Graham Vick CBE

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born Birkenhead

Birkenhead

Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

, 30 December 1953
) is an English

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...

 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...

 director. He studied 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...

, Manchester.

At age 24, Vick directed a production of Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst

Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....

's Savitri

Savitri (opera)

Sāvitri is a chamber opera in one act by Gustav Holst, his Opus 25, with the libretto by Holst himself. The story is based on the episode of Savitri and Satyavan from the Mahābhārata, which was also included in Specimens of Old Indian Poetry and Idylls from the Sanskrit...

for Scottish Opera

Scottish Opera

Scottish Opera is the national opera company of Scotland, and one of the five national performing arts companies funded by the Scottish Government...

, and became the company's director of productions in 1984. In 1987, he founded the Birmingham Opera Company

Birmingham Opera Company

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....

 and remains its artistic director. From 1994 to 2000, Vick was director of productions at Glyndebourne Opera.

Vick directs opera throughout Europe and America where he is one of the most prominent and prolific of contemporary opera directors.

Vick was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours.

Recordings

Many of Vick's productions can be seen on DVD including Lulu

Lulu (opera)

Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...

 (Glyndebourne, 2004) Warner Music Vision B000189L10, and Falstaff

Falstaff (opera)

Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...

 (Covent Garden, 2001) Opus Arte B00005NUP8.

Sources

• Vick, Graham by Barry Millington, in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  The New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
  
  ', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7
• Jasper Rees, 'La traviata: A Nuremberg-style display of synchronised chair-swivelling', The Daily Telegraph
  The Daily Telegraph
  The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
  
  , October 25, 2007 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/10/25/bmvick125.xml
• Edward Rothstein, 'In New Hall, Echoes of Glyndebourne Old', New York Times, June 4, 1994 http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/music/story/505483530D9463DF86257373000E9D7C?OpenDocument
• Martin Bernheimer, 'Living Dangerously' (Profile of Graham Vick), Opera News
  Opera News
  Opera News is an American classical music magazine. It has been published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a non-profit organization located at Lincoln Center which was founded to support the Metropolitan Opera of New York City...
  
  , June 2000 http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/_archive/600/grahamvick.600.html
• Hamilton, Mary. (1990). A-Z of Opera. New York, Oxford, Sydney: Facts On File. p. 212. ISBN 0-8160-2340-9.
• Sadie, Stanley and John Tyrrell. (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Vol. 26, p. 530. ISBN 0-333-60800-3.
• Warrack, John and Ewan West. (1996 3rd ed.). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 538. ISBN 0-19-280028-0.