The Inclusivity of Opera

The Programme

London Coliseum, 26 March 2025, 2.30pm

Time	Activity
2.10-2.30pm	Arrival
2.30-3.10pm	Barbara Gentili, University of Surrey, ‘Italy’s Most Operatic “Homes”: Milan’s Casa Verdi and Parma’s Teatro Regio, 1950s – 1980s’
3.10-3.50pm	Alexandra Wilson, Guildhall School of Music & Drama/University of Oxford, ‘“My People Must Have the Best”: Fostering Operatic Communities at the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells’
3.50-4.10pm	Refreshments
4.10-5.30pm	Roundtable session: ‘Opera, Communities and Connection’
	Chaired by Carol Leeming, Black Lives in Music Speakers: Alison Buchanan, Pegasus Opera Company; Beth Warnock, ENO; Francesco Izzo, University of Southampton & Teatro Regio, Parma; Jo Bedford, Opera North; Michael McCarthy, Music Theatre Wales; Richard Willacy, Birmingham Opera Company; Tumi Williams, Starving Artists
5.30pm	Drinks reception

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Access Information: There is step-free access to the venue. If you have any access requirements, please get in touch with us so we can help make your visit to the London Coliseum as smooth as possible.

Please note that your ticket includes tea & coffee and a drinks reception at the end of the event.

This event is now fully booked, if you would like to join the waiting list if tickets become available please contact [email protected]. If you are unable to join in person, the event is being livestreamed on the Theatrical Voice Research Centre YouTube page here.

Our Panel

 

Barbara Gentili

Barbara Gentili is an opera singer and music historian based at the University of Surrey. Her research interests encompass the cultural history of Italian opera; the impacts of recording; opera and society and celebrity cultures. Her first monograph on verismo singing was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2024. Other publications include two articles on early twentieth-century singing practices for Music and Letters and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and an article on the singer and opera impresaria Emma Carelli for Cambridge Opera Journal. Forthcoming publications include her second monograph, on women of the stage and new configurations of femininity in early twentieth-century Italy for OUP, and her co-edited volume on transnational opera for Routledge. She is an active organiser of academic and public engagement events through her Theatrical Voice Research Centre (https://www.surrey.ac.uk/theatrical-voice-research-centre).

Alexandra Wilson

Professor Alexandra Wilson is a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford and a Research Resident at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Previously she taught at Oxford Brookes University for nineteen years, latterly as Professor of Music and Cultural History. Her books include, The Puccini Problem, Opera in the Jazz Age, Puccini’s La bohème, and the edited collection Puccini in Context. Her new book Someone Else’s Music: Opera and the British is about to be published by Oxford University Press and a Cambridge Guide to Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci is forthcoming. Her writing about music can also be found in many newspapers, magazines and online platforms, and in programme books for major opera companies worldwide, and she can be heard regularly on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Carol Leeming

Carol Leeming MBE FRSA is an internationally-acclaimed music artist, hailed by academics as a polymath. A multi-award winning, multi-disciplinary artist in literature, performing arts and digital media. Carol is a published poet, playwright, director, composer, singer/songwriter, actor & filmmaker, vocal coach, curator and journalist. Carol is Resident Artistic Director at Curve Theatre Leicester and Associate Writer/Director at Playground Theatre, West London. Recent work includes dramaturg for Streetwise Opera Company, Chips Off the Old Block, libretto Joseph Paterson, music David Austin 2024, nominated for the International Opera Award Equalities Impact. Performer BBC Dream Prom 60, conductor Kwame Ryan, BBC Concert Orchestra. In 2024 poetry performances Beyond the Bassline Speakey Spokey Writers Mosaic, division of The Royal Literary Fund, British Library. Performer Remnants for Poet Orchestra James B Wilson & Yomi Sode, Trinity Laban Orchestra 2024. TEDx Performer and Speaker; National Ambassador Black Lives in Music: Equalities, Health & Well-Being. Patron Emeritus East Midlands Women Awards. Carol’s Company Dare to Diva was established in 2002 and is currently developing an original contemporary chamber opera.

Jo Bedford

Jo Bedford joined Opera North’s Learning & Engagement Department in 2010 and has since worked in various roles within the department, including as Senior Producer and Department Manager. Jo now heads up Opera North’s Community Engagement Programme, which focuses on taking opera outside of the opera house and into the heart of local communities, to enable people from all walks of life to engage with the artform on their own terms.

Jo grew up in a musical household. Her father, Steuart Bedford, was a conductor, pianist, organist and Benjamin Britten specialist. She was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to experience opera from a young age, which sowed the seeds of a profound and lifelong appreciation for live music.

Alison Buchanan

Alison Buchanan is the Artistic Director of Pegasus Opera Company, a company that champions diversity in opera in the UK, making her the only black female Artistic Director of an opera company in England and in Europe. Buchanan was recently named one of one hundred black women in the UK who have made a mark. Buchanan maintains voice studios in London, Washington DC and New York and gives masterclasses at conservatories and universities across the USA, alongside mentoring young artists.

Buchanan has been praised for her musical versatility and for possessing a voice spun of 24 Karat gold. She is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Alison is the winner of the Kathleen Ferrier, the Luciano Pavarotti, the Washington International and the Maggie Teyte competitions. After making her debut as Mimi with San Francisco Opera, Buchanan went on to perform with LA Opera singing the role of Nedda in I Pagliacci, working with Placido Domingo and Franco Zeffirelli. Alison has performed with the New York City Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Michigan Opera, Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and the Wexford Festival. She has performed under the batons of Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Donald Runnicles, Marin Alsop, Jane Glover and David Robertson to name but a few, with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, The Philippines Philharmonic, The Säo Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil, The Philadelphia Symphony, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Francesco Izzo

Francesco Izzo is Professor of Music at the University of Southampton, General Editor of the critical edition Works of Giuseppe Verdi (University of Chicago Press and Ricordi), and programme director of the Accademia Verdiana, the young artist programme of Teatro Regio Parma.  He has published widely on Italian opera and other subjects. He is the author of the monograph Laughter between Two Revolutions: Opera buffa in Italy, 1831-1848 (2013) and the editor of the critical edition of Verdi’s Un giorno di regno (2021). As a pianist, he collaborates with numerous singers, and recently has performed with Leo Nucci, Lisettte Oropesa, Antonio Poli, Riccardo Zanellato.  He has consulted for leading opera companies and festivals, including the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, the Welsh National Opera, the Teatro Real, and the Salzburg Festival, and has held visiting professorships at the University of Chicago, New York University, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and the University of Venice ‘Ca’ Foscari’.

Michael McCarthy

Michael is Director of Music Theatre Wales, the company he co-founded as Cardiff New Opera Group in 1982 becoming MTW in 1988. MTW was Associate Company Director at the Royal Opera House from 2001 – 2018. From 1998-2012 he was also Artistic Director of Operatoriet – the contemporary opera studio for Norway; 2007 – 2012 Dramaturg FIVE:15 for Scottish Opera; Leader of Opera Creation Academy at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2012.

Michael has directed many contemporary operas, mainly for MTW and also for Scottish Opera, Opera Vest, Opera Theatre of St Louis, Opera National du Rhin and Theater Magdeburg, plus large-scale outdoor stagings of Tosca and Nabucco, and productions of La Traviata, Cosi fan Tutte, Il Re Pastore, Richard Löwenherz, Fidelio and Don Giovanni. His production of Cinderella by Maxwell Davies for WNO was broadcast on S4C Television, and his production of The Lighthouse was made into a film for BBC2 TV.

Beth Warnock

Beth is the Director of ENO Engage at English National Opera, which encompasses the outreach, participation, Creative Health and learning programmes for the company. Beth is driven by a belief in the arts for social change, and is motivated to work to create programmes and cultures that are accessible, inclusive and available to all. Before joining ENO, Beth led similar programmes at Barbican Centre, Little Angel Theatre, and as a freelance theatre practitioner. Beth trained at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama on the Drama, Applied Theatre, and Education course.

Richard Willacy

Richard Willacy has established a track record as a director, artistic director, producer and educator; devising, supporting, delivering and leading multi-scale outward-facing work in Opera and contemporary Music Theatre, New Writing, Digital, Theatre and Dance.

Joining Birmingham Opera Company as a freelance Associate Director for the launch of BOC with the “participatory” site-specific Votzek in 2001, Richard began a long-term collaboration with Graham Vick, retained by the company from 2005 and appointed Associate Artistic Director in 2008 in a specially created role.

Putting his full energy and force into the Birmingham experiment as Associate Artistic Director 2008-2014, Executive Producer of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht 2012 for London 2012 and Executive Director 2014-2021, in which period he maintained much of the associate artist director role, Richard has been a key player in pioneering and nurturing some of the most exciting work in Opera in the 21st Century.  Richard has led the company as General Director since 2021.