OperaUpClose
“OperaUpClose is an ambitious, Olivier Award-winning opera company, producing innovatively staged, unintimidating, affordable and – crucially – high quality English chamber re-imaginings of well-known works and premieres of new operas. We are an associate artist at The Old Church, an associate company of Soho Theatre and co-produce with the Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Tricycle Theatre, Kings Place and Malmö Opera (Sweden). We tour across the UK as well as some international engagements.
Since being founded in 2009 OperaUpClose has produced twenty-nine operas: six world premieres of contemporary operas and twenty-three classic operas in newly commissioned chamber orchestrations and English librettos. For a list of all of our previous productions please see our PAST PRODUCTIONS page. Our production of La Bohème won the 2011 Olivier Award for Best Opera Production and the WhatsOnStage.com Award for Best Off-West End production; and our world premiere of The Blank Canvas won the 2015 Off West End Award for Best Opera.”
Robin Norton-Hale
“Robin is a writer and director for opera and theatre. She was one of the three founders of OperaUpClose in 2009. Her directing credits for the company, all in her own new English translations, are Carmen (Soho Theatre & UK tour), La Traviata (Tricycle Theatre, Soho Theatre & UK tour), La Bohème (Soho Theatre, Charing Cross Theatre, Cock Tavern Theatre & UK tour), Don Giovanni (Soho Theatre & UK tour) and The Barber of Seville (King’s Head Theatre & UK tour). She also wrote the English librettos for OperaUpClose’s Eugene Onegin and The Marriage of Figaro and has directed La Voix Humaine (Kings Place) and the UK premiere of Young Wife for the company. Other opera directing credits include a double bill of her own new version of Let’s Make an Opera and Britten’s The Little Sweep (Malmö Opera), La Traviata (Malmö Opera, Swedish tour) and Ariodante (revival director English Touring Opera). Theatre directing includes Redefining Juliet (Barbican), Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (King’s Head Theatre), the world premiere of Glyn Maxwell’s Masters, Are You Mad? (Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre), The Taming of the Shrew (Southwark Playhouse), Glyn Maxwell’s Best Man Speech (UK tour) and Pick ‘n’ Myths (devised for Lyric Theatre Hammersmith and UK tour). Prior to directing, Robin read English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford University and trained as a journalist before working in press and marketing for English Touring Opera. She is a 2013/14 Clore Leadership Fellow and is a trustee of Chats Palace in East London.”
For more information about OperaUpClose, click here.
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