Ali McGregor
Encyclopedia
Ali McGregor is an Australia
n opera
singer, actress and cabaret
performer.
, studied music at the Australian National University
before completing her Bachelor of Music at the Royal Northern College of Music
in Manchester
, UK as a Peter Moores
Scholar. Her first lead role was playing Polly Peachum in Jonathan Miller
's The Beggar's Opera
at Wilton's Music Hall
. She went on to present La Traviata – LIve from Paris for Channel 4
alongside Howard Goodall
in 2000. She was then lured back to Australia by Simone Young
to be one of her first Young Artists for Opera Australia
. She then went on to become a principal soprano with Opera Australia
from 2000 until 2005. She played various roles including Zerlina in Don Giovanni
, Papagena in The Magic Flute
, Marzellina in Fidelio
, Yum Yum in The Mikado
, Adele in Die Fledermaus
, Ninetta in The Love for Three Oranges, The Plaintiff in Trial by Jury
and Clorinda in La Cenerentola
for which she won a Green Room Award
in 2003. She also performed Zerlina for New Zealand Opera
in 2005.
Dimity Shepherd and soprano Antoinette Halloran
. This show was first performed in The Famous Spiegeltent in Melbourne and later at the Adelaide Fringe Festival
. She then took the show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2006 with soprano Catherine Friel and mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Tate. They performed at the Spiegeltent and later at The Gilded Balloon
in 2007. They also performed at Lost Vagueness at the Hackney Empire and Glastonbury Festival
and Waterford Festival in Ireland.
and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. In this show she played the autoharp
(which has since become her trademark instrument) and was accompanied by the percussionist Ben Hendry. She was a regular member of the Spiegletent's "La Clique – a Sideshow Burlesque" in the Melbourne and Adelaide festivals and at the Edinburgh Fringe from 2005 to 2008.
; guests include Hamish & Andy
, Danny Bhoy
, Tim Minchin
, Eddie Perfect
, Julia Zemiro
and Rima the itty bitty Bellydancer. in 2007 it debuted at Edinburgh Fringe Festival at The Gilded Balloon. In 2009 she hosted the show alongside her butler Saxon McAllister (sideshow comedian Asher Treleaven) at The Assembly Rooms for an entire, sold-out season to rave reviews. Her guests included Jimmy Carr
, Simon Amstell
, Adam Hills
, Robin Ince
, Frisky and Mannish
, Dusty Limits
, Ginger & Black, Pete Firman
, Lady Carol, The Pajama Men
, Wil Anderson
, Craig Hill
and Tim Key
. She also performed on Frank Skinner
's Credit Crunch Cabaret, BBC Radio 4
's 4 at the Fringe and Nicholas Parsons
Happy Hour.
and the Out of Joint Theatre Company
directed by Max Stafford-Clark
which played in Sydney
and then went on to tour the UK in 2009.
music quiz show Spicks and Specks.
. Their first child, a daughter named Beatrice Pearl, was born on 8 May 2010.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singer, actress and cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
performer.
Career
McGregor, who was born in MelbourneMelbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, studied music at the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
before completing her Bachelor of Music at the Royal Northern College of Music
Royal Northern College of Music
The Royal Northern College of Music is a music school in Manchester, England. It is located on Oxford Road in Chorlton on Medlock, at the western edge of the campus of the University of Manchester and is one of four conservatories associated with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music...
in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, UK as a Peter Moores
Peter Moores
Sir Peter Moores CBE DL is a British businessman, art collector and philanthropist, a former chairman of the Liverpool-based Littlewoods football pools and retailing business in the United Kingdom....
Scholar. Her first lead role was playing Polly Peachum in Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE is a British theatre and opera director, author, physician, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and...
's The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
at Wilton's Music Hall
Wilton's Music Hall
Wilton's Music Hall is a grade II* listed building, built as a music hall and now a more general-purpose performance space in Grace's Alley, off Cable Street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets...
. She went on to present La Traviata – LIve from Paris for Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
alongside Howard Goodall
Howard Goodall
210px|thumb|Howard Goodall at St. John the Baptist Church in Devon, United Kingdom, May 2009Howard Lindsay Goodall CBE is a British composer of musicals, choral music and music for television...
in 2000. She was then lured back to Australia by Simone Young
Simone Young
Simone Margaret Young AM is an Australian conductor. She is music director of the Hamburg Philharmonic and general manager of the Hamburg State Opera...
to be one of her first Young Artists for Opera Australia
Opera Australia
Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...
. She then went on to become a principal soprano with Opera Australia
Opera Australia
Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...
from 2000 until 2005. She played various roles including Zerlina in Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, Papagena in The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
, Marzellina in Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
, Yum Yum in The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
, Adele in Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
, Ninetta in The Love for Three Oranges, The Plaintiff in Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
and Clorinda in La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
for which she won a Green Room Award
Green Room Awards
The Green Room Awards are peer awards which recognise excellence in cabaret, dance, drama, fringe theatre, musical theatre and opera in Melbourne....
in 2003. She also performed Zerlina for New Zealand Opera
The NBR New Zealand Opera
The NBR New Zealand Opera is New Zealand's largest professional opera company. The company was formed in 2000 when the Wellington City Opera and Auckland Opera companies decided to merge into one organization for financial reasons. The company produces two fully staged operas each year during an...
in 2005.
The Opera Burlesque
In 2005 McGregor created the show "The Opera Burlesque" to introduce more people to opera. She was joined by mezzo-sopranoMezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
Dimity Shepherd and soprano Antoinette Halloran
Antoinette Halloran
-Education:Antoinette Halloran is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts where she won the Mabel Kent Scholarship and completed a Diploma of Arts ; she has an Honours Degree in Music from the University of Melbourne. In 1993 she studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston.-Career:In...
. This show was first performed in The Famous Spiegeltent in Melbourne and later at the Adelaide Fringe Festival
Adelaide Fringe Festival
The Adelaide Fringe Festival is an arts festival held annually in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. The event is the Southern Hemisphere's largest arts event and the second-largest fringe festival in the world, second in size only to the Edinburgh Fringe...
. She then took the show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2006 with soprano Catherine Friel and mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Tate. They performed at the Spiegeltent and later at The Gilded Balloon
The Gilded Balloon
The Gilded Balloon is one of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe's best-known venues, established by Karen Koren in 1986 in Edinburgh's Cowgate. When a fire destroyed the original premises, Teviot Row House in Bristo Square became the Gilded Balloon's main venue....
in 2007. They also performed at Lost Vagueness at the Hackney Empire and Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...
and Waterford Festival in Ireland.
Cabaret
Her solo shows Midnight Lullabies and Evergreens also debuted at The Famous Spiegeltent as well as playing at The Butterfly Club in Melbourne and at AdelaideAdelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. In this show she played the autoharp
Autoharp
The autoharp is a musical string instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers, which, when depressed, mute all of the strings other than those that form the desired chord. Despite its name, the autoharp is not a harp at all, but a chorded zither. -History:There is debate over the...
(which has since become her trademark instrument) and was accompanied by the percussionist Ben Hendry. She was a regular member of the Spiegletent's "La Clique – a Sideshow Burlesque" in the Melbourne and Adelaide festivals and at the Edinburgh Fringe from 2005 to 2008.
Ali McGregor's Late-Nite Variety-Nite Night
Her variety show Ali McGregor's Late-Nite Variety-Nite Night has become a fixture at The Melbourne International Comedy FestivalMelbourne International Comedy Festival
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is the third-largest international comedy festival in the world and the largest cultural event in Australia. Established in 1987, it takes place annually in Melbourne over four weeks in April typically opening on or around April Fool's Day...
; guests include Hamish & Andy
Hamish & Andy
Hamish & Andy are an Australian comedy duo formed in 2003 by Hamish Blake and Andy Lee. They currently host the radio program The Hamish & Andy Show which airs in Australia on the Today Network....
, Danny Bhoy
Danny Bhoy
Danny Bhoy is an Indian-Scottish comedian who has performed in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada...
, Tim Minchin
Tim Minchin
Timothy David "Tim" Minchin is a British-Australian comedian, actor, and musician.Tim Minchin is best known for his musical comedy, which has featured in six CDs, three DVDs and a number of live comedy shows which he has performed internationally. He has also appeared on television in Australia,...
, Eddie Perfect
Eddie Perfect
Eddie Perfect is an Australian actor, comedian and musician who currently plays Mick Holland in Channel Ten's Offspring series. He won the 2009 Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work, the Victorian Premier's Literacy Award and the Green Room Award for his musical, Shane Warne The...
, Julia Zemiro
Julia Zemiro
Julia Zemiro is an Australian television presenter, radio host, actor, singer and comedian.- Early life :...
and Rima the itty bitty Bellydancer. in 2007 it debuted at Edinburgh Fringe Festival at The Gilded Balloon. In 2009 she hosted the show alongside her butler Saxon McAllister (sideshow comedian Asher Treleaven) at The Assembly Rooms for an entire, sold-out season to rave reviews. Her guests included Jimmy Carr
Jimmy Carr
James Anthony Patrick "Jimmy" Carr is an English-Irish comedian and humourist. He is known for his deadpan delivery and dark humour. He is also a writer, actor and presenter of radio and television....
, Simon Amstell
Simon Amstell
Simon Marc Amstell is a BAFTA nominated, award-winning English comedian, television presenter, screenwriter and actor, best known for his roles as former co-host of Popworld, former host of Never Mind the Buzzcocks and co-writer and star of the sitcom Grandma's House.-Early life:Amstell was born...
, Adam Hills
Adam Hills
Adam Hills is an Australian comedian and television presenter. He has appeared on Australian and British television and is best known for his role hosting the Australian ABC music trivia show Spicks and Specks...
, Robin Ince
Robin Ince
Robin Ince is an English stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He is best known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage .-Stand-up comedy:...
, Frisky and Mannish
Frisky and Mannish
Frisky & Mannish is a musical comedy cabaret double act based in London, England.Formed in March 2008 by writers and performers Laura Corcoran and Matthew Floyd Jones, the duo is best known for a style of pop culture parody that consists of the musical and dramatic rearrangement of well-known pop...
, Dusty Limits
Dusty Limits
Dusty Limits is a cabaret singer and comedian based in the United Kingdom, and one of the leading figures on the “new cabaret” scene.-Biography:Dusty Limits first appeared in cabaret in Brisbane, Australia, and made his European debut in 1999...
, Ginger & Black, Pete Firman
Pete Firman
Pete Firman is an English magician and television presenter.He has appeared in British television magic shows on Channel 4, Five, and Sky1. He is also the presenter of two gameshows on CBBC: Stake Out and Wait For It..!....
, Lady Carol, The Pajama Men
The Pajama Men
The Pajama Men are Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez, an American comedy duo from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They have won numerous awards including the prestigious Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2009 and Best Newcomer and Best of the Fest at The Sydney Comedy Festival in...
, Wil Anderson
Wil Anderson
William James "Wil" Anderson is an Australian comedian, writer, performing stand-up, and television and radio presenter and personality.- Early life :...
, Craig Hill
Craig Hill
Craig Hill is a Scottish comedian, TV presenter and actor known for his cheeky, irreverent and camp act. His act comprises stand-up, comic characterisations and improvisation styles with musical diva impersonations, notably a parody of Shirley Bassey singing the football chant ‘Who Ate All the...
and Tim Key
Tim Key
Tim Key is an English actor, comedy writer, and performance poet. In 2009, he was the winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award and was also nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality.-Edinburgh Fringe:...
. She also performed on Frank Skinner
Frank Skinner
Frank Skinner is a British writer, comedian and actor. He is best known for his television presenting, often alongside David Baddiel, with whom he also collaborated for the football song "Three Lions."He is a radio presenter on the Saturday morning slot on Absolute Radio.-Youth and early career...
's Credit Crunch Cabaret, BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
's 4 at the Fringe and Nicholas Parsons
Nicholas Parsons
Nicholas Parsons OBE is a British actor and radio and television presenter.-Early life:...
Happy Hour.
Acting work
As an actress, McGregor has appeared in various TV commercials in the UK for companies including Norwich Union, BBC, Eircell, Pontiac Grand Prix, Bliss Jewellery and BN Biscuits. She has also appeared as Polly Peachum/Grace Madden for the Sydney Theatre CompanySydney Theatre Company
The Sydney Theatre Company is one of Australia's best-known theatre companies operating from The Wharf Theatre near The Rocks area of Sydney, as well as the Sydney Theatre and the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre....
and the Out of Joint Theatre Company
Out of Joint theatre company
Out of Joint is a British and international touring theatre company based in London. It specialises in the commissioning and production of new writing, interspersed with occasional revivals and classic productions....
directed by Max Stafford-Clark
Max Stafford-Clark
Maxwell Robert Guthrie Stewart Stafford-Clark is an English Theatre Director.-Life and career:He went to school at Felsted and Riverdale Country School in New York City. He has worked as a theatre director since he left Trinity College, Dublin.His directing career began as associate director of...
which played in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
and then went on to tour the UK in 2009.
Other work
McGregor is a regular guest panellist on the ABCABC1
ABC1 was a United Kingdom based television channel from Disney using the branding of the Disney owned American network, ABC.The channel initially launched exclusively on the British digital terrestrial television platform Freeview on 27 September 2004. On 10 December 2004 it was launched on...
music quiz show Spicks and Specks.
Personal life
She is married to comedian Adam HillsAdam Hills
Adam Hills is an Australian comedian and television presenter. He has appeared on Australian and British television and is best known for his role hosting the Australian ABC music trivia show Spicks and Specks...
. Their first child, a daughter named Beatrice Pearl, was born on 8 May 2010.