Opening with several hundred stacked books collapsing to the floor as despondent minor chords reverberate around the auditorium, Seven Angels promises to be a visually dramatic, musically arresting and theatrically ambitious opera.

A new work composed by Luke Bedford, written by Glyn Maxwell and directed by John Fulljames, the libretto takes elements of Milton’s Paradise Lost to tell the tale of seven fallen angels landing in a deserted, apocalyptic landscape.

Eager to imagine what took place there, the angels create a story about greed, self-sufficiency and hope, set around a beautiful garden.

It’s no surprise that the themes and issues threaded within the narrative caught the attention of Friends Of The Earth, who have teamed up with The Opera Group and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group to promote the show.

“The idea was to do something to highlight the environment and climate change. There are some interesting parallels in Milton’s work that we can drawon – the most obvious one being a ruined garden. We used this theme as part of the tale we created,”

composer Luke Bedford explains.

“The angels act as narrators as well as characters. Sometimes the action breaks away and it’s the angels talking about what might happen next, so they work on two levels. We start with the creation of the world, finish on the end of it and cover everything in between – it’s certainly not small-scale!”

Given that scale, Seven Angels would be an ambitious piece for an experienced opera authority, yet somewhat unbelievably, this is Bedford’s first foray into the genre.

“One thing that really appeals to me about opera is you can be much more direct – words can be used for the actions and the staging. Music can only say so much, but when you’re dealing with a direct message like climate change, it’s so much harder to do that with just a piano. How do people know what it is about? Ultimately it’s just notes on a page,” he explains.

A graduate of the Royal College of Music, Bedford won the Royal Philharmonic Society composition prize for composers under 29 in 2000, aged just 22, and has since gone on to compose over 20 pieces for soloists, quartets and full orchestras.

“I’d never written a piece longer than 18 minutes and the opera is 90 minutes long… it’s a big step up! There are seven scenes, so when you break the music down to each scene it makes it feel much more manageable,” he laughs.

“You have to get a dramatic feeling for it. There are times when you need fast music, as there’s something building up which needs to be exciting, while other times you have to step back and throw it down. It’s all about the ebb and flow.”

Not that Bedford took the move into the operatic genre lightly.

He admits it took Fulljames – who returns to Brighton with company The Opera Group following last year’s Argus Angel award-winning opera The Lion’s Face – to persuade him into the project.

“It’s such a big commitment and you have to be certain it’s going to be worthwhile and that you can do it. I was involved very early on in the creative process, so it was very different from writing a concert piece, which is basically me in my room writing notes on bits of paper,” he laughs.

“I’ve written for the voice before but I’ve never written for stuff in the theatre. What I learnt from John’s workshops was the sense of what happens when someone stops reading the notes off the page and starts acting at the same time as singing. Suddenly this extra dimension appeared – just hearing the performers speaking the words while acting them out created a real sense of drama.”

It’s a dimension that has Bedford excited for the future.

“You certainly get a taste for it. I think there’s a quote from Britten about being flexible as a composer – bring the right music for the right time,” he says.

“If you have a persona in the concert hall, you need to get rid of that when you come to the stage. Give the actors and singers time to breathe and create their own thing. I’d love to come back to it.”

* Starts 7.30pm, tickets £12.50/£10, call 01273 709709