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.
Count Ory is a comic opera by Rossini that rarely gets performed today. Written for performance in Paris in 1828, the year the Duke of Wellington beca...
This strange trilogy is made up of two short pieces – The Heart’s Ear and Bel Canto – and a longer piece, Silk Moth by Bushra El –Turk, which they ‘bo...
This version of the old Viennese operetta is subtitled The Revenge of the Bat-man. It is charmingly updated to the present day with maids becoming nan...
Forgetting Heledd is a very powerful piece of theatre, telling the story of a family coping with early onset dementia through the eyes and the words o...
The Revenge of the Bat is a better title for this insubstantial piece of Viennese musical farce. Its only claim to a place in the modern repertoire is...
“I am the hidden life that stirs when the candle is out” is the line of the libretto that remains in my memory after this superb production of The Tur...
“An epic feat of outreach” are the words used by Lily Einhorn who produced this marvellous version of Noye’s Fludde as a joint enterprise for English ...
Mozart produced three great operas with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Cosi fan Tutte was first performed in Vienna in 1790 and, despite a brief period ...
Devotees of Donizetti should look away now... but everyone who loves comic opera should pay close attention. With this free adaptation of the maestro’...
Mozart produced The Magic Flute in the last year of his life, 1791. Europe was in turmoil. In England, The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine was published...
