With my fellow trustees we have staged high-quality opera productions with orchestra, mostly at Jacksons Lane Theatre in Highgate, with our objective of ‘advancing young singers’ – providing an almost unique platform in the UK for singers at the start of operatic careers to sing ‘in rep’ before discerning audiences, a vital experience for their future careers.
And indeed our ‘alumni’ have a great record of going on to work with leading UK and European opera companies, including English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Glyndebourne and many others.
As example, just the other day I went to see Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House: in the chorus was Shafali Jalota (Susanna in our 2021 Nozze di Figaro), and Robert Berry-Roe (a fox-cub in our award-winning 2022 Cunning Little Vixen) as the young Prince Fyodor.
There have been many wonderful experiences: bringing live opera back to London after Covid in 2020 with open-air performances of Holst’s Sharp at Lauderdale House; taking our production of Handel’s Partenope to the 2022 Three Palaces Festival in Malta; giving the first UK performance of Lidarti’s 1774 oratorio Esterwhich brought us coverage on Radio 3’s Music Matters and BBC Music Magazine; working with local children in Vixen in 2022 and Hansel and Gretel in 2023: our 2024 Eugene Onegin (also an Off West End Award winner), which led one leading critic to comment “It was the sort of night that made you want to go out and drag in an opera-sceptic, just to watch their prejudices being blasted away at storm force.” And as I write we have six nominations for Off West End Awards for our 2025 productions, Cinderella and Monteverdi’s The coronation of Poppeaplus a nomination for the Fringe Theatre Opera award for Poppea (results later this year).
Before handing over the helm to my vice-chair, the opera singer Philip Sheffield, the last production over which I will preside is very special. Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretiaapart from its passionate and moving qualities, is a key moment both in Britten’s career and in the development of British opera. And, speaking from an era of recovery from war (its premiere was in 1946), it carries new meanings to us about the nature of conflict, both sexual and social. It is a privilege to present it at Jacksons Lane from April 17 to 26, with, as always, a wonderfully talented cast, and with Oliver Cope as conductor and Eleanor Burke and Alex Gotch as directors, the same team who brought us our prize-winning Onegin. I hope we may see you there!
