You commissioned Itch, a new opera, in 2023. Can you share the story behind how Itch came into being? What inspired its creation?
I was actively looking to commission a new piece and was looking at a lot of potential source material. I was reading a lot of books with that in mind. While on holiday in France I’d taken one of Simon Mayo’s Itch books with me and as I was reading it, I just started thinking, “this is the one”.
I knew Simon a little bit, well enough to correspond with him, so while still on holiday I sent him a message to say, “I’m just reading your book, Itch, and loving it”. He replied (as a joke) “why don’t you turn it into an opera, then” and I replied that that was exactly why I was getting in touch with him, because that’s what I think it could be. So that’s how it started.
Why did you choose Jonathan Dove to compose the opera?
I’ve known Jonathan for over 20 years. He’s a fantastic composer. We had already produced and had great success with his opera Flight in 2015 at Opera Holland Park, and ever since then we had often talked about working together and creating something new. He really composes amazing music that people today really find something in, and so I went to him with Itch and said, “I know you don’t usually take ideas for commissions in this way, but I really think I have got something here”.
He came back to me a couple of days later and said, “Yes I think you’re right. This would make a great opera.”
What was it about Itch that made you feel it was right for an operatic adaptation?
I really wanted an opera that was set today; in modern language, modern costumes, modern setting, modern mentality. Within that, I thought Itch had a lot of hope (without giving away the story too much!). A lot of new operas can be quite dark and focus on the futility of a lot of aspects of modern life but even when there are dark days there is also always hope and in Itch, we really show that. There is real hope in it.
I liked that the hero was young. I often look for stories with ordinary people in extraordinary situations. He’s not a king, he’s not a duke, he’s a teenager.
The core narrative is very Ring Cycle or Lord of the Rings; it’s about suddenly having some power, and the decision to use it for good, or for ill. Young people so often get a bad representation but here this teenager has that choice and is ready to sacrifice everything so this power doesn’t get into the wrong hands.
I always look for an opera to have a quest, a good journey. We did it when we did Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a few years ago, and Itch had a really great quest already within its story.
4. Itch has been nominated for an Ivor Novello award and was described by The Observer as “an exhilarating, instant classic.” In your experience, what does it take to make a successful opera in today’s world? Could you walk us through the process and give us a sense of how many people it takes to bring a production like this to life?
I think that if I really knew what it took to make a successful opera, then I’d do it more often, because it’s really tough. Audiences have an entire repertoire that they like seeing and sometimes new things are a little tougher to cut through. To put an opera together, it becomes an incredible amount of people coming together, a stunning amount of people, really.
At first, it’s very much a one-to-one thing. I went to Simon, and when I got back to London we met in person for the first time and we just talked through it. Then I went to Jonathan, who then discussed with me bringing in his regular collaborator, Alasdair Middleton (the librettist).
Jonathan and I both wanted Stephen Barlow to direct — we’d all worked with him before. Stephen and I had both loved working with conductor Jessica Cottis, so I asked her on board. We wanted to work with a new designer, and as soon as we met Frankie Bradshaw we both immediately knew we had the right person (as was proved by her unbelievable set in Itch!). And so from there, there was a continual, almost concentric circle process of adding more and more people to the mix until we had built am exceptional team and cast. You need to raise the money for a new piece, so we had a lot of trusts, foundations and individuals supporting us through it. It becomes a village of people that you need to convince why this piece is worth it.
You touched a bit there on the challenges of bringing together a contemporary opera to a modern audience; could you talk a bit more about why it’s important to create new operas?
I think that it’s important because one thing that we all forget is that there was a time when La Bohème was a new opera — everything started somewhere. The Barber of Seville famously had a really awful premiere where Rossini, the composer, was chased through the streets with the audience being so angry with him for writing such a bad piece. Whilst Itch is brand new now, in 50 years it becomes a piece that people look back on.
Getting people in to see modern opera or contemporary opera is difficult, but I think we are slightly behind as an art form because you don’t have as many problems getting people in to see new plays. You certainly do not have that problem getting people in to see new films or TV shows. If the TV industry never did anything new, that would be ridiculous, and so we need to follow that path more.
There are a lot of challenges about appealing to a lot of people to get them into the opera house. Having a piece that relates to the audience is one potential way to get people in. With Itch, if there are kids in the audience, they can relate to the two central leads. If there are mums and dads in the audience that have dealt with troublesome teenagers, you have their parents onstage.
Itch is also this year’s Young Artists (YA) Programme production. Can you tell us more about the programme and its aims?
The Young Artists Programme was set up in 2012 when a lovely woman, Christine Collins, came to me and said she wanted to do something for us as a company. She wanted to give us a sizable amount of money and she wanted it to be about “opportunity”. She didn’t say “young artist” originally, and I took the idea of “opportunity” and ran with it, turning it into this Young Artists Programme. It’s about being there for people who will take the opportunity and make the most of it. We put these artists in the rehearsal room for the same amount of time as the main cast with their own director, conductor, stage management team and rehearsals. It’s the nearest thing to doing a full-scale professional show after college; the real thing.
I often say how it’s about putting the right amount of pressure (in a good way) on the company to really get them to learn quickly while still being in a protected and supported environment.
It felt like a good thing to do, and we’ve had huge success with it. Over the years, people have really thrived under us because of it and then gone on to success elsewhere. We pride ourselves on how many alumni come back every year to do main roles. We had 14 last year, I think there’s 10 this year. You know, I think that that’s the proof of the pudding that it works because people are moving on in the professional world.
It helps us as a company because we’re discovering new talent; it helps the artists themselves because they get support and get pushed on through their career by the support of our donors; and it helps the ecosystem of opera because there’s more people coming through better trained. So it’s a great thing, I’m really proud of it.
Why was Itch chosen as this year’s YA production? What makes it a good fit for emerging artists?
I think a lot of it is because a lot of the characters in Itch are young, so there was much more of a closer playing age — even the adults are not that old. So I think that there are a lot of YAs just playing their actual age. We also chose Itch because we’re trying to reflect a world that’s here now, I think that it was a really good call for it. There’s a lot of pressure on the roles because some of it’s hard to sing. I think that we’ve protected a few of them by some changes we’ve made, but even still it’s a great piece to learn from in a supported environment.
This year marks your 25th anniversary with the company. Looking back, how would you say the company has changed the most over that time?
You often don’t notice change until you look back. I think that the level of acting and performance as well as singing has improved a lot here over those years. Especially at our place, the audience are so close to the singers, there’s really no place to hide. So I think that’s a great thing.
Generally speaking, it’s certainly harder to get audience members through the door these days, certainly since Covid. I think that’s the biggest single change. But on the other side, a huge change since Covid was that we could change our theatre, the way we see what we do, the nature of it. Ultimately, I think the experience of going to the opera, which we pride ourselves on, has got better because we have really worked on the comfort, the sort of drinks and food you can buy, the welcome you get. I think we can play with that much more, and it’s better than ever now.
What are you most proud of from your 25 years at the helm?
Obviously a lot of the shows. So many. Itch being one of them. Tosca that we revived last year is another. La traviata in 2018, Pagliacci, Katya Kabanova, Fidelio in 2003. The Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland commission. There are lots of shows that I’ve been so proud of over the years.
Other than that, I think I’m most proud of two things: the first being the amount of nurturing we’ve done of artists and people on and off stage. I think that’s really big, the nurturing that goes through everything. Backstage stage management, on stage, singers, in every way, directors, conductors. The amount of people who very nicely let me know that they got their break here and how much it meant to them is really nice.
The other big thing is just the general culture that we’ve created. I think culture is really hard to establish and it takes a long time, but I think people recognise who we are and how we run things. A lot of people throughout the industry say nice things about the OHP culture of the company being supportive of artists and throughout the entire company between departments, and that there are no psychological walls (and sometimes no physical ones either backstage either!). There’s an openness here, a directness and an honesty.
Even things like the advanced rehearsal scheduling, which gives people chances to plan parental care or other jobs — these things I’m most proud of, because it’s very recognisable as us and people talk about that side of us a lot.
What are you most looking forward to — both to the 2025 Season and beyond?
Everything. Doing our first Wagner (The Flying Dutchman) is big for us. It’s a massive challenge for us and that’s great. I’m really excited about that because it’s doing something new. It’s not about me, but it’s still nice for me to challenge myself after 25 years as well. I don’t like it to be too easy. Bringing Itch back as well for its second run. There’s a lot of new operas that are done once and that’s it. That seems such a waste of energy and time and money. Bringing it back for the second time, see how it’s matured, what an audience is like seeing it for the second time. That’s really exciting. I love doing co-productions, so with The Merry Widow with Scottish Opera is great. La traviata is one of my favourite productions we’ve ever done, lovely to see it back. And Lucia, I mean, it’s already looking stunning. It’s a stellar cast on it.
Really, it’s every single show I’m looking forward to, and that’s one of the great things about doing a Season, you can look forward to it in different ways. When you curate a season, you’re never going to please everyone for every show; what you have to do is create a season and get enough out of it. We’re getting a lot of new audience members for the Wagner and for Itch again. When we did Itch in 2023, it was the biggest number of first time visitors to our theatre in our company history. So whilst the negatives of other people don’t go, new people do and you have to balance the season like that.
What is a piece of advice, musical or otherwise, that has stayed with you?
In my job as a producer really, advice has come from a variation of places; from the great West End producer Cameron Mackintosh and also a very famous, renowned opera critic called Rodney Milnes. Both said to me over a period of time, over 25 years ago, that even though you’re the producer and the boss of the company, never lose sight of the fact that you have to put yourself in a position of a glorified customer as well.
You have to be aware that people are going to come in and see it once. And that doesn’t mean you’ve got to be too careful or dumb things down, but it does mean you have to be very aware that you’re telling the story to people that may not have heard it before. And that’s crucially important. You’re the representative of the audience because you’re the person that can say, don’t do this, don’t do that — it doesn’t work. You can make those calls. If audiences don’t understand it, it’s your fault. My fault.
Interview by Holly Bancroft
