Owen Davies was brought up in London but has Welsh roots. He was raised on chapel hymns, Handel oratorios and Mozart arias. He began going to the theatre in the 1960s and, as a teenager, used to stand at the back of the Old Vic stalls to watch Olivier's National Theatre productions. He also saw many RSC productions at the Aldwych in the 1960s. At this time he also began to see operas at Covent Garden and developed a love for Mozart, Verdi and Richard Strauss. After a career as a social worker and a trade union officer, Owen has retired from paid employment but is a student at Rose Bruford College studying for a BA in Opera Studies.
The King’s Head team have come up with another modernised stripped-down version of a great operatic classic and it is superb. With only four singers a...
This David McVicar production of Traviata is nearly ten years old now but has lost none of its narrative force and emotional power. It is not a ground...
Prokofiev's operatic version of Tolstoy's novel presents a range of challenges for any opera company. David Pountney's production for Welsh National O...
This fascinating play about the artist Leonora Carrington is the result – so the writer tells us - of a visit to an exhibition of Carrington’s work at...
The Grimeborn season at the Arcola Theatre often achieves minor miracles. This production of an opera by Cavalli from seventeenth century Venice is a ...
The Grimeborn season at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston continues with an intriguing re-telling of the story of Carmen. The writer Dan Allum has drawn o...
The Grimeborn opera season at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston continues with a re-imagined version of Eugene Onegin, devised by Guido Martin-Brandis. Th...
The Grimeborn opera season at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston has seen double bills from Opera Alegria before. This year they have twinned two very diff...
Opera Della Luna has an admirable track record of revitalising old comic operas. Its guiding spirit, Jeff Clarke, has taken Donizetti’s comic masterpi...
The Grimeborn opera season at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston always throws up some fascinating curiosities – this charming comic opera by Ethel Smyth i...
