New Chamber Opera

New Chamber Opera is a professional opera company located in Oxford, United Kingdom.[1] It specialises in the fields of chamber opera and music theatre, and produces rarely performed works from the Baroque era to the present. It is a member of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum. New Chamber Opera has received financial support from the Arts Council of Great Britain and The National Lottery.

History

New Chamber Opera was founded in 1990 by Michael Burden and Gary Cooper.[2] Burden serves as its director. The company has staged more than thirty productions, including Handel's Orlando, Serse and Amadigi di Gaula, Cimarosa's The Secret Marriage and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Il Rè pastore.[3] The company has an associated Baroque orchestra, The Band of Instruments.

Appearances outside Oxford have included concerts and productions at the Tudeley and Southwark Festivals, several performances at London's South Bank Centre, and at the National Gallery. With its contemporary music ensemble Phoenix, it has performed several pieces of twentieth-century music theatre including Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King, Vessalii Icones, Notre Dames des Fleurs, and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot, and Harrison Birtwistle's Down by the Greenwood Side.

New Chamber Opera has frequently recovered and performed lesser known works, particularly those of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. To this end its members have prepared new editions and commissioned new translations. In 2008 and 2009, New Chamber Opera took part in a national fundraising campaign led by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, to prevent the only known manuscript of the English version of Francesco Cavalli's opera, Erismena, from being exported to the United States.[4] New Chamber Opera subsequently staged the opera using a new edition by Michael Burden, and toured the production to the Opera at West Green House.

Its music director is Steven Devine, and its singing patron is James Bowman.

Activities
The cast of Paisiello's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia", 2017

The focus of the company's professional activities is the Summer Opera, an annual garden staging in the Warden's Garden at New College. The garden, a natural theatrical space surrounded by stone walls with an 18th-century stone summer house, is located between Queen's Lane and All Souls College.

The Band of Instruments, founded by Michael Burden and Gary Cooper in 1995, first performed with the Choir of New College, Oxford. In 2014 the Band's musical director is Roger Hamilton, and its leader is Caroline Balding.

Recordings

New Chamber Opera's recordings have mostly appeared on the Gaudeamus label, with Academy Sound and Vision. These include music by Purcell from the Gresham Manuscript, and Music for Ceremonial Oxford. It has frequently recorded French Baroque music, recording stage music from Charpentier's output, and the only complete recording of Rameau's cantatas.

The Band of Instruments have also recorded the cycle of the four seasons concertos by the Italian composer Giovanni Antonio Guido, Scherzi armonici sopra le quattro stagioni dell’anno (‘Harmonics above the four seasons of the year’). Guido, who was serving as maître de la musique for the Duke of Orléans, had been living and working in France from about 1703. KLassik.com commented that ‘Caroline Balding, Matthew Truscott and Sarah Moffatt play perfectly synchronized in timbre and expression’, while CD Classico Italy described it as ‘a fine and authentic execution by the violinist Caroline Balding’.

New Chamber Opera Studio

The company also operates the New Chamber Opera Studio,[5] which stages two student productions annually and a recital series of twenty-four concerts in which they take part. Recent productions have included Orpheus in the Underworld, by Offenbach, in 2012[6] and La Calisto, by Francesco Cavalli, in 2014[7]

In 2016, the company gave the world premiere of "Rothschild's Violin" by Marco Galvani in the antechapel of Oxford's New College.[8]

The members of New Chamber Opera Studio also prepare or organise the live content of the University's visiting chairs of opera. The visiting professors have included Thomas Allen, Graham Vick, John Eliot Gardiner, Renée Fleming, Jane Glover, and Katie Mitchell.

New Chamber Opera also part-funds two Repetiteur Scholarships every three years to St Catherine's College, Oxford. The award has recently been held by:

Productions

This list of productions follows the information in the company's website.[9]

New Chamber Opera

New Chamber Opera Studio

Recordings
  • Purcell Anthems, music by Henry Purcell, 1995, CRD with the Choir of New College, Oxford
  • The Music to Le mariage forcé and Les Fous divertissants, music by Marc-Antione Charpentier, 1996, ASV
  • Songs and Music from the Gresham Autograph, music by Henry Purcell, 1999, ASV
  • Rameau: Collected Cantatas, music by Jean-Philippe Rameau, 1999, ASV CDGAU632 (reviewed in the New York Times)
  • Music from Ceremonial Oxford, music by Richard Goodson, Matthew Locke, Sampson Eastwick, John Blow, Henry Aldrich, 2001, ASV CDGAU222[11]
  • Andromède and Le ballet de Polieucte, music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, 2002, ASV CDGAU303[12]
  • Vivaldi Cantatas: music by Antonio Vivaldi, 2004, ASV CDGAU339
  • Guido The Four Seasons: music by Giovanni Antonio Guido, 2013, Divine Art B00AQZU9XW

References
  1. George Henry Hubert Lascelles Earl of Harewood (2003). Opera. Rolls House Publishing Company. p. 1318.
  2. Gramophone. 74, Issues 877–879. C. Mackenzie. 1996. p. 13.
  3. "Music in Oxford ". Peter Schofield, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Reviewed: 19 July 2012
  4. "The earliest opera in English saved for the nation: The Bodleian library acquires Erismena", Bodleian Library website, 16 January 2009. Retrieved 30 August 2016.
  5. Peter Schofield (2007). The Enjoyment of Opera. Serendipity. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-84394-186-6.
  6. "New Chamber Opera: Orpheus in the Underworld". BachTrac, By Wilf Jones, 6 February 2012
  7. Helena Bickley, "Review: La Calisto". The Oxford Culture Review 8 February 2014.
  8. "Review: ‘Rothschild’s Violin’". 27 February 2016 The Oxford Culture Review
  9. "Production History", New Chamber Opera website. Retrieved 31 August 2016.
  10. Winton Dean, Handel's Operas 1726–1741 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), Appendix E 'Modern Stage Productions to the end of 2005', 15 July 1998.
  11. "CD Review Music from Ceremonial Oxford". ClassicalNet. 2001, Gerald Fenech
  12. "CD Review: Andromède Le ballet de Polieucte". Classical Music.net, Marc-Antoine Charpentier
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