Started in 2017, The Opera Company produces innovative new productions of the greatest works in the repertoire and exciting new pieces that explore the frontiers of what opera can do. With a passionate belief in strong story telling as the foundation of great drama, The Opera Company combines beautiful visuals, subtle acting, detailed interpretation, and superlative singing, to bring music and stage together into a moving whole.
“★★★★★
I can’t imagine anything more happiness enhancing… a transporting little delight.”
““Precisely what Grimeborn does well, a serious, original idea done to the highest standards.””
“★★★★★
It was entirely magical, that bewitching freedom and fantasy and strangeness of French music, played and performed with palpable love, humour and huge enjoyment.
Modest forces, but great ambitions and a big, generous vision, producing an exhilaration out of all proportion to the means.”
”
“A Vixen of Vivid intensity. Guido Martin-Brandis’s new production... gets to the heart of the matter. Martin-Brandis provides a piano quintet arrangement so skilful that you forget about what’s missing.””
Our Mission
To stage operas to the highest standards on large and small stages, in beautiful productions which will delight, move and entertain our audiences. Opera serves two of our deepest yearnings: for gripping storytelling and for transcendent beauty. We will never forget this.
To explore the opportunities afforded by opera in intimate settings, condensing and distilling the greatest works of the repertoire to find the things that fringe opera can do that grand opera cannot reach.
To develop ongoing relationships with the finest young singing actors, helping them to reach their full potential on stage, and through this establish a company of regular collaborators.
To avoid the familiar clichées of contemporary operatic acting and direction, and focus instead on stagecraft that tells the story simply, movingly, and with the greatest sensitivity to the text and musical score that we can muster.
To assume our audiences are cleverer than we are - never to patronise, preach, or pander.
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SELECTED Productions
Castor et Pollux
Sheldonian Theatre Oxford + Stour Music Festival
Please click below for production photos, and more information.
Onegin and Tatiana
Arcola Theatre, Grimeborn Festival
Please click below for production photos, reviews, and more information.
The Cunning Little Vixen
Arcola Theatre, Grimeborn Festival
Please click below for production photos, reviews, and more information.
French Cantatas: The Theatre of the Salon
Heath Street Baptist Church, touring
Please click below for production photos, reviews, and more information.
Rameau’s Roots (& Mouret’s Madness)
Heath Street Baptist Church
Please click below for production photos, and more information.
Pygmalion / Nelée Et Myrthis
Theatre Basse Passiere, Normandy
Please click below for production photos, and more information.
Rusalka
Animated Short
Please click below to find out more and to watch this video opera.
Future plans
Future plans include French Cantatas, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Der Rosenkavalier. There are many other more and less famous operas that we would love to stage too, from Mozart to Schoeck. Get in contact if you are interested in helping us realise these projects.
Contact
To get in contact about joining a mailing list to hear about upcoming shows, to audition for the opera company, to become a friend or sponsor of The Opera Company, or for anything else, please contact us via the contact form.
Reviews for Previous Productions
“★★★★★
“I can’t imagine anything more happiness enhancing… this imaginative romp, was a transporting little delight.”
“The Opera Company’s Onegin & Tatiana, devised by Guido Martin-Brandis, was a quietly powerful rhapsody on Tchaikovsky, boiled down to the central couple, supplemented with eclectic songs by Strauss, Debussy, Copland and more. It sounds random, but wasn’t: In fact, precisely what Grimeborn does well, a serious, original idea done to the highest standards. With two very strong performances by Isolde Roxby and Nick Dwyer, energetic and varied pianism by Richard Hall, and a contemplative narration by Joan Plunkett, this was strong on poetically nostalgic atmosphere, and confronted the emotional storms and sheer trickiness of love with imaginative magic.”
“ ****
Rarely has the final confrontation been so searing for both sides – the point in the action where the accumulation of psychological commentary beforehand really came into its explanatory own.
A subtle and shrewd exploration of one of the most intriguingly adult and mature opera plots that there is.
An absorbing and very stimulating evening.”
“Guido Martin-Brandis took a simple and sincere approach to the drama and relationships... economically and eloquently traced.
Joyful and touching.”
“An absorbing and effective introduction to one of the great romantic operas and the power of all four performances, enhanced by being delivered in such an intimate setting, is more than enough to make this another Grimeborn success.”
“A brilliant introduction to Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
9/10”
“A Vixen with vivid intensity
Guido Martin-Brandis’s new production... gets to the heart of the matter. Martin-Brandis provides a piano quintet arrangement so skilful that you forget about what’s missing.”
“ ****
The Cunning Little Vixen is an opera favourite but no less fascinating for that, especially in this innovative and engaging production... Another feather in the cap for the Arcola’s Grimeborn Festival, giving opportunities to see opera anew.”
“Martin-Brandis and Till, playing to the strengths of intimacy, and a piano quintet arrangement, bring out enough colour and freshness to make this two hours of absolute delight.
All in all, as fresh as it was unexpected, it has definitely left this viewer with a taste for more of what Grimeborn has to offer.”
“This innovative production at the Arcola Theatre’s annual Grimeborn Opera Festival delves into Leoš Janáček’s 1920s work with energy and imagination... A perfect and approachable way to discover this gem of early 20th century opera for the first time.
In this scaled-down new arrangement for piano quintet, Janáček’s haunting, textured melodies swirl and glimmer like soft light dappling a forest floor.”