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The opera company of the UCL Union Music Society provides students with a unique opportunity. |
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University College Opera
UCL was named 'University of the Year 2004/05' by the Sunday Times and is consistently ranked by the Financial Times among the country's top five universities. In the 2005 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Rankings, UCL was rated 26th in the world. The University has the highest number of 5* and 5 rated departments after Oxbridge.
The Students
With over 19,000 students from over 130 countries, UCL is a truly cosmopolitan university. Its students are also among the most academically gifted in the UK, with 73% graduating with Firsts or Upper Second Honours. They have an estimated spending power of £40 million annually.
Founded in 1893, UCL Union is the oldest student union in the country, with a turnover of £5.5million. Its services include many bars, cafes and shops, as well as a theatre in the heart of Bloomsbury.
UCL Union Music Society
The Music Society is one of the Union's largest and most ambitious societies. It performs in several concerts each year, with challenging repertoires at venues including UCL, the Bloomsbury Theatre and local churches.
University College Opera
The opera company of the UCL Union Music Society provides students with a unique opportunity. The University has no music department, and yet UCOpera has the courage to stage rarely performed operas, including world premieres, with professional singers, directors and designers.
This combination produces incredible energy through the focused enthusiasm of the student chorus and orchestra. Driven by the presence of professionally trained artists, they create an intensity and vitality that many, more professional productions lack.
Sponsors
University College Opera attracts audiences of 2000, made up of the student body as well as the general public, and we attract national media attention.
We are always looking for new partnerships so don't hesitate to get in contact with our sponsorship team at sponsorship@ucopera.org for more information on what we can do for you.
History
University College Opera's first performance at University College London was in 1951. UCO was the brainchild of the College's then Director of Music, Anthony Addison. In the difficult circumstances of the early post-war years it was his ambition to put on opera in a college which had no Faculty or Department of Music, and very little in the way of strong musical tradition. The main auditorium in UCL had been destroyed during the wartime bombing and for the first seventeen years of the opera's existence, performances took place under appallingly difficult conditions in the College's old Gymnasium. Facilities were minimal and there were invariably complications resulting from a raised orchestra pit. In 1962 UCO experimented with putting the orchestra behind the stage and invisible to the audience, but the result was hardly a success. Anthony Addison conducted all performances at UCL until his appointment to the Carla Rosa Opera in 1953 when he was succeeded by a rising young conductor called Charles Mackerras. Although he did conduct some memorable concerts, Mackerras' other commitments at the time unfortunately made it impossible for him to direct any operas at UCL and he was followed by Marcus Dodds, then chorus master for Sadler's Wells Opera. The next important appointment was in 1962 when George Badacsonyi became Opera Director and it was during the long period of his tenure (1963-1976) that significant changes began to take place in the general outlook of UCO and its approach to performance and production practice.
From the very start the Music Society's policy had been to choose unusual or rarely performed operas but in the early days the Opera was almost entirely a college activity and very much amateur based - the orchestra, chorus and nearly all the soloists were either current or very recent UCL students. Inevitably the performances were not always of the very highest standard, so during the 1960's the decision was taken to introduce aspiring young professional singers into the casts. This policy was implemented on a very much larger scale with the opening of the Bloomsbury Theatre (originally the Collegiate Theatre). The new theatre had excellent modern facilities and was a world away from the dim and draughty gymnasium. The whole production became much more professional and this, combined with the unusual repertoire, began to attract the critics.As early as 1957 the periodical Opera reviewed a UCO production and from 1968 UCO's productions came to be regarded as one of the outstanding annual events in the British opera calendar, regularly and enthusiastically reviewed by the national press. George Badacsonyi's long and distinguished period as conductor came to an end and he was followed by two excellent and experienced conductors in Guy Woolfenden (Director of Music for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre) and Howard Williams (then a staff conductor at the ENO). Then in 1981 began the UCO career of its second longest serving Director of Opera, Christopher Fifeld. Fifeld's tenure at UCO lasted ten years during which UCO took an ever more original and enterprising direction, including the opportunities he gave the opera-going public to see three virtually unknown operas: Chabrier's Gwendoline, Spohr's Faust and particularly Die Lorelei by Max Bruch (whose first ever critical biography was written by Fifeld). In 1991 Fifeld was succeeded as opera director by Simon Kenway.
From 1992 to 2000, UCO was in the extremely capable hands of David Drummond, who made his debut with Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys. Arriving straight from Scottish Opera, David's energy and inspiration continued to provide UCO with memorable performances. Glinka's Russlan and Ludmilla in 1993, for example, was sung in Russian and featured two brass bands, one on each side of the auditorium.
One of the proudest achievements in University College Opera's long history was the 1994 production of Cesar Franck's Hulda which Drummond rediscovered and restored from the composer's manuscript. UCO was thus able, on Hulda's hundredth anniversary, to give a world premiere of this work as the composer had intended it, causing a major re-evaluation of Franck as an opera composer.
Drummond continued to delight UCO audiences with inspired repertoire choices such as La Wally, The Ballad of Baby Doe, Mazeppa, The Jewels of the Madonna and Kullervo, and for bringing in directors of the calibre of Robert Chevora, Netian Davan-Wetton and Paul Curran. Over the last three years, UCO has packed out the Bloomsbury Theatre on every night, commanding audiences to witness the work of such audacious repertoire at the great standard of which the company is currently capable. UCO's 50th anniversary production, and Drummond's swansong, was Sallinen's Kullervo, attended at its British Premiere by the composer and reviewed to great acclaim alongside Covent Garden in Opera Now magazine.
Something should be said concerning the singers who have appeared in UCO productions. Home-grown products have included two UCL students who later went on to successful professional careers. Mary Illing was a geology student with a pure, clear, lyric soprano voice who sang Bastienne in 1952 and returned as a professional for Der Wildschütz in 1958 and sang with Sadler's Wells. Terry Jenkins was an engineering student in the early sixties, when he sang the leading renot parts in a number of UCO operas and went on to become a regular member of English National Opera.
Since UCO decided on a consistent policy of employing aspiring professional soloists there have been three outstanding examples of little-known singers who had some of their earliest stage experience with UCO and later went on to become famous: these were Felicity Lott, Jonathan Summers and Robert Lloyd. The progression continues. Julian Gavin - who sang in Hulda - became one of ENOs principal tenors. Rachel Nichols (Mazeppa), Grant Doyle (Jewels) and Carole Wilson (Kullervo) have all recently made their debut at the Royal Opera. This intermingling of amateur and professional in music has always been mutually beneficial and UCO has good cause to be proud of its achievements in bringing students and progessional performers together. Perhaps the last word should rest with one of the earliest enthusiasts of opera at UCL, Ralph Vaughan Williams. In her biography of her husband, Ursula Vaughan Williams notes in 1952 that "...another opera he saw during the winter was Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor which was given a sparkling performance by students of UCL." He would be delighted that UCO is still flourishing after his words of encouragement.
Fiesque, written by the French composer Edouard Lalo, tells a story of love, jealousy, conspiracy and murder. Set in Italy in 1547, the opera follows the struggle of Count Fiesque against his city’s oppressive rule - his victory and his ultimate downfall.
Fiesque leads a revolution against the ruling family of Genoa. But soon his ambition, love of celebrity, and his adulterous involvement with the daughter of the enemy, cause his own followers to mistrust him. They begin to plot against him.
The city’s tyrannical rulers are overthrown, but as Genoa marches in triumph, Fiesque’s life is cut violently short by those closest to him. Lalo’s score is beautiful and compelling, bringing this powerful story dramatically to life.
History of Fiesque
Born in Lille, France, in 1823 to a family of Spanish descent, Eduardo Lalo studied violin at the Paris Conservatoire and began composing in the 1840s. In 1855, he helped form the Armingaud Quartet to promote the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Mendelssohn. In 1865 he married the contralto Julie Bernier de Maligny, who performed many of his songs.
Lalo wrote Fiesque, his first opera, for a competition sponsored by Paris's Théâtre-Lyrique in 1868. It is based on the play Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua (Fiesco: or the Genoese Conspiracy) by Friedrich von Schiller, a leading 18th-century German dramatist and poet, whose "Ode to Joy" was adopted as text for the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Set in Genoa, Italy, in 1547, Fiesque follows the struggle between the republican Count Fiesco and the city's ruling Doria family of doges. Matters are complicated by Fiesco's feelings for Julie Doria, a daughter of the family, which in turn arouse the jealousy of Fiesco's own wife, Léonore. Though the Dorias are ultimately overthrown, Fiesco's triumph is cut short when Verrina, a fellow republican disillusioned with Fiesco's ambition, throws him into the harbour.
To Lalo's disappointment, Fiesque was placed third in the Théâtre-Lyrique competition and never received a performance. The poor reception may have resulted from the work's emphasis on republican ideals as well as from the left-wing political leanings of its librettist, Charles Beauquier. Furthermore the Franco Prussian war broke out at this very time (1870) and would not have helped a project of this kind to find a stage. Nevertheless, Lalo continued composing for the stage. In 1881 he completed the opera Roi d'Ys, based on a Breton legend, though it too initially failed to find a venue. Yet in 1888 Lalo received a degree of vindication when Roi d'Ys was finally performed, to general acclaim, at the Opéra-Comique.
Friends of UCO
If you are interested in UCO, you may like to join our Friends scheme.
This scheme is more than just financial aid; our Friends give us, the
students of UCL, invaluable encouragement. As long as we have Friends, we know that there
are always those who believe that no operatic work should be forgotten. They remind us
just how important our job is.
World-renowned soprano and former UCO singer, Dame Felicity Lott, is the patron of
the Friends programme. Together we encourage you to join the programme which offers many
exciting advantages to you, the opera lover. Friends' benefits include a reception and
pre-opera lecture on opening night, free tickets for the night of your choice, and a
complimentary programme.
Contact Details
Please feel free to contact the student management team. Alternatively, for more information on the UCLU Music society, please go to http://www.uclumusicsociety.org/index.html
nowledgements
Acknowledgements
University College Opera would like to thank:
# UCL Union
# Dean of Students
# John Lewis Charitable Trust |
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