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Guildford Opera Company
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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.
From Autumn 2003 to Spring 2009 GOC was led by Kevin John, a fine tenor and pianist with an impeccable professional background. The company continued to offer a varied concert programme - from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Messiah “sing-a-longs” - as well as an annual staged production, to attract new members.
The present Director of Music, Francis Griffin, is a graduate of the Royal College of Music and has a strong orchestral background with a passion for opera.  He has worked extensively with operatic societies and orchestras throughout England and Europe, notably White Horse Opera in Devizes, has conducted in the South Bank and Barbican Centres, and has collaborated particularly closely with local composer Joe St Johanser.
Following the critically acclaimed production of Faust in November 2009, Francis is looking forward to starting rehearsals for Lucia di Lammermoor on 28 April 2010.
GOC enjoys a lively social programme, often harnessed to fundraising activities which in recent years have helped provide supporting orchestras for its stage productions. The success of GOC’s 35th anniversary production of Die Fledermaus in 2006 was complemented by sell-out performances of A Masked Ball in 2007, testament to the company’s continued place in the fore-front of Guildford music-making.

To find out more about joining GOC, go to the membership page.
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NODA - National Operatic and Dramatic Association
About
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.
A scene from the 2008 production of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore
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