OPERA CIRCUS
A group of singers who had been studying with the great buffo bass Federico Davia in London, decided that we wanted to continue exploring his teachings about the truthfulness of performance in opera and the physicality of Commedia. After a sold out series of opera scenes at The Theatre Museum’s theatre, Opera Circus was born in January 1991.
We began with a self-devised piece called Kill Me I Love You, a sort of operatic slap stick variety show that toured around the world for nearly 5 years in many different forms. In its first year it was nominated for a Music Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, much to our surprise!
We went to the Circus Space in Hoxton to see if we could perform acrobatics while singing. We couldn’t but it was a great experiment.  We went to see Peter Brook, and in his kindness and wisdom he told us why we couldn’t.
David Glass, the great mime and theatre director came into our lives and became our mentor and guide through the difficult world of trying to combine physical theatre and opera. Monika Pagneux taught us what it means to be an artist.  Monika had worked for many years with Le Coq in Paris and then became Peter Brook’s movement director.
Both Monica and David taught us about sensitivity and quality on the stage. Peta Lily taught us clown.  David Glass directed two shows for us, Shameless! and King Stag. Shameless! toured world wide, winning awards and great reviews. We toured around England, Scotland and Ireland. We performed in Lima, Canada, Romania, Georgia, Lithuania and Thailand where we were honoured to perform the show for the King of Thailand’s 70th birthday. We fell in love with Georgia’s artists and wine, we were celebrated in Romania where we learned how important it is to be an artist and where the audiences showed us how their participation could lift a performance way beyond anything we might achieve without them. Lithuania offered us the wonderful children of Orphanage 1 and 2 in Vilnius to work alongside. We returned for four years producing wild and exciting performances for large audiences and at one point taking over the departure lounge of Vilnius airport with 96 children. They actually delayed a plane taking off so we could finish the show.
Impropera was born, that mad show where opera singers make up complete operas on the spot from audience suggestions. King Stag middle scale became King Stag small scale and then the company looked to new ways of working.
David Pearl and Tina Ellen Lee had led the company since it’s inception alongside the soprano Janet Mooney. The company changed direction with David heading off to become a highly successful practitioner of theatre skills in business and to run Impropera and Janet to sing on a much larger stage.
Tina became the Artistic Director and began to produce new work, which included Cat Man’s Tale with music by Alasdair Nicholson and libretto by David Harrower (Director Peta Lily). Arcane with music by Paul Clarke of Clod Ensemble and libretto by David Spencer (Director John Wright.)
There was an exploration of a DADA-esque opera by Jonathan Cooper, which had a scratch performance at BAC but hasn’t seen the light of day yet. Â David Glass directed a wonderful two week work in progress session of a new work called MeMe with two sold out performances at BAC. Â Again this is still a work in progress.
In 2004 Opera Circus began to work with Nigel Osborne, the brilliant British composer, on an idea to create an opera from the beautiful music of Sevdah…a sort of Balkan Blues. For a week in the Autumn of 2004, Bridport in Dorset resounded to the music of the wonderful Sevdah musicians from Mostar, Mustafa Santic and Ivica Vinkovic, along with the Opera Circus singers including Lore Lixenberg, Susan Bisatt, Andy Morton and Robert Rice. We also had with us the theatre director, Lenka Udovicki, the well known Balkan singer and actor Rade Serbedzija and their three glorious children. We were joined by Tim Laycock one of Dorset’s renown folk singers, story tellers and instrumentalist. Nigel Osborne led the week and The Sevdah Opera Project was born. We workshopped the ideas, explored the music, toured the village halls of Dorset with our discoveries and joined with Bridport Arts Centre to involve the town in our project. We visited Brijuni, the beautiful island where Tito used to take his annual holidays and performed the beginnings of the opera at Lenka and Rade’s stunning house by the sea to the entire cast and crew of Hamlet, which was being performed at the Ulysses Theatre Festival on the island.
We began to help Nigel on his Summer Music School for special needs children and those suffering from war trauma both in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  This led to the world premiere of the new opera Differences in Demolition on June 9th 2007 at the National Theatre in Mostar, sadly now closed. We then toured to Tuzla, Banja Luka, Sarajevo and Zenica coming into London as part of the City of London Festival at Wilton’s Music Hall.  Since then the opera has toured Scotland and as you will see from this web site carries on its performances this year in Vienna.
The company is 20 years old next year and there will be a celebration through the new work, Naciketa. The rest is on the web site.