 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2024) |
New Chamber Opera is a professional opera company located in Oxford, United Kingdom. [1] It specialises in the fields of chamber opera and music theatre, and produces rarely performed works from the Baroque era to the present. It is a member of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum. New Chamber Opera has received financial support from the Arts Council of Great Britain and The National Lottery.
New Chamber Opera was founded in 1990 by Michael Burden and Gary Cooper. [2] Burden serves as its director. The company has staged more than thirty productions, including Handel's Orlando , Serse and Amadigi di Gaula , Cimarosa's The Secret Marriage and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Il Rè pastore. [3] The company has an associated Baroque orchestra, The Band of Instruments.
Appearances outside Oxford have included concerts and productions at the Tudeley and Southwark Festivals, several performances at London's South Bank Centre, and at the National Gallery. With its contemporary music ensemble Phoenix, it has performed several pieces of twentieth-century music theatre including Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King, Vessalii Icones, Notre Dames des Fleurs, and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot, and Harrison Birtwistle's Down by the Greenwood Side.
New Chamber Opera has frequently recovered and performed lesser known works, particularly those of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. To this end its members have prepared new editions and commissioned new translations. In 2008 and 2009, New Chamber Opera took part in a national fundraising campaign led by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, to prevent the only known manuscript of the English version of Francesco Cavalli's opera, Erismena , from being exported to the United States. [4] New Chamber Opera subsequently staged the opera using a new edition by Michael Burden, and toured the production to the Opera at West Green House.
Its music director is Steven Devine, and its singing patron is James Bowman.
The focus of the company's professional activities is the Summer Opera, an annual garden staging in the Warden's Garden at New College, and accompanied by The Band of Instruments. The garden, a natural theatrical space surrounded by stone walls with an 18th-century stone summer house, is located between Queen's Lane and All Souls College.
The Band of Instruments, founded by Michael Burden and Gary Cooper in 1995, first performed with the Choir of New College, Oxford. The Band's leader is Caroline Balding. The Band occasionally performs as an independent ensemble, and always accompanies the Summer Opera.
The Band of Instruments have also recorded the cycle of the four seasons concertos by the Italian composer Giovanni Antonio Guido, Scherzi armonici sopra le quattro stagioni dell’anno (‘Harmonics above the four seasons of the year’). Guido, who was serving as maître de la musique for the Duke of Orléans, had been living and working in France from about 1703. KLassik.com commented that ‘Caroline Balding, Matthew Truscott and Sarah Moffatt play perfectly synchronized in timbre and expression’, while CD Classico Italy described it as ‘a fine and authentic execution by the violinist Caroline Balding’.
New Chamber Opera's recordings have mostly appeared on the Gaudeamus label, with Academy Sound and Vision. These include music by Purcell from the Gresham Manuscript, and Music for Ceremonial Oxford. It has frequently recorded French Baroque music, recording stage music from Charpentier's output, and the only complete recording of Rameau's cantatas.
The company also operates the New Chamber Opera Studio, [5] which stages two student productions annually and a recital series of twenty-four concerts in which they take part. Recent productions have included Orpheus in the Underworld, by Offenbach, in 2012 [6] and La Calisto, by Francesco Cavalli, in 2014 [7]
In 2016, the company gave the world premiere of "Rothschild's Violin" by Marco Galvani in the antechapel of Oxford's New College. [8]
The members of New Chamber Opera Studio also prepare or organise the live content of the University's visiting chairs of opera. The visiting professors have included Thomas Allen, Graham Vick, John Eliot Gardiner, Renée Fleming, Jane Glover, and Katie Mitchell.
New Chamber Opera also part-funds two Repetiteur Scholarships every three years to St Catherine's College, Oxford, or to a scholar from another college. The senior scholar serves as the Studio's director. The award has recently been held by:
This list of productions follows the information in the company's website. [9]
René Jacobs is a Belgian musician. He came to fame as a countertenor, but later in his career he became known as a conductor of baroque and classical opera.
Carolyn Watkinson is an English mezzo-soprano, specialising in baroque music. Her voice is alternately characterized as mezzo-soprano and contralto.
Dame Janet Abbott Baker is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.
English Touring Opera (ETO) is an opera company in the United Kingdom founded in 1979 under the name Opera 80 by the then-existing Arts Council of Great Britain. In 1992 the company changed to its present name. Today it is sponsored in part by Arts Council England as well as receiving support from individual and corporate sponsors, plus trusts and foundations. The company aims to bring high quality opera to areas of England that would not otherwise have ready access to such productions. From 2002 its director was James Conway, who came from the Opera Theatre of Ireland. It was announced in January 2022 that he was stepping down, and his successor was revealed in March 2022 as Robin Norton-Hale.
Ann Murray, is an Irish mezzo-soprano.
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera Les Arts florissants by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra of period instruments and a small vocal ensemble. Current notable members include soprano Danielle de Niese and tenor Paul Agnew, who has served as assistant conductor since 2007. Jonathan Cohen is also on the conducting staff; Christie remains the organization's artistic director.
Melinda O'Neal is a conductor of choral and choral-orchestral music, professor emerita of music, and author.
Christian Sturm is a German tenor.
Dame Sarah Patricia Connolly is an English mezzo-soprano. Although best known for her baroque and classical roles, Connolly has a wide-ranging repertoire which has included works by Wagner as well as various 20th-century composers. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to music.
Gotham Chamber Opera was a professional opera company located in New York City. The company was founded in 2000 under the name of the Henry Street Chamber Opera by Artistic Director Neal Goren and specialized in producing rarely performed chamber operas from the Baroque era to the present. In 2003, it changed its name to the Gotham Chamber Opera (GCO) after incorporating as an independent 501(c)(3) organization. Its Executive Director was Edward Barnes, who took over from David Bennett. It closed in 2015.
Norma Burrowes is an Irish coloratura soprano, particularly associated with Handel and Mozart roles.
Martin Pearlman is an American conductor, harpsichordist, composer, and early music specialist. He founded the first permanent Baroque orchestra in North America with Boston Baroque in 1973–74. Many of its original players went on to play in or direct other ensembles in what became a growing field in the American music scene. He later founded the chorus of that ensemble and has been the music director of Boston Baroque from its inception up to the present day.
Opera Fuoco is a French lyrical ensemble conducted by David Stern.
Christopher Moulds is an English conductor of classical and baroque operas.
Pamela Dellal is an American mezzo-soprano in opera and concert, a musicologist and academic teacher. She has performed classical music from the medieval Hildegard von Bingen to contemporary. She is on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory, Brandeis University, and the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She has made English traslations of all german texts that Johann Sebastian Bach set to music.
Patricia Johnson is an English operatic mezzo-soprano. She made an international career and is known for her dramatic voice and her stage presence. She appeared in leading roles of the repertory, such as Carmen and Eboli, and created new roles, such as the Baronin Grünwiesel in Henze's Der junge Lord, and the Princess in Nicolas Nabokov's Love's Labour's Lost.
Jill Feldman is an American soprano who has acquired an international reputation for her interpretation of medieval, baroque and classical repertoires.
Vincent Boussard is a French opera and theatre director. First a specialist for early opera, he became known for his versions of romantic operas, sometimes in international collaboration. His staging of Massenet's Manon was presented at the Vilnius National Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the Korea National Opera. His production of Bellini's I puritani was shown at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie and the Oper Frankfurt.
Christian Curnyn is a British conductor, harpsichordist and baroque music specialist.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
