Birmingham Opera Company

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Birmingham Opera Company is a professional opera company based in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England, that specialises in innovative and avant-garde productions^[1]^[2]^[3] 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 town Halls in the Birmingham area, unusual venues have included a dilapidated warehouse on the edge of a local housing estate, a large tent beside the Aston Villa Football Club grounds, and an old car parts factory close by.^[4]

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 Votzeck in a derelict warehouse in Ladywood.^[5] The company won a South Bank Show Award for Best Opera for it's production of Beethoven's Fidelio (2002). The South Bank Show have 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 it's 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.

After two decades, Graham Vick remains Artistic Director.

Previous new productions include:

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 Votzeck, 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, Janacek 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