Birmingham Opera Company
Encyclopedia
Birmingham Opera Company is a professional opera
company based in the Jewellery Quarter
in Birmingham
, England
, that specialises in innovative and avant-garde productions of the operatic repertoire, often in unusual venues.
The company was founded by leading international opera director Graham Vick
and conductor Simon Halsey
as the City of Birmingham Touring Opera in 1987, acquiring its current name in 2001.
Besides small local venues such as community centres and public spaces in the Birmingham area, unusual venues have included a dilapidated warehouse on the edge of a local housing estate, a large tent beside Villa Park
, the Aston Villa Football Club grounds, and an old car parts factory close by.
The company won the Prudential Award for Opera in 1991 for its first production of Wagner
's mammoth Ring Cycle
, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Music for its 2001 production of Berg
's Wozzeck
in a derelict warehouse in Ladywood
.
The company won a South Bank Show Award for Best Opera for its production of Beethoven's Fidelio
(2002). The South Bank Show also made a programme on the company which was broadcast on ITV. Fidelio was also broadcast live on BBC4. Birmingham Opera Company has recently been nominated for the RPS Award for Audience Development for its production of Verdi's La Traviata
in 2007 in which 300 local participants performed to an audience of almost 10,000 people at the National Indoor Arena
.
Birmingham Opera Company has a long and successful relationship with BBC. In 2011, a film version of Birmingham Opera Company was broadcast alongside an hour long documentary "Verdi; The Director's Cut" on Graham Vick's work abroad and in Birmingham. Othello also was also selected for "The Best of European Opera" which was broadcast on Christmas Day 2010 and to be broadcast across the European Union in 2011.
Birmingham have commissioned a opera from composer Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton
After two decades, Graham Vick
remains Artistic Director.
The Wedding Words and music by Igor Stravinsky
Performed at AE Harris Buildings in the Jewellery Quarter Birmingham
April -September 2010
A Man of Feeling by Stephen Oliver
Graham Vick directed a new production of Stephen Oliver's A Man of Feeling staged in Birmingham in venues as varied as The Custard Factory, The Yardbird and The CBSO Centre and for the Stephen Oliver 60th Birthday Anniversary at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival at Norwich Playhouse.
December 2009
Othello Verdi
At Argyle Works, Little Barr Street, Birmingham
The UK's first Black Othello, a cast of hundreds of volunteers alongside international artists drawing the BBC to make a documentary film of Graham Vick's work in Birmingham and abroad and to make a BBC film version for broadcast.
August 2008
"King Idomeneo" Mozart
Performed at the disused Sherborne Rubber Company
March 2007
He Had It Coming, Mozart.
Performed at the disused The Old Municipal Bank, Broad Street Birmingham.
2006 Ariadne Sells Out
The Prologue from Richard Strauss’s Ariadne on Naxos
Presented in The Que Club/Central Methodist Hall, Corporation Street Birmingham in November 2006.
April 2005 Ulysses Comes Home, Monteverdi.
In a disused ice rink, Birmingham.
August 2004 Women Beware, Monteverdi.
Performed on and beside the Fazeley Canal beneath a railway arch on the approach to Snow Hill Station, Birmingham.
July 2004 Curlew River, Benjamin Britten.
With Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall and broadcast on BBC4 and Radio 3 and CBSO Centre, Birmingham
June 2004 Rites of Spring, Monteverdi.
Al fresco performances outside St Philip’s Cathedral, beside the canal at Symphony Hall and in the Japanese Garden in Brindley Place.
January 2004 Mortal Combat, Monteverdi.
After shopping hours in the new Bullring shopping centre. Performed outside Debenhams for an audience made up of people who had specifically come for the performance and many passers by who had been walking to the station to make their way home.
April/May 2003 Candide, Leonard Bernstein.
The Chuckworks, an abandoned car parts factory, sadly now demolished in Digbeth, Birmingham.
March 2002
Fidelio, Beethoven.
Performed in a big top in Aston Park beside Aston Villa FC.
The South Bank Show made a documentary about the making of Fidelio and BBC4 broadcast the last performance live.
February-
March 2001 Wozzeck, Berg.
Performed in a semi-derelict warehouse on the edge of the Ladywood estate in Birmingham.
In the newly restored Aircraft Hangar No 2, Speke, Liverpool.
Sports Centre, Sheffield.
Freixo Electricity Sub Station, Porto, Portugal as part of the Capital of Culture celebrations.
CBTO
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...
company based in the Jewellery Quarter
Jewellery Quarter
The Jewellery Quarter is an area of Birmingham City Centre, England, situated in the south of the Hockley area. It is covered by the Ladywood district. There is a population of around 3,000 people in a area....
in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, that specialises in innovative and avant-garde productions of the operatic repertoire, often in unusual venues.
The company was founded by leading international opera director Graham Vick
Graham Vick
Graham Vick CBE is an English opera director. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester....
and conductor Simon Halsey
Simon Halsey
Simon Halsey is an English choral conductor.Born in London, Halsey sang in the choirs of both New College, Oxford and King's College, Cambridge. He studied conducting at the Royal College of Music in London....
as the City of Birmingham Touring Opera in 1987, acquiring its current name in 2001.
Besides small local venues such as community centres and public spaces in the Birmingham area, unusual venues have included a dilapidated warehouse on the edge of a local housing estate, a large tent beside Villa Park
Villa Park
Villa Park may mean:United Kingdom* Villa Park, an association football stadium in Birmingham, EnglandUnited States* Villa Park, California, a small city in Orange County* Villa Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago in DuPage County...
, the Aston Villa Football Club grounds, and an old car parts factory close by.
The company won the Prudential Award for Opera in 1991 for its first production of Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's mammoth Ring Cycle
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Music for its 2001 production of Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
's Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
in a derelict warehouse in Ladywood
Ladywood
Ladywood is an inner-city area in Birmingham, England. It is a council constituency, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the smaller Ladywood ward and the wards of Aston, Nechells and Soho. In June 2004, Birmingham City Council conducted a city-wide "Ward Boundary...
.
The company won a South Bank Show Award for Best Opera for its production of Beethoven's 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...
(2002). The South Bank Show also made a programme on the company which was broadcast on ITV. Fidelio was also broadcast live on BBC4. Birmingham Opera Company has recently been nominated for the RPS Award for Audience Development for its production of Verdi's La Traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
in 2007 in which 300 local participants performed to an audience of almost 10,000 people at the National Indoor Arena
National Indoor Arena
The National Indoor Arena is a large indoor arena and is owned by the NEC Group. It is situated in central Birmingham, England and was opened in 1991, as the largest indoor arena at the time in the UK...
.
Birmingham Opera Company has a long and successful relationship with BBC. In 2011, a film version of Birmingham Opera Company was broadcast alongside an hour long documentary "Verdi; The Director's Cut" on Graham Vick's work abroad and in Birmingham. Othello also was also selected for "The Best of European Opera" which was broadcast on Christmas Day 2010 and to be broadcast across the European Union in 2011.
Birmingham have commissioned a opera from composer Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton
After two decades, Graham Vick
Graham Vick
Graham Vick CBE is an English opera director. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester....
remains Artistic Director.
Previous productions
November 2010The Wedding Words and music by Igor Stravinsky
Performed at AE Harris Buildings in the Jewellery Quarter Birmingham
April -September 2010
A Man of Feeling by Stephen Oliver
Graham Vick directed a new production of Stephen Oliver's A Man of Feeling staged in Birmingham in venues as varied as The Custard Factory, The Yardbird and The CBSO Centre and for the Stephen Oliver 60th Birthday Anniversary at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival at Norwich Playhouse.
December 2009
Othello Verdi
At Argyle Works, Little Barr Street, Birmingham
The UK's first Black Othello, a cast of hundreds of volunteers alongside international artists drawing the BBC to make a documentary film of Graham Vick's work in Birmingham and abroad and to make a BBC film version for broadcast.
August 2008
"King Idomeneo" Mozart
Performed at the disused Sherborne Rubber Company
March 2007
He Had It Coming, Mozart.
Performed at the disused The Old Municipal Bank, Broad Street Birmingham.
2006 Ariadne Sells Out
The Prologue from Richard Strauss’s Ariadne on Naxos
Presented in The Que Club/Central Methodist Hall, Corporation Street Birmingham in November 2006.
April 2005 Ulysses Comes Home, Monteverdi.
In a disused ice rink, Birmingham.
August 2004 Women Beware, Monteverdi.
Performed on and beside the Fazeley Canal beneath a railway arch on the approach to Snow Hill Station, Birmingham.
July 2004 Curlew River, Benjamin Britten.
With Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall and broadcast on BBC4 and Radio 3 and CBSO Centre, Birmingham
June 2004 Rites of Spring, Monteverdi.
Al fresco performances outside St Philip’s Cathedral, beside the canal at Symphony Hall and in the Japanese Garden in Brindley Place.
January 2004 Mortal Combat, Monteverdi.
After shopping hours in the new Bullring shopping centre. Performed outside Debenhams for an audience made up of people who had specifically come for the performance and many passers by who had been walking to the station to make their way home.
April/May 2003 Candide, Leonard Bernstein.
The Chuckworks, an abandoned car parts factory, sadly now demolished in Digbeth, Birmingham.
March 2002
Fidelio, Beethoven.
Performed in a big top in Aston Park beside Aston Villa FC.
The South Bank Show made a documentary about the making of Fidelio and BBC4 broadcast the last performance live.
February-
March 2001 Wozzeck, Berg.
Performed in a semi-derelict warehouse on the edge of the Ladywood estate in Birmingham.
In the newly restored Aircraft Hangar No 2, Speke, Liverpool.
Sports Centre, Sheffield.
Freixo Electricity Sub Station, Porto, Portugal as part of the Capital of Culture celebrations.
CBTO
- 2000 Pelléas and Mélisande, Debussy
- 1999 The Two Widows, Smetana
- 1998 The Adventures of Vixen Sharp Ears, Janáček
- 1997 The Church Parables, Britten
- 1997 Macbeth, Verdi
- 1996 Falstaff, Verdi
- 1995 Les Boréades, Rameau
- 1994 Faust, Gounod
- 1994 Silas Marner, Howard Goodall
- 1993 Beauty & the Beast, Stephen Oliver
- 1993 Ghanashyam, Ravi Shankar
- 1992 La bohème, Puccini
- 1992 Zaide, Mozart
- 1991 Peace, Carl Davis
- 1990 The Ring Saga, Wagner
- 1988 The Magic Flute, Mozart
- 1987 Eis Thanaton, John Tavener
- 1987 La bohème, Puccini