Christopher Webber
Encyclopedia
Biography
Webber was born in CheshireCheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
and educated at The Manchester Grammar School and the University of Kent at Canterbury
University of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
. Starting his professional career with theatre directing work, for companies such as Orpheus Opera (of which he was Artistic Director 1980–87), Kent Opera
Kent Opera
Kent Opera was a British opera company in the period 1969-1989. Based in Ashford, England the Company presented its productions in several centres mainly in the southern part of England. These included The Orchard Theatre, Dartford, the Assembly Halls, Tunbridge Wells, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury,...
, the new D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...
in Britain and the USA, and various other English companies, he soon broadened his portfolio to include musical journalism, as Opera and Classical Music Editor for Richard Branson
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies....
's Event Magazine, as well as Music and Musicians Magazine.
As a writer, his early work included Bluff Your Way at the Races (Ravette) as well as many opera translations into English. Play commissions soon followed, beginning with a new English version of Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
's Philoctetes
Philoctetes
Philoctetes or Philocthetes according to Greek mythology, the son of King Poeas of Meliboea in Thessaly. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer, and was a participant in the Trojan War. He was the subject of at least two plays by Sophocles, one of which is named after him, and one each by both...
written for Offstage Downstairs. Later successes include Tatyana commissioned by Nottingham Playhouse, with Josie Lawrence
Josie Lawrence
Josie Lawrence is a British comedienne and actress best known for her work with the Comedy Store Players improvisational troupe, the television series Whose Line Is It Anyway? and more recently her role as Manda Best in EastEnders....
in the title role, and Beverly Klein as her sister Olga; Dr Sullivan and Mr Gilbert (Mull Theatre, revived at Glasgow Citizens' Theatre and on tour throughout Scotland); and Green Tea, shortlisted for a Guinness Prize.
He is an authority on the Spanish zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
, and his book The Zarzuela Companion (Scarecrow Press 2002, Foreword by Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
) is a standard English work on the subject. He has also written on Hispanic
Music of Spain
The Music of Spain has a long history and has played an important part in the development of western music. It has had a particularly strong influence upon Latin American music. The music of Spain is often associated abroad with traditions like flamenco and the classical guitar but Spanish music...
and Portuguese
Music of Portugal
Portugal is internationally known in the music scene for its traditions of fado, but the country has seen a recent expansion in musical styles, with modern acts from rock to hip hop becoming popular...
Music for The Oxford Companion to Music
The Oxford Companion to Music
The Oxford Companion to Music is a music reference book in the series of Oxford Companions produced by the Oxford University Press. It was originally conceived and written by Percy Scholes and published in 1938. Since then, it has undergone two distinct rewritings, one by Denis Arnold, in 1983,...
, Opera Magazine, Royal Opera
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
and many other publications; has provided programme notes and translations for many concert and festival organisations including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
; and been Visiting Lecturer on the subject at various academic institutions, including the University of Tübingen and University of Valencia. He is also a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, including the entries on his Manchester Grammar School contemporary Steven Pimlott
Steven Pimlott
Steven Charles Pimlott OBE was an English opera and theatre director and actor. An obituary in The Times hailed him as "one of the most versatile and inventive theatre directors of his generation"...
, and Joyce Hatto
Joyce Hatto
Joyce Hatto was a British pianist and piano teacher. She became famous late in life, when unauthorised copies of commercial recordings made by other pianists were released under her name, earning her high praise from critics. The fraud did not come to light until a few months after her...
. Webber has since been featured on British TV's Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
and BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
, in documentaries about Hatto, "the fraudster pianist".
As an actor he has worked in England's West End and Repertory Theatre, creating the role of Owl in the first stage version of Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh , and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner...
(London Royalty Theatre
Royalty Theatre
The Royalty Theatre was a small London theatre situated at 73 Dean Street, Soho and opened on 25 May 1840 as Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School and finally closed to the public in 1938. The architect was Samuel Beazley, a resident in Soho Square, who also designed St James's Theatre, among...
and national tour) and taking part in world and/or international premières of plays by Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
and Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
amongst others. He has also been an exponent in the field of corporate and medical professional actor-based roleplaying, especially noted for his work on development of feedback techniques, including his formulation of Advocate Feedback.
Plays
- Philoctetes (1987, based on SophoclesSophoclesSophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
) - Green Isle (1989)
- Love and Politics (1990, based on Schiller's Kabale und Liebe)
- Tatyana (1990)
- Birth of an Opera, Death of a Composer (1990)
- Green Tea (1993, rev. 2000)(Couthurst Press 2000, ISBN 1-902819-01-2)
- Dr Sullivan and Mr GilbertDr Sullivan and Mr Gilbert (play)Dr Sullivan and Mr Gilbert is a play written by Christopher Webber, on commission from Mull Theatre in Scotland, with music by Arthur Sullivan. It is a fantasy retelling of the Gilbert and Sullivan story, in which images and characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland are superimposed onto...
(1993) (Couthurst Press 2001, ISBN 1-902819-00-4) - Mozart and Salieri (1993, after Pushkin)
- A Flower and a Kiss (commissioned Welsh National OperaWelsh National OperaWelsh National Opera is an opera company founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1943. The WNO tours Wales, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world extensively. Annually, it gives more than 120 performances of eight main stage operas to a combined audience of around 150,000 people...
, 1995) - The Girl with the Roses (1999, after Pablo SorozábalPablo SorozábalPablo Sorozábal Mariezcurrena was a Basque-Spanish composer.Trained in San Sebastián, Madrid and Leipzig; then in Berlin, where he preferred Friedrich Koch as composition teacher to Arnold Schönberg, whose theories he disliked. It was in Germany that he made his conducting debut, and the rostrum...
's La del manojo de rosas) - The StrongerThe StrongerThe Stronger is a famous 1889 play by August Strindberg. The play is quite short, consisting of only one scene that can be performed in approximately 10 minutes. The characters consist of only two women: a "Mrs. X" and a "Miss. Y", only one of whom speak, an example of a dramatic monologue...
(2010, zarzuela after StrindbergStrindbergStrindberg may refer to:People* August Strindberg , Swedish dramatist and painter* Nils Strindberg , Swedish photographer* Anita Strindberg , Swedish actor* Henrik Strindberg , Swedish composerOther...
, with Derek Barnes composer)
Books
- Bluff Your Way in Opera (Ravette, 1989, with Peter Gammond)
- Bluff Your Way At the Races (Ravette, 1990)
- The Zarzuela Companion (Scarecrow Press Inc., 2002) Lib. Cong. 2002110168 / ISBN 0-8108-4447-8
- The Oxford Companion to MusicThe Oxford Companion to MusicThe Oxford Companion to Music is a music reference book in the series of Oxford Companions produced by the Oxford University Press. It was originally conceived and written by Percy Scholes and published in 1938. Since then, it has undergone two distinct rewritings, one by Denis Arnold, in 1983,...
(OUP, 2002 ed. Alison Latham; major contributor) - Zarzuela! (UME, from 2001 [4 vols.] ed.)
- De la zarzuela al cine. Los medios de comunicación populares y su traducción de la voz marginal (München, Martin Meidenbauer, 2010 ed. Max Doppelbauer and Kathrin Sartingen) ISBN 978-3-89975-208-3
External links
- http://www.zarzuela.net/bio/cdw.htm Zarzuela.Net website (founder/editor) – biographical page
- http://www.musicweb-international.com/bax/index.html Sir Arnold Bax website (major contributor)