Lost and found – a musical adventure in the Fitzwilliam Museum

It's almost like a theme park ride with each part of the story offering a different surprise." - —Toby Young, composer of Lost Museums are big places full of mysterious things. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge with its splendid classical facade is home to thousands of treasures from Chines ceramics and Egyptian mummies to paintings by Italian masters and French impressionists.  Now its impressive galleries are to be the setting for an accessible opera based on a visit that takes an unexpected turn of events. When Luke and Elena take their small son Adam on a trip to the Fitzwilliam, he gets lost - not just in the wonder of the intriguing objects he encounters but so properly lost that his parents can't find him anywhere. What happens next is a voyage of discovery and reunion, as Luke and Elena's hidden histories are mirrored in the stories that lie behind some of the treasures on display. To be performed for the first time on 29 October, Lost is an experimental promenade opera - a combination of words and music that takes the audience on an exploration that's both touching and funny. Written by composer Toby Young and librettist Katy Austin, it will take place for one evening only in the sumptuous galleries of the Fitzwilliam as part of the University of Cambridge's Festival of Ideas. While much contemporary opera has a reputation for esotericism, Lost is deliberately accessible, with Young describing his music as "a kind of classical jazz" and Austin summing up her libretto as "combining poetry with everyday speech albeit with more than a few puns".