Five:15 Operas Made in Scotland is five, specially commissioned, fifteen minute operas produced through collaboration between Scottish Opera and some of the leading figures working in Scotland’s vibrant creative industries. Each of our contributors has a particular passion for opera, though many of them are new to creating it and some of the teams are working together for the first time. All five operas are shown together in every performance and each varies in style, theme and subject matter: from myths to scientific experiments and from medieval Scotland to modern day Govan.
Five:15 is part of Scottish Opera’s commitment to find the next generation of opera makers, writers and composers in Scotland, and aims to stimulate discussion about what opera as an artform could or should look like in the 21st Century.
Conductor Derek Clark
Dramaturg Michael McCarthy
Designer Andrew Storer
Players from Scottish Opera’s Orchestra
Lise Christensen (Mezzo Soprano)
Nicholas Garrett (Bass-Baritone)
Alexander Grove (Tenor)
Paul Keohone (Baritone)
Elizabeth McCormack (Mezzo)
Ashley Neilson (Boy Soprano)
Robert Ogden (Counter-tenor)
Kate Valentine (Soprano)
Peter Van Hulle (Tenor)
Dream Angus
Writer: Alexander McCall Smith Composer: Stephen Deazley
Director and Dramaturg: Ben Twist
Gesualdo
Writer: Ian Rankin Composer: Craig Armstrong
Director: Michael McCarthy
The King’s Conjecture
Writer: Bernard MacLaverty Composer: Gareth Williams
Director: Ben Twist
The Perfect Woman
Writer: Ron Butlin Composer: Lyell Cresswell
Director: Frederic Wake-Walker
The Queens of Govan
Writer: Suhayl Saadi Composers: Nigel Osborne & Wajahat Khan
Director: Michael McCarthy
Conductor Derek Clark
Dramaturg Michael McCarthy
Designer Andrew Storer
Players from Scottish Opera’s Orchestra
Lise Christensen (Mezzo Soprano)
Nicholas Garrett (Bass-Baritone)
Alexander Grove (Tenor)
Paul Keohone (Baritone)
Elizabeth McCormack (Mezzo)
Ashley Neilson (Boy Soprano)
Robert Ogden (Counter-tenor)
Kate Valentine (Soprano)
Peter Van Hulle (Tenor)
Dream Angus
Writer: Alexander McCall Smith Composer: Stephen Deazley
Director and Dramaturg: Ben Twist
Gesualdo
Writer: Ian Rankin Composer: Craig Armstrong
Director: Michael McCarthy
The King’s Conjecture
Writer: Bernard MacLaverty Composer: Gareth Williams
Director: Ben Twist
The Perfect Woman
Writer: Ron Butlin Composer: Lyell Cresswell
Director: Frederic Wake-Walker
The Queens of Govan
Writer: Suhayl Saadi Composers: Nigel Osborne & Wajahat Khan
Director: Michael McCarthy
BIOGRAPHIES
1. Craig Armstrong Music, Gesualdo
Was born in Glasgow in 1959. He studied composition and piano at the Royal Academy of Music, London from 1977 to 1981. Since then, from his base in Glasgow he has written for film and for several classical commissions. He has composed for Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge, The Quiet American, Ray, Orphans, and most recently Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center and Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age. He has received two BAFTAs, two Ivor Novellos, a Golden Globe, an American Film Institute Award, a Grammy and in 2007 an Outstanding International Achievement award from Scottish BAFTA. Craig has released two solo records to Massive Attack’s label Melankolic and Piano Works on Sanctuary in 2004. He has composed concert works for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Hebrides Ensemble and the Scottish Ensemble. In 2006 he collaborated with Dalziel and Scullion for the reopening of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow. In 2007 he recorded his first classical record for EMI Classics France with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for release in 2008. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London.
2. Ron Butlin Words, The Perfect Woman
Is a prize-winning novelist and one of Scotland’s most acclaimed writers. His poetry and fiction have won several Scottish Arts Council book awards, and translations of his works into 10 languages have also gained awards. Besides his BBC radio plays, much of his work has been broadcast in Britain and abroad. He was chosen by the British Council to be Scotland’s writer-representative at the Oradea 2000 conference in Romania and at the first-ever New Writing Worlds Symposium at the University of East Anglia in 2005, and was Poet-in-Residence at the National Galleries of Scotland in 2004. He has worked with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Hebrides Ensemble and Edinburgh String Quartet on ‘poetry’ texts for composers, and was commissioned by the SCO to write the central poem for Edward Harper’s Symphony No.2. His most recent works include the novel Belonging, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, and a collection of short stories, No More Angels.
3. Lise Christensen Mezzo-soprano
Was born in Denmark. She first read History at the University of Copenhagen before studying Singing at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and then the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She completed her studies at the National Opera Studio, working in residence with both Opera North and Welsh National Opera. She is also a Samling Foundation scholar. At the GSMD she won the Schubert Prize, the Crompton Lieder Award and The Philharmonia Chorus’s Prize. Her operatic engagements include: Prince Orlofsky Die Fledermaus (Scottish Opera on Tour), Third Lady Die Zauberflte (The Oxford Philomusica), title role Carmen (Mid-Wales Opera), Dorabella Cosê fan tutte (Garden Opera and London Opera Players), Francesca Zambello’s production of The Little Prince for BBC Wales, Meg Page Falstaff (Stanley Hall Opera), Madama Larina Eugene Onegin (Clonter Opera) and Alisa Lucia di Lammermoor (New Sussex Opera).
4. Derek Clark Conductor
Was born in Glasgow and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the London Opera Centre. He joined Welsh National Opera’s music staff in 1977 as a repetiteur and staff conductor. Since joining Scottish Opera as Head of Music in 1997, he has conducted Samson, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, Cosê fan tutte, Fidelio, Carmen, Rigoletto, La bohme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Eugene Onegin, Hansel and Gretel and James MacMillan’s Ins de Castro. He has re-orchestrated Hansel and Gretel and Die Fledermaus for Scottish Opera on Tour and is currently working on Rossini’s Cinderella for the Spring 2008 Tour. This season he has conducted Il barbiere di Siviglia, made a guest appearance with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius, and will conduct performances of Falstaff.
5. Lyell Cresswell Music, The Perfect Woman Was born in Wellington, New Zealand. From 1980 to 1982 he was Forman Fellow of Composition at Edinburgh University and from 1982 to 1985 Cramb Fellow in Composition at Glasgow University, since when he has been a full-time composer based in Edinburgh. His music is widely performed and he has been a featured composer at many festivals around the world. In 1978 he won the Ian Whyte Award for the orchestral work Salm and in 1979 received the APRA Silver Scroll for his contribution to New Zealand music. In 2001 he received a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award and in 2002 an honorary DMus from Victoria University of Wellington, as well as being awarded the inaugural Elgar Bursary. In 2006/7 he was New Zealand School of Music/Creative New Zealand Composer-in-Residence in Wellington. In 2004 he collaborated with Ron Butlin on the chamber opera Good Angel Bad Angel, commissioned by Hebrides Ensemble. A CD of his recent orchestral music, including settings of poems by Ron Butlin, will be released this year by Naxos.
6. Stephen Deazley Music, Dream Angus
Was born in Belfast and is an award-winning composer. He is widely acknowledged as a champion of music and music education for children and young people, whose works have featured at festivals in Europe and the USA, most recently in 2007 with Washington National Opera at the Smithsonian’s Folkworks Festival. His current commissions include a song cycle for children’s chorus and amplified ensemble with New York writer George Saunders, and new projects for Dartington Arts Trust and Welsh National Opera. In 2004 he founded Music at the Brewhouse, an eclectic performing group drawn from classical, improvised, experimental and electronic music traditions. Last seen at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2007 with Helter Skelter, an outdoor cabaret for musicians and circus performers, Music at the Brewhouse have developed an exciting and original portfolio of works, including the groundbreaking Thrie Heids, which was a winner at the 2007 British Academy of Composers’ Awards, and The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, which will feature at the 2008 St Magnus Festival in Orkney.
7. Nicholas Garrett Bass-baritone
Studied at Trinity College of Music in London. His UK operatic engagements include: Sourin The Queen of Spades and Gralsritter Parsifal (Scottish Opera), Colline La bohme (Scottish Opera Go Round), Pinellino Gianni Schicchi (Royal Opera House), Sven Love Life, Jenkins Of Thee I Sing and Escamillo and Dancairo Carmen (Opera North), Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince Into the Woods (ROH2), Baron Douphol La traviata and Angelotti Tosca (English National Opera), Sparafucile and Monterone Rigoletto, Figaro Le nozze di Figaro and Nourabad The Pearl Fishers (English Touring Opera), title role Don Giovanni, Don Basilio ll barbiere di Siviglia and Escamillo (Opera Holland Park) and Ben The Telephone (Buxton Festival). Other operatic engagements include: Fiorello Il barbiere di Siviglia (Opra Bastille, Paris) and Nikitich Boris Godunov (Nantes). He created the roles of Federzoni and Sagredo in the world premire of Michael Jarrell’s Galile in Geneva and sang Laurent in the European premire of Tobias Picker’s Thrse Raquin at the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera House.
8. Alexander Grove Tenor
Is a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester and also trained as a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral. He is the recipient of the Anne Ziegler Award, the Alfred Alexander Award and Peter Moores Foundation, Mario Lanza Foundation and MBF Major Scholarships. His recent operatic engagements include: Pyotr and Yarishkin The Nose (The Opera Group), Ramiro La Cenerentola (Stanley Hall Opera), Fenton The Merry Wives of Windsor, Count Zedlau Wiener Blut and Alfred Die Fledermaus (Clonter Opera) and Dottore The Jewel Box (Bampton Classical Opera). In 2007 he also dbuted in Sweden as Gabriele in Foroni’s Christina Regina di Svezia for Vadstena Akademien, as well as a successful live European broadcast on Sveriges and BBC Radio. Notable recitals include a private performance for President Bush Snr at the White House, performing alongside Jos Carreras under Sir George Solti at the Royal Festival Hall, London, perfomances with Sir David Willcocks and the London Symphony Orchestra and Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ under Kent Nagano at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.
9. Peter Van Hulle Tenor
Read Music at Leeds University and then studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio. For Scottish Opera he has sung Goro Madama Butterfly, Charles Lamb Monster, Cockerel and Schoolmaster The Cunning Little Vixen, Reverend Adams Peter Grimes, Philistine Man and Israelite Messenger Samson, Tchaplitsky The Queen of Spades, Sailor Tristan und Isolde, Marschallin’s Major Domo Der Rosenkavalier and Messenger Aida. Other operatic engagements include: Menelaus La belle Hlne and Hotel Porter Death in Venice (English National Opera), Don Ottavio Don Giovanni (Mid-Wales Opera and Opera Project), Alfredo La traviata and Spoletta Tosca (Opera Holland Park), Guillot de Morfontaine Manon, Cockerel and Schoolmaster, Dr Blind Die Fledermaus and Don Basilio Le nozze di Figaro (English Touring Opera), Mime Siegfried (Longborough Festival), Quint The Turn of the Screw (Opera Project) and title role in Handel’s Imeneo (Opera on a Shoestring). He created the role of Slave in Stuart MacRae’s The Assassin Tree (Edinburgh International Festival) and Charlie Despard in Edward Rushton’s The Young Man with the Carnation (Almeida Opera).
10. Paul Keohone Baritone
Was born in Kilmarnock and trained at the Royal College of Music. For Scottish Opera he has sung Sacristan Tosca and Theseus in Julian Evans’ The Minotaur. Other operatic engagements include: Teddy Foran in Mark Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie (English National Opera), Der Bauer in Schubert’s Des Teufels Lustschloss (Opra de Nancy), Marcello La bohme, Leporello Don Giovanni and Monterone Rigoletto (Opera Project), Scarpia Tosca (European Chamber Opera), Alberich Das Rheingold (The Mastersingers), Escamillo Carmen (Opera on a Shoestring), Water Sprite in Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki (Wexford), Masetto Don Giovanni (Opera Holland Park) and Ghost of Virgil Francesca da Rimini and Servant The Miserly Knight, both by Rachmaninov (Chelsea Opera Group). He created the role of Hamlet in the world premire of Ophelia by Henrik Hellstenius for Opera Vest in Norway. He will cover the role of Parsons in Lorin Maazel’s 1984 at La Scala, Milan. In 2004 he was nominated for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King with Ensemble 10/10 in Liverpool.
11. Wajahat Khan Music and Sarod, The Queens of Govan Is internationally renowned as one of India’s most outstanding sarod virtuosos. He represents the eighth generation of a legendary musical dynasty which goes back 400 years to the Mughal courts. Son of the illustrious sitar maestro Ustad Imrat Khan, he has performed to great acclaim in over 30 countries worldwide in prestigious venues and festivals, including the Royal Albert Hall _ã_ BBC Proms, Aldeburgh and Glastonbury Festivals (UK), Lincoln Center (New York), Suntori Hall (Tokyo), Symphony Hall (Berlin), Acropolis (Athens) and the Kremlin (Moscow). As a composer he has accomplished numerous collaborations with Western classical, jazz, flamenco and rock, including two unique Sarod Concertos and an award-winning Quintet for Sarod and String Quartet, working with leading world ensembles such as the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Cape Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, rock band Kula Shaker and the Medici String Quartet. Based in London, he also teaches and lectures internationally, and has many acclaimed recordings to his credit. He will give a special performance of Morning Ragas on the sarod, accompanied by tabla and tanpura, at The Riverside Studios on Sunday 17th August at 11am
12. Alexander McCall Smith Words, Dream Angus Is most widely celebrated as the creator of Precious Ramotswe, heroine of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books, now numbering nine titles, which have been translated into 42 foreign languages and have sold more than 17 million copies. He is the author of over 60 books of fiction and non-fiction, including two series of novels set in Edinburgh, the Isabel Dalhousie and the 44 Scotland Street series. His book, Dream Angus, was published by Canongate in their Myths Series. He received the Author of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2004 and was made a CBE in 2007 for services to literature. He recently collaborated with the choral composer Tom Cunningham in Scotland at Night, a song cycle based on a series of his poems about Scotland.
13. Michael McCarthy Five:15 Dramaturg, and Director of The Queens of Govan and Gesualdo Is the Co-Founder and Joint Artistic Director of Music Theatre Wales, as well as Artistic Director of Operatoriet, the contemporary opera studio for Norway, with which he has worked on the development of over 30 new Norwegian operas. With MTW he has commissioned and staged many new chamber operas and currently has three new operas in progress from Michael Berkeley (libretto Ian McEwan), Huw Watkins and Eleanor Alberga. Recent productions include Julie by Boesmans, House of the Gods by Plowman, Tippett’s The Knot Garden (in a co-production with the Royal Opera House) and Nigel Osborne’s The Piano Tuner and The Electrification of the Soviet Union. His production of Punch and Judy with MTW will be seen at the ROH in March. Other productions include: Monster for Scottish Opera, Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Martyrdom of St Magnus with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at Glasgow’s Tramway and for Den Norske Opera, and The Feast of the Pheasant for the Scottish Early Music Consort.
14. Elizabeth McCormack Mezzo-soprano
Was born in Fife and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and at the National Opera Studio in London. She is a past winner of the Scottish Opera John Noble Bursary, the Decca-Kathleen Ferrier Prize, the Royal Overseas League Music Competition and the Isobel Baillie Performance Award, was Scotland’s representative at Cardiff Singer of the World in 1993 and is a recipient of the Countess of Munster and Caird Scholarships. For Scottish Opera she created the role of the Daughter in The Vanishing Bridegroom (also at the Royal Opera House) and sang Varvara Kêtya Kabanovê, Dorabella Cosê fan tutte, Suzuki Madama Butterfly and Cherubino Le nozze di Figaro. Other operatic engagements include: Pitti Sing The Mikado, Cherubino and Garcia Don Quixotte (English National Opera), Nancy Albert Herring (Banff Festival, Canada), Melanto The Return of Ulysses (Buxton Festival), Pippo The Thieving Magpie and Zerlina Don Giovanni (Opera North), Flora La traviata and Karolka Jenufa (Thê¢tre du Chê¢telet, Paris) and Second Flowermaiden Parsifal and Annio La clemenza di Tito (Opra Bastille, Paris).
15. Bernard MacLaverty Words,
The King’s Conjecture Was born in Belfast, moved to Scotland in 1975 and now lives in Glasgow. He has been a medical laboratory technician, a mature student, a teacher of English and, for two years in the mid-1980s, Writer-in- Residence at the University of Aberdeen. He is a member of Aosdana in Ireland. He currently teaches creative writing on a postgraduate course in prose fiction run by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. He has published five collections of short stories and four novels: Lamb, Cal, Grace Notes (winner of the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award, 1997) and The Anatomy School. He recently wrote and directed a short film, Bye- Child. As a broadcaster, he wrote and presented a radio review programme, The Best of 3, for BBC Radio 3, and wrote and presented Grace Notes, a weekly classical music programme, for BBC Radio Scotland.
16. Anthony Moffat Leader
The Orchestra of Scottish Opera Was born in Hexham, Northumberland and studied at the Royal Academy of Music with eminent leader and soloist Manoug Parikian, winning many awards, including, in his final year, the Marjorie Hayward Prize for best violinist. As founder member of the Borante Piano Trio, he has toured extensively, notably in Vienna as a soloist in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Haydn Chamber Orchestra of Vienna. He has led many British orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Birmingham Royal Ballet Sinfonia, as well as the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Formerly Associate Leader of the Hall Orchestra, he was appointed Leader of The Orchestra of Scottish Opera in 2000.
17. Ashley Neilson Boy Soprano
Ashley is a Primary 7 pupil at Hutchesons’ Grammar School in Glasgow. He plays the clarinet and participates in the school wind band, and is also a member of the junior choir. He enjoys music and drama and attends regular classes at both Stagecoach and UK Theatre School, and has taken part in several productions. He was recently cast for a short film for Norwegian television shot in Glasgow about the life of a Scottish footballer.
18 Robert Ogden – Counter-tenor
Was born in Harrogate, read music as a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge and studied opera at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Netherlands Opera Studio. He was awarded the Curtis Gold Medal for Singing on leaving the RNCM. He studies with Michael Chance and Dinah Harris. He has performed all over the world, working with conductors such as Richard Hickox, Sir David Willcocks, Owain Arwel Hughes, Nicholas McGegan, Heinz Fricke and Richard Bradshaw, and orchestras including the Belarus State Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Brandenburger Sinfoniker and Deutches Kammerorchester Frankfurt am Main. He recently returned from The Washington Opera’s tour of Japan, where he sang roles alongside artists such as Jos Carreras and Maria Guleghina. His recent operatic engagements include: Kreon Medea by Rolf Liebermann (Stadttheater Bern), Delfa Giasone by Cavalli (Stadttheater Klagenfurt), Paggio Sly by Wolf-Ferrari and the Shepherd Tosca (Washington Opera), Oberon A Midsummer Night’s Dream and title role Radamisto (Opera North), Consigliere Arianna by Monteverdi (Muziektheater Transparant and the Netherlands Opera Studio), Ptolomeo Giulio Cesare (Handel Opera Society), Athamus Semele (Teatru Manoel, Malta) and a new one-man show, Food of Love, directed by Klaus Bertisch, dramaturge at the Netherlands Opera.
19. Nigel Osborne Music,
The Queens of Govan Studied with Egon Wellesz, Kenneth Leighton and Witold Rudzinski. His award-winning music has been performed by orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble Intercontemporain Paris, as well as at the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne. He was Master of Music at the Shakespeare Globe and is currently Musical Director of the experimental Ulysses Theatre in Istria. He has worked closely with directors David Freeman, Michael McCarthy, David Pountney and Peter Sellars and writers Craig Raine and Howard Barker on Hell’s Angels (Royal Court), Terrible Mouth (English National Opera), Faust and La morte d’Arthur (Lyric, Hammersmith) and the trilogy Sarajevo (South Bank). He was invited to create the first opera of the war in Sarajevo, Evropa, with Dino Mustafic and Goran Simic, and has pioneered programmes of creative arts therapy for children who are the victims of conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Georgia, Chechnya and Palestine.
20. Ian Rankin Words, Gesualdo
Was born in Fife and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. Previously employed as a grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hifi journalist and punk musician, his first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, was published in 1987. The Rebus books have now been translated into 31 languages. He has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow and is a winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award, as well as the Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction and the Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. The Rebus books have been successfully adapted for television, and Ian has also presented a range of documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC. He has been awarded five honorary doctorates, has a street named after him in his hometown, and was presented with the OBE in 2002.
21. Suhayl Saadi Words, The Queens of Govan
Is a novelist and stage and radio dramatist based in Glasgow. His hallucinatory realist novel, Psychoraag, won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, was shortlisted for the oldest literary prize in the UK, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Pakistan National Literary Award and was nominated for the Dublin-based Impac Prize. It has just been published in French, and was acclaimed by The List magazine and the Scottish Book Trust as one of the Top 100 Scottish books of all time. His eclectic short-story collection, The Burning Mirror, was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Prize. His first novel, the literary erotic fiction The Snake, was penned under the pseudonym Melanie Desmoulins. His work has been adapted for stage and screen, he has edited a number of anthologies and has penned song lyrics for modern classical compositions with the Dunedin Consort (The People’s Mass) and international choirs (Project Paradisum). Driven always by music, his work has appeared worldwide from San Diego to Singapore. He has written extensively for the UK national Press, the BBC and the British Council.
22. Andrew Storer Designer
Studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon School of Art. He began his career designing for Ballet Rambert and London Contemporary Dance Theatre. He has designed productions for ballet and opera companies throughout Europe including: Bach Dances (Semperoper Dresden), Elvira Madigan (Royal Danish Ballet), Eva (Gothenburg Opera), Mata Hari (Deutsche Oper Berlin), Romeo and Juliet (Grand Theatre Geneva, Gothenburg Ballet, Arena di Verona and Scottish Ballet) and Sebastian (Spoleto Festival and Teatro dell’Opera Rome). His designs for television include the award-winning ballet For My Daughter (Danish Royal Ballet); the lighting for Tryst, composed by James MacMillan (Scottish Chamber Orchestra / BBC 1); the Sound Bites Two series of programmes with Evelyn Glennie (BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / BBC 2) and Red Forecast Orchestral Theatre III composed and conducted by Tan Dun (BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / BBC 2).
23. Ben Twist Director, The King’s Conjecture and Dream Angus Co-founded The Merry Mac Fun Co. to tour political theatre around Scotland, was Associate Director at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre and Artistic Director of Manchester’s Contact Theatre. He has also directed theatre for the Royal Lyceum Theatre, TAG, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, The Lyric Belfast and Prime Productions. His production of Sunset Song was nominated for the TMA Award for Best UK Touring Show. In music-theatre he has directed for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Psappha, The South Bank Centre, Mr McFall’s Chamber, The Seer Ensemble and Haddo House Opera. He wrote the libretto for and directed Ronald Caltabiano’s Marrying the Hangman, which transferred from Manchester to New York and San Francisco. He has directed extensively for Hebrides Ensemble, including world premires of Room by David Fennessy and Good Angel Bad Angel by Lyell Cresswell and Ron Butlin. He regularly teaches dramaturgy for the British Council.
24. Kate Valentine Soprano
Studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and at the National Opera Studio. She was semi-finalist in the 2005 Kathleen Ferrier Competition and has been the recipient of awards and scholarships including the Glyndebourne Anne Wood/Joanna Peters Award, a Sybil Tutton Award, a Susan Chilcott Scholarship and Scottish Opera’s John Scott Award. Her operatic engagements include: Rosalinda Die Fledermaus (Scottish Opera on Tour), Donna Anna Don Giovanni (Samling Opera at The Sage, Gateshead), Countess Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro (Glyndebourne on Tour), Second Woman Dido and Aeneas (Nicholas McGegan and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra) and First Lady Die Zauberflte (Opera Holland Park). Her concert appearances include Elijah with Andrew Padmore and the Amici Ensemble, Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music with David Jones and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall under Sir David Willcocks. She will make her dbut for Opera North as Konstanze Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail.
25. Frederic Wake-Walker Director, The Perfect Woman
Was raised in Suffolk, where he sang the treble roles in three Britten operas at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh. He formed Mahogany Opera in 2003 and has directed Walton’s The Bear at the Edinburgh Fringe, Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and Not in Front of the Waiter, with music by Offenbach, at the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh, and Britten’s Curlew River in St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh and on tour throughout East Anglia. He has assisted Stephen Lawless on Mozart’s Ascanio in Alba (Buxton Festival), Conti’s Don Quisciotte in Sierra Morena (Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik) and Capriccio (New York City Opera), and Lindy Hume on Albert Herring (Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh) with the Britten-Pears Young Artists. He was Staff Director at Glyndebourne Festival for the recent revival of Die Fledermaus and Assistant Director for Glyndebourne on Tour for Die Fledermaus and Nicholas Hytner’s Cosê fan tutte. He has also shadowed Franco Zeffirelli, John Cox, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, Ian Judge and David McVicar.
26. Gareth Williams Music, The King’s Conjecture
Is originally from County Armagh, but moved to Glasgow after studying Music at Queen’s University, Belfast. He completed a Masters in Composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and then a Postgraduate Certificate in Education. He is currently completing a PhD in Composition at the RSAMD. He has been active as a composer at the RSAMD, producing work for Hebrides Ensemble, Paragon Ensemble, Ceoil Quartet, Symposia, Black Hair Ensemble and London Sinfonietta. He was the winner of the British Conservatoire Composers Forum 2000 and in 2004 won the Dinah Wolff Prize for composition. His work has been featured at the Edinburgh International Festival, St Magnus Festival in Orkney and York Late Music Festival. He performs regularly as a singer/songwriter and piano player, something he has explored in several of the pieces in his PhD portfolio. His first opera, Love in the Blue Corner, was premired in Glasgow in 2006.