John Copley (producer)

Last updated

John Copley

CBE
Born (1933-06-12) 12 June 1933 (age 89)
Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK
Occupation(s)Theatre and opera producer
Spouse(s)John Hugh Chadwyck-Healey
(civil partner 2006–2014)

John Michael Harold Copley CBE (born 12 June 1933), [1] is a British theatre and opera producer and director.

He was born in Birmingham to Ernest and Lilian (née Forbes) Copley, and attended King Edward VI Five Ways grammar school. After a brief career as an actor, he became stage manager at Sadler's Wells in 1953 and resident producer for The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, in 1972. He has produced most of the standard operatic repertoire for many opera houses and festivals in Europe, the United States, and Canada. He is also an accomplished pianist and singer. He has had a long association with Opera Australia, including the Australian premiere of Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa in 1974. [2] [3]

The filmed operas he has been associated with are:

For over 50 years Copley was the partner of John Hugh Chadwyck-Healey (1922–2014), grandson of Charles Chadwyck-Healey, 1st Baronet. In 2006, they contracted a civil partnership, which Copley described when he was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs programme on 3 January 2010. [4]

Copley was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to opera. [5]

In January 2018, during choir rehearsals for a revival of Copley's 1990 production of Rossini's Semiramide at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, [6] Copley coached the singers to show reactions to the appearance of Nino's ghost at the end of act 1. He suggested that he would "imagine the character naked" which prompted a complaint from a chorister. The Met's manager Peter Gelb then fired Copley, citing a different account of the complaint. Gelb's action has been described as a "witch hunt" and been widely criticised by other cast members, opera singers and managers. The American Guild of Musical Artists also considered Gelb's response to be inappropriate, and "believed the episode could have been resolved amicably". At the time of Copley's firing, the Met was investigating allegations of sexual misconduct made by four former students against former music director James Levine, details of whose private life were said to have been widely known; in these circumstances the company made sure in reporting on its decision regarding Copley to emphasise its "strong policies in place relating to workplace behaviour (placing) paramount importance on the welfare of its artists and staff". [7] [8] [9]

Footnotes

  1. "Birthday's today". The Telegraph. 12 June 2013. Archived from the original on 12 June 2013. Retrieved 10 June 2014. Mr John Copley, opera director, 80
  2. Jenůfa production details, ausstage.edu.au
  3. Paul Wingfield (1999). "Appendix – Janáček Premieres in Australia". Janácek Studies. Cambridge Composer Studies. Cambridge University Press. p. 167. ISBN   9780521573573.
  4. Presenter: Kirsty Young (3 January 2010). "John Copley". Desert Island Discs . London, UK. BBC. BBC Radio 2.
  5. "No. 60728". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2013. p. 8.
  6. "Met Opera Fires Stage Director, Citing 'Inappropriate Behavior'" by Michael Cooper, The New York Times , 31 January 2018
  7. Cooper, Michael (2 February 2018). "Union Questions Met's Firing of Director for Remark to Chorister". The New York Times.
  8. "Britain's leading Opera director John Copley sacked after making 'sexually inappropriate' joke about naked ghost" by Olivia Rudgard and Rozina Sabur, The Daily Telegraph , London, 4 February 2018
  9. "Opera world rallies round director John Copley sacked 'over joke'".

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leoš Janáček</span> Czech composer (1854–1928)

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic music, including Eastern European folk music, to create an original, modern musical style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metropolitan Opera</span> Opera company in New York City

The Metropolitan Opera is an American opera company based in New York City, currently resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager. As of 2018, the company's current music director is Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Sir Richard Armstrong is an English conductor. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar.

Welsh National Opera (WNO) is an opera company based in Cardiff, Wales; it gave its first performances in 1946. It began as a mainly amateur body and transformed into an all-professional ensemble by 1973. In its early days the company gave a single week's annual season in Cardiff, gradually extending its schedule to become an all-year-round operation, with its own salaried chorus and orchestra. It has been described by The New York Times as "one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe".

<i>Jenůfa</i> Opera by Leoš Janáček

Její pastorkyňa is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer, based on the play Její pastorkyňa by Gabriela Preissová. It was first performed at the National Theatre, Brno on 21 January 1904. Composed between 1896 and 1902, it is among the first operas written in prose.

<i>The Cunning Little Vixen</i> Opera by Leoš Janáček

The Cunning Little Vixen, is a three-act Czech-language opera by Leoš Janáček completed in 1923 to a libretto the composer himself adapted from a novella by Rudolf Těsnohlídek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisabeth Söderström</span> Swedish soprano (1927–2009)

Anna Elisabeth Söderström was a Swedish soprano who performed both opera and song, and was known as a leading interpreter of the works of Janáček, Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. She was particularly well known for her recordings of the lead soprano roles in the three Janáček operas Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová, and The Makropoulos Affair, all of which received Gramophone Awards. The Gramophone critic John Warrack described her portrayal of Káťa Kabanová as "establishing by an infinity of subtle touches and discreet, sensitive singing the picture of Káta as the richest and most human character in the drama".

Michael Chance CBE is an English countertenor and the founder and Artistic Director of The Grange Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Gelb</span>

Peter Gelb is an American arts administrator. Since August 2006, he has been General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

George Guest CBE FRCO was a Welsh organist and choral conductor.

William Campbell Rough Bryden was a Scottish stage and film director and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Pountney</span>

Sir David Willoughby Pountney is a British-Polish theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works. He has directed over ten world premières, including three by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies for whom he wrote the librettos of The Doctor of Myddfai, Mr Emmet Takes a Walk and Kommilitonen!

Holgate School was a state school in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England. It was closed in 2012, when it was merged with The Kingstone School to form Horizon Community College. After Holgate closed, it was demolished and the site was turned into a car park for Horizon Community College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Rosen</span>

Albert Rosen was an Austrian-born and Czech/Irish-naturalised conductor associated with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Wexford Festival, the National Theatre in Prague and J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň (Pilsen). He had a strong affinity with the works of Czech composers such as Smetana, Dvořák, Martinů and Janáček.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libuše Domanínská</span> Czech opera singer (1924–2021)

Libuše Domanínská was a Czech classical soprano who had a career in concert and opera from the 1940s through the 1970s. She was a leading member of the Brno National Theatre and later the Prague National Theatre where she sang a repertoire of 50 roles, especially as Janáček's Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen. She was instrumental in making the composer's operas known internationally, both in recordings and guest appearances.

Lothar Koenigs is a German conductor.

Robert Brubaker is an American operatic tenor. Born in Manheim, Pennsylvania, he is an alumnus of the Hartt College of Music. Robert Brubaker began his professional career as a baritone chorister with the New York City Opera. He left there 17 years later as a leading tenor, in La bohème as Rodolfo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roberta Alexander</span> American operatic soprano

Roberta Alexander is an American operatic soprano. She began her career as a lyric soprano in 1975 and spent the next three decades performing principal roles with opera houses internationally. Particularly celebrated for her performances of Mozart heroines, she was a leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera from 1983 to 1991. In addition to principal Mozart roles like Countess Almaviva, Elettra, Fiordiligi, and Donna Elvira, she had particular success with the parts of Mimì in Puccini's La bohème and the title role in Janáček's Jenůfa. More recently she has performed secondary character roles on stage, including performances at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in 2013, La Scala in 2014, and La Monnaie in 2015. She performed the Fifth Maid in Strauss's Elektra at the Met in 2016 and Curra in Verdi's La forza del destino at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2019.

Eilene Hannan AM was an Australian operatic soprano with an international reputation. She was particularly associated with opera sung in English, although she also sang in other languages. She was as well known as an actress as she was a singer. Her repertoire included Mozart's Pamina, Susanna, Cherubino, Dorabella and Zerlina; Mimì in Puccini's La bohème; Natasha Rostova in Prokofiev's War and Peace; Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin; Marzelline in Beethoven's Fidelio; Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande; Blanche in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites; the title roles in Janáček's Káťa Kabanová, Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen; the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier; Princess Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlos; Pat Nixon in Adams' Nixon in China; Wagner's Sieglinde and Venus; Salome in Massenet's Hérodiade; and Monteverdi's Poppea.

Amanda Jane Roocroft is an English operatic soprano, who in the course of her career has sung leading roles in the opera houses of Europe and North America.