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 as a 'mature student' he has recently gained a certificate in Opera Studies from Rose Bruford College.
This is a show that fizzes with ideas and enthusiasm. Written in 1950, The Bald Soprano is the first play of the French-Romanian playwright Eugene Ion...
Turgenev’s masterpiece has lured many writers to take up the challenge of adapting it for their own times. In this fine National Theatre production, P...
This is a difficult opera to like. Strauss wrote his great operas between 1905 and the start of the Great War – after 1914 he struggled to find the su...
This is a riveting and challenging play in a clever and creative production. That I found it difficult to watch says volumes for the strength of the w...
Beckett’s plays are always challenging – for actors and audience alike. Sometimes they are rewarding too and two of these three short plays certainly ...
ENO describes this stunning production of Sweeney Todd as semi-staged. It is a tribute to the show and its performers that by the end of an evening of...
Giordano wrote fourteen operas but Andrea Chenier,first heard in Milan in 1896, is the only one that is regularly performed today. Giordano was one of...
This play is a moral and political fable in the guise of a farcical fairy tale. It tells of the attempt of knight errant, Sir Lancelot, to free a vil...
This strange show is difficult to categorise. It is described by the theatre as “avariety gang show for the 21st century”. It mixes stunts, magic, ill...
This is a brilliant but desperately bleak play. Written by Simon Stephens around ten years ago, it focuses on four unhappy men gathered in a run-down ...
