• It is 1965. Failing pop star, Arnold Dorsey is advised by his manager to find a catchier name. As Engelbert Humperdinck Please Release Me sells
  80,000 copies in a day and fends off Penny Lane from the top of the charts
• When Wagner was running out of steam on Parsifal (1880-1), he asked The Real Humperdinck to write some scene change music. Mrs Wagner (Cosima) was godmother to Engelbert’s only son, Wolfram
• Relatively little was known about Humperdinck until his granddaughter Eva (a Doctor of Music and a nun) published his letters. She has written a statement pointing to errors in Pachl’s book on Siegfried Wagner, the composer’s son and pupil of Engelbert (google Eva Humperdinck)
• Many recent productions have been set in sink estates. We’ve gone more Charles Dickens
• Susan Bullock (witch/mother) has sung major Wagner roles on every continent; William Dazeley (father/brush-maker) was in our 2007 Falstaff; Soraya Mafi (Gretel) was Constance in our 2013 Carmelites – her first professional role. She has since appeared at the Châtelet, ENO, WNO

• Operas take place in a new five–storey opera house, nestling in the woods by 15th century West Horsley Place
• The new opera house opened in June 2017 and since then more than 30,000 people have visited
• It was built in just 10 months and £11.4m was raised from individuals
• During the company’s 22 year history, repertoire has included lesserknown operas such as Thaïs, Don Quichotte (Massenet), Carmélites (Poulenc) Enchantress (Tchaikovsky), Love for Three Oranges (Prokofiev), Eliogabalo (Cavalli)
• Fiddler on the Roof, starring Bryn Terfel, was at the 2015 BBC Proms
• The world première of Pushkin was presented in 2018 by Moscow’s Novaya Opera orchestra and chorus
• The company pioneers younger audiences and younger artists

Membership

JOIN THE FAMILY

Annual memberships are payable by monthly direct debit from as little as £20 per month

Members make the 2020 season and allow the work in prisons, primary schools and with young people.

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