempo (Somos Nós)
In Leiria youth prison, inmates performed with their relatives at key points in the opera. O Tempo (Somos Nós)
O Tempo (Somos Nós) told a philosophical story of separation, temptation and imprisonment in which the married lovers stay faithful and are reunited at the end. O Tempo (Somos Nós)
Community opera produce wonderful experiences for audiences and performers.O Tempo (Somos Nós)
The introduction of non-operatic musical languages such as gypsy rumba, rock and rap became a natural enlargement of the palette. O Tempo (Somos Nós)

The final work, O Tempo (Somos Nós)—Time (As We Are)—was performed at the prison on 3 and 4 June 2022 and at the Gulbenkian Concert Hall in Lisbon on 16 and 17 June 2022 for a combined audience of about 2,500.

The support of the Prison Service and the Ministry of Justice was vital to making this brave production possible, and discussion continues about the role of opera and the arts in rehabilitation. Funding is already secured to continue the work for the next three years.

But perhaps the most compelling evidence of the work’s success is how many inmates stay in touch with SAMP after their release: several came to see the new opera and offer their support for the work.

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