The Company
Opera 80 itself became the successor to Opera For All, an "umbrella organization" which had planned tours by small groups which performed to piano accompanment. David Parry became music director in 1983.
ETO is a charitable organization which seeks to stimulate access, understanding and appreciation of opera. The company has always presented operas in English and it currently tours twice each year to more venues than any other opera company in the UK, going to about 33 theatres, many of which would not normally host opera performances. These include London, Cambridge, Exeter, Poole, Cheltenham, Malvern, Crawley, Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Buxton, Durham and Perth. It is estimed that the Spring 2012 tour included "nearly 50 gigs".
As James Conway notes:
- "One of the great new challenges is to show audiences that what we offer is different from the essentially passive experience of cinema relays - to point out how the actual live experience of listening and looking is incomparably better".
In Britain's economic climate of 2012, Arts Council England grants have increased by about 50% since 2002 and "English Touring Opera....will receive £1,577,015 in 2012/13, rising to £1,819,244 in 2014/15. This is expected to allow the company to sustain its current level of touring over the coming year, then to increase its programme of activity from 2012 onwards."
Read more about this topic: English Touring Opera
Famous quotes containing the word company:
“... we may remember what the Romans ... thought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)