Guildford
Opera Company
The company inherited in 1991 by Peter
White, then Director of Music at Guildford's Royal Grammar School, was
at its peak, performing regularly at Guildford's Civic Hall with a
range of exceptional soloists, many working professionally with
companies like ENO, Sadlers Wells and Scottish National Opera. It also
had its own company dancers under choreographer Georgina Durelle and a
talented back-stage crew. Its achievements in this period
were twice recognised with NODA awards - in 1992 for Die
Fledermaus and 1996 for I Pagliacci - this in addition to
its programme for Merrie England (1975) being on permanent display in
the Enthoven Theatre Collection at the Victoria and Albert museum.
In 1997 the Electric Theatre opened and GOC
staged its first production there, Dido and Aeneas, under the late
Chris Findlay's direction. From then until the closure of the Civic
Hall in 2004 the company alternated between these contrasting venues,
augmenting its staged productions with concert programmes at venues
including the Marble Hall at Clandon Park, and Chilworth Friary, as
well as touring local villages.
The millennium found GOC still ready and
willing to take on new challenges, like the 20th Century Opera Season
of 2002, when MD Oliver Parker led the company in Stuart Barker's bold
production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress alongside Bernstein's
Trouble in Tahiti and Walton's The Bear, both critically acclaimed by
The Times.
Since 2003 GOC has been led by Kevin John,
a fine tenor and pianist with an impeccable professional background.
The company continues to offer a varied concert programme -
from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Messiah “sing-a-longs”
- as well as an annual staged production, and to attract new
members, occasionally from the most surprising quarters! (No, you'll
have to ask!). It enjoys a lively social programme, which it harnessed
to it’s fundraising activities in 2006 to help provide a
small orchestra for Die Fledermaus. The success of that production is a
testament to the company’s continued place in the fore-front
of Guildford music-making.
Plenty
of reason to be raising a toast: to “King
Champagne” and the next 35 years!
To
find out more about joining GOC, go to the membership page.
* NODA -
National Operatic and Dramatic Association
* NODA -
About
Our
‘Past Productions’ display board in the Foyer of
the Electric Theatre
Click
on thumbnail image above for full size image
Guildford
Opera Company began
life in 1968 performing Gilbert and Sullivan as the Emmanuel Players
before formal constitution, first as Guildford Amateur Operatic Society
in 1971 and then as Guildford Opera Company (GOC) in 1975.
Over the next 20 years its reputation for
excellence and innovation was established under Musical Director John
Avery, working with a variety of talented producer/directors. These
included Chris Bedloe with whom he adapted the music and libretto for
GOC's first full-scale opera, Carmen, in 1975, Mavis Tanner,
whose production of The Mikado in 1980 was GOC's first “sell-out”
production, and Paul Frecknall who helped John achieve a long-cherished
ambition to mount a Wagner opera The Flying Dutchman in his penultimate
year as MD.
GOC's success during this period was due in
no small part to the Women's Royal Auxiliary Corp Staff Band with whom
it joined forces in 1973, for the annual Festival of Light Music
concerts in aid of the Army Benevolent fund, an association which
continued until the Gulf War and subsequent defence cuts led to
disbandment in the early 1990s.
The
Publicity team with the ‘Sold out’ display board
before our last production, Verdi’s ‘A Masked
Ball’