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 Secret Marriage is one of those lost treasures of late eighteenth century opera. First performed in Vienna in 1792 it was popular all over Europe ...
Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) is a treasure trove of gems from a musical age that should be better known. Though a lot of early opera is nowad...
Once again Jermyn Street Theatre, with their tiny basement auditorium in central London, has found a fascinating curiosity of a play/musical to put on...
Welsh National Opera has taken two of their productions to the Hippodrome in Bristol, a brave venture given the limitations of the venue, the most ser...
This show deserves a six-star rating. It wins on so many levels I don't know where to start. The show grew out of a youth project that began 10 years ...
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 ...
