Tom Sutcliffe (opera critic)
Encyclopedia
Tom Sutcliffe is an English
opera
critic
, author and journalist. He is also a current member of the General Synod of the Church of England
, first elected for the Diocese of Southwark
in 1990. From 2002 until 2011 he was a member of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England.
. He was a boy chorister at Chichester Cathedral
, and became head chorister there in 1955, near the end of the period during which Horace Hawkins
was Organist and Master of the Choristers
. He was educated with a choral scholarship at Hurstpierpoint College
and then at Magdalen College, Oxford
, where he was a tenor
choral scholar
and studied English literature
.
His professional career as a countertenor
commenced in 1964, while he taught English at what is now the Purcell School
. He sang for Henry Washington
at Brompton Oratory, and took singing lessons privately from Roy Hickman, a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
, whose students included the tenor Ian Partridge, the contralto Ruth Little, and the countertenor Kevin Smith. From 1965 to 1969, he played an important role in the management of the pioneering early music
group Musica Reservata, founded by Michael Morrow and John S. Beckett
. He was responsible for the first ever large-scale concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
involving an orchestra of authentic instruments in July 1967, as a result of which Musica Reservata was contracted to make a number of recordings with Philips
Records. Between 1966 and 1970, he was the one countertenor in the choir of Westminster Cathedral
(where the boy choristers also provide an alto line). He was a founder member alongside Paul Esswood
, James Griffett and James Bowman
of the mens' voice vocal ensemble Pro Cantione Antiqua, making a series of recordings in 1970 for German radio stations conducted by Bruno Turner
. Also in 1970 he made his professional opera debut at the Landestheater Darmstadt
as Ottone in L'incoronazione di Poppea
in a production by the veteran German opera director Harro Dicks, conducted by Hans Drewanz using a new edition by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
. In 1969 and 1970, he sang with the Concentus Musicus Wien
, first as alto soloist in the Christmas Oratorio
in Bremen, and then at the Vienna Festival
in a Konzerthaus performance of two Bach alto cantatas. He also recorded the Machault
Messe de Nostre Dame
with James Bowman, and was a soloist in the first period instrument recording of the St Matthew Passion, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
, and continued to review music and opera for Vogue until 1987. Between 1973 and 1996, he worked on the staff of The Guardian
, where he was first commissioned as a critic in 1972 - covering Rudolf Bing's farewell Gala at the Met
, and the new Bayreuth Festival
Tannhäuser
staged by Götz Friedrich
. After 1979, when the Guardian's famous theatre and opera critic Philip Hope-Wallace died, he wrote frequently about opera, eventually becoming the main opera critic on the paper until 1993 and the replacement of Edward Greenfield
on his retirement as chief music critic by Andrew Clements. In 1996 Sutcliffe left the Guardian, where he had also been a frequent writer of features and had edited the arts and obituaries pages. He has continued to write obituaries for The Guardian, including most recently the obituary of Wolfgang Wagner
, the composer's grandson, and in 2007 of Luciano Pavarotti
. Two months after leaving the Guardian he was invited to become opera critic of the Evening Standard
, replacing Alexander Waugh
in a post that he held until 2002 when Norman Lebrecht
joined the paper as arts supremo on the retirement of editor Max Hastings
. He also wrote regularly for Opera News
, among many other publications.
He contributed to the Cambridge Companion to Twentieth Century Opera and has also written for the programme books of San Francisco Opera
, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
, Welsh National Opera
, Garsington Opera
, Grange Park Opera
, the Aldeburgh Festival
, Opera Holland Park
, La Monnaie
, the Edinburgh Festival
, Opera Australia
, Frankfurt Opera, the Theater an der Wien
in Vienna, and the Teatro di San Carlo
in Naples
. His appearances on television have included a 1991 film about Benjamin Britten
in the BBC
's J'Accuse series. In 1994 he took an important part in Lindsay Anderson
's last film, an entertaining and autobiographical documentary titled Is That All There Is?
. He has twice been elected to a Leverhulme Trust
Fellowship, and from 1999 to 2009 chaired the Music section of The Critics' Circle
, of which he is President until the end of 2012. In 2007 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Rose Bruford College
. He worked as a dramaturg in collaboration with opera director Keith Warner at the Monnaie in Brussels
in 1998 and at the Theater an der Wien
in 2003 and 2006. He currently writes for Opera Now and Opernwelt
.
Meredith Oakes
. Their son Walter Sutcliffe
is an opera and theatre director, and their daughter Chloe Sutcliffe is working on her doctorate on climate change vulnerability assessments for dryland farming (for the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University).
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
, author and journalist. He is also a current member of the General Synod of the Church of England
General Synod of the Church of England
The General Synod is the deliberative and legislative body of the Church of England. The synod was instituted in 1970, replacing the Church Assembly, and is the culmination of a process of rediscovering self-government for the Church of England that had started in the 1850s.- Church Assembly: 1919...
, first elected for the Diocese of Southwark
Anglican Diocese of Southwark
The Diocese of Southwark is one of the 44 dioceses of the Church of England, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Diocese forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England. It was formed on May 1, 1905 from part of the Diocese of Rochester...
in 1990. From 2002 until 2011 he was a member of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England.
Early life
Sutcliffe was born in Norwich, and saw his first opera, at the age of 4, at the Kings Theatre, SouthseaKings Theatre, Southsea
Kings Theatre is a theatre in Southsea, Portsmouth which opened in 1907. It is operated by the charity Kings Theatre Trust Ltd.-History:The theatre opened on 30 September 1907 with a production of Charles 1 followed by 2 further of Sir Henry Irving's Works...
. He was a boy chorister at Chichester Cathedral
Chichester Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, otherwise called Chichester Cathedral, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in Sussex, England...
, and became head chorister there in 1955, near the end of the period during which Horace Hawkins
Horace Hawkins (musician)
Horace Hawkins was appointed as organist and Master of the Choristers after Harvey Grace had left Chichester Cathedral. The Cathedral Chapter tried to entice the noted musical educator Geoffrey Shaw into the organist's seat, but it was not to be; after a long interregnum, they appointed Hawkins on...
was Organist and Master of the Choristers
Organist and Master of the Choristers
An Organist and Master of the Choristers is a title given to a Director of Music at a Cathedral, particularly an Anglican Cathedral in England. The tradition dates back to the Middle Ages. He is both the organist and the choirmaster....
. He was educated with a choral scholarship at Hurstpierpoint College
Hurstpierpoint College
Hurstpierpoint College is an independent, co-educational, day and boarding school for pupils aged 4–18, located just to the north of the village of Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex in the lee of the South Downs...
and then at Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
, where he was a tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
choral scholar
Choral scholar
A choral scholar is a student either at a university or private school who receives a scholarship in exchange for singing in the school or university's choir...
and studied English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
.
His professional career as a countertenor
Countertenor
A countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble...
commenced in 1964, while he taught English at what is now the Purcell School
Purcell School
The Purcell School is a specialist music school for children, located in the town of Bushey, south Hertfordshire, England, and is the oldest specialist music school in the UK. The school was awarded the UNESCO Mozart Medal in 2003, which was received on behalf of the school by Prince Charles, who...
. He sang for Henry Washington
Henry Washington
Henry Washington was a one time African American slave of the first president of the United States, George Washington. His history and linked documents can be found on-line He was a saltwater slave from Africa purchased from a deceased estate in 1763 to be part of Washington's workforce in the...
at Brompton Oratory, and took singing lessons privately from Roy Hickman, a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama is an independent music and dramatic arts school which was founded in 1880 in London, England. Students can pursue courses in Music, Opera, Drama and Technical Theatre Arts.-History:...
, whose students included the tenor Ian Partridge, the contralto Ruth Little, and the countertenor Kevin Smith. From 1965 to 1969, he played an important role in the management of the pioneering early music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
group Musica Reservata, founded by Michael Morrow and John S. Beckett
John S. Beckett
John Stewart Beckett , was an Irish musician, composer and conductor; cousin of the famous writer and playwright Samuel Beckett.-Youth and education:...
. He was responsible for the first ever large-scale concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
involving an orchestra of authentic instruments in July 1967, as a result of which Musica Reservata was contracted to make a number of recordings with Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
Records. Between 1966 and 1970, he was the one countertenor in the choir of Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral in London is the mother church of the Catholic community in England and Wales and the Metropolitan Church and Cathedral of the Archbishop of Westminster...
(where the boy choristers also provide an alto line). He was a founder member alongside Paul Esswood
Paul Esswood
Paul Esswood is an English countertenor. He is best known for his singing in Bach cantatas and the operas of Handel and Monteverdi. Along with his countrymen Alfred Deller and James Bowman, he led the revival of countertenor singing in modern times.Esswood was born in West Bridgford, England. He...
, James Griffett and James Bowman
James Bowman
James Thomas Bowman CBE is a famous countertenor born in Oxford, England. His career spans opera, oratorio, contemporary music and solo recitals. In 2010 it was announced that he would give his last London concert in 2011 at the Wigmore Hall, although will continue to give recitals outside the...
of the mens' voice vocal ensemble Pro Cantione Antiqua, making a series of recordings in 1970 for German radio stations conducted by Bruno Turner
Bruno Turner
Bruno Turner is a British musicologist, choral conductor, broadcaster, publisher and businessman.-Life:The son of a motor spares magnate, Turner went on holiday to Sweden shortly after the Second World War...
. Also in 1970 he made his professional opera debut at the Landestheater Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
as Ottone in L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello...
in a production by the veteran German opera director Harro Dicks, conducted by Hans Drewanz using a new edition by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement...
. In 1969 and 1970, he sang with the Concentus Musicus Wien
Concentus Musicus Wien
Concentus Musicus Wien is a baroque music ensemble founded by Nikolaus and Alice Harnoncourt in 1953. It generated the now well-established movement in performance and recordings to play early music on period instruments....
, first as alto soloist in the Christmas Oratorio
Christmas Oratorio
The Christmas Oratorio BWV 248, is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. It was written for the Christmas season of 1734 incorporating music from earlier compositions, including three secular cantatas written during 1733 and 1734 and a...
in Bremen, and then at the Vienna Festival
Vienna Festival
The Wiener Festwochen is a cultural festival in Vienna that takes place every year for five or six weeks in May and June.The Wiener Festwochen was established in 1951, when Vienna was still occupied by the four Allies...
in a Konzerthaus performance of two Bach alto cantatas. He also recorded the Machault
Machault
-Communes of France:*Machault, in the Ardennes département*Machault, in the Seine-et-Marne département-Other names:* Fort Machault: a fort built by the French in 1754 in northwest Pennsylvania.* Machault : a French battle ship built in 1757....
Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame is a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by the French poet, composer and cleric Guillaume de Machaut...
with James Bowman, and was a soloist in the first period instrument recording of the St Matthew Passion, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
Later career
For two years from 1968, Sutcliffe sold advertising space on the magazine Music & Musicians which he edited from 1970 to 1973. In January 1975 he became music, opera and theatre critic for VogueVogue (British magazine)
The British edition of Vogue is a fashion magazine that has been published since 1916.When British Vogue was launched, it was the first overseas edition of an existing fashion magazine. Under the magazine's first editor, Elspeth Champcommunal, the magazine was essentially the same as the American...
, and continued to review music and opera for Vogue until 1987. Between 1973 and 1996, he worked on the staff of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, where he was first commissioned as a critic in 1972 - covering Rudolf Bing's farewell Gala at the Met
Met
-In the arts:* Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan, New York* Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, New York* Various buildings known as the Metropolitan Opera House* The Metropolitan Ensemble Theater in Kansas City, Missouri-In computing and the Internet:...
, and the new Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser was a German Minnesänger and poet. Historically, his biography is obscure beyond the poetry, which dates between 1245 and 1265...
staged by Götz Friedrich
Götz Friedrich
Götz Friedrich was a German opera and theatre director.He was a student and assistant of Walter Felsenstein at the Komische Oper Berlin in Berlin, where he went on to direct his early productions...
. After 1979, when the Guardian's famous theatre and opera critic Philip Hope-Wallace died, he wrote frequently about opera, eventually becoming the main opera critic on the paper until 1993 and the replacement of Edward Greenfield
Edward Greenfield
Edward Greenfield is an English music critic and broadcaster. He joined the Manchester Guardian in 1953, working as a lobby correspondent in the House of Commons. He has been a record critic for the newspaper since 1955, a music critic since 1964, and was chief music critic from 1977 until his...
on his retirement as chief music critic by Andrew Clements. In 1996 Sutcliffe left the Guardian, where he had also been a frequent writer of features and had edited the arts and obituaries pages. He has continued to write obituaries for The Guardian, including most recently the obituary of Wolfgang Wagner
Wolfgang Wagner
Wolfgang Wagner was a German opera director. He is best known as the director of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's death in 1966...
, the composer's grandson, and in 2007 of Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti
right|thumb|Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in [[Strelna]], 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of [[St...
. Two months after leaving the Guardian he was invited to become opera critic of the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
, replacing Alexander Waugh
Alexander Waugh
Alexander Waugh is an English writer, critic, composer, cartoonist, record producer and television presenter. He is most known for his biography of Paul Wittgenstein published in 2009....
in a post that he held until 2002 when Norman Lebrecht
Norman Lebrecht
Norman Lebrecht is a British commentator on music and cultural affairs and a novelist. He was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph from 1994 until 2002 and assistant editor of the Evening Standard from 2002 until 2009...
joined the paper as arts supremo on the retirement of editor Max Hastings
Max Hastings
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.-Life and career:Hastings was educated at Charterhouse...
. He also wrote regularly for Opera News
Opera News
Opera News is an American classical music magazine. It has been published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a non-profit organization located at Lincoln Center which was founded to support the Metropolitan Opera of New York City...
, among many other publications.
He contributed to the Cambridge Companion to Twentieth Century Opera and has also written for the programme books of San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
, Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
, Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera
Welsh 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...
, Garsington Opera
Garsington Opera
Garsington Opera is an annual open air summer opera festival founded in 1989 by Leonard Ingrams. For twenty one years it was held in the gardens of Leonard Ingrams' home at Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire. Since 2011 the festival is now held in Wormsley Park, the home of the Getty family near High...
, Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera is a professional opera company whose base is The Grange in Hampshire, England. The company was founded in 1998 by Wasfi Kani OBE and Michael Moody...
, the Aldeburgh Festival
Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings...
, Opera Holland Park
Opera Holland Park
Opera Holland Park is a summer opera company which produces an annual season of opera performances staged under a temporary canopy in Holland Park, a public park in a wealthy district of west central London of the same name. The venue is fully covered but is open at the sides.The canopy was...
, La Monnaie
La Monnaie
Le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie , or the Koninklijke Muntschouwburg is a theatre in Brussels, Belgium....
, the 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...
, Opera Australia
Opera Australia
Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the The Arts Centre in Melbourne...
, Frankfurt Opera, the Theater an der Wien
Theater an der Wien
The Theater an der Wien is a historic theatre on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district of Vienna. Completed in 1801, it has seen the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music...
in Vienna, and the Teatro di San Carlo
Teatro di San Carlo
The Real Teatro di San Carlo is an opera house in Naples, Italy. It is the oldest continuously active such venue in Europe.Founded by the Bourbon Charles VII of Naples of the Spanish branch of the dynasty, the theatre was inaugurated on 4 November 1737 — the king's name day — with a performance...
in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
. His appearances on television have included a 1991 film about Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
in the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's J'Accuse series. In 1994 he took an important part in Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
's last film, an entertaining and autobiographical documentary titled Is That All There Is?
Is That All There Is?
"Is That All There Is?" is a song written by American songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller during the 1960s. It became a hit for American singer Peggy Lee from her recording in November 1969...
. He has twice been elected to a Leverhulme Trust
Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 under the will of the First Viscount Leverhulme, William Hesketh Lever, with the instruction that its resources should be used to support "scholarships for the purposes of research and education."...
Fellowship, and from 1999 to 2009 chaired the Music section of The Critics' Circle
The Critics' Circle
The Critics' Circle is a professional association of British critics of dance, drama, film, music, visual arts and architecture. It was established in 1913 as an offshoot of the Society of Dramatic Critics, which had been formed six years earlier but had become inactive.For many years the Circle...
, of which he is President until the end of 2012. In 2007 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Rose Bruford College
Rose Bruford College
Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance is a British drama school, offering university-level and professional vocational training for theatre and performance and the BA and MA degrees, based in Sidcup, Southeast London.-History:Founded in 1950, Rose Bruford "pioneered the first acting degree...
. He worked as a dramaturg in collaboration with opera director Keith Warner at the Monnaie in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
in 1998 and at the Theater an der Wien
Theater an der Wien
The Theater an der Wien is a historic theatre on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district of Vienna. Completed in 1801, it has seen the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music...
in 2003 and 2006. He currently writes for Opera Now and Opernwelt
Opernwelt
Opernwelt is a monthly German magazine for opera, operetta and ballet.The magazine covers news about current performances; it presents portraits of composers and performers, articles about opera houses and performance spaces, and about contemporary and historical subjects from the world of opera...
.
Personal life
Sutcliffe is married to the author, playwright and librettistLibretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
Meredith Oakes
Meredith Oakes
Meredith Oakes is an Australian playwright who has lived in London since 1970. She has written plays, adaptations, translations, opera texts and poems, and taught play-writing at Royal Holloway College and for the Arvon Foundation....
. Their son Walter Sutcliffe
Walter Sutcliffe
Walter Sutcliffe is a British opera and theatre director.His work has been seen in the UK, US, Germany, Austria, The Czech Republic, and Estonia, including productions of Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning, Strindberg's The Great Highway and the Austrian premier of Michael Tippett's The...
is an opera and theatre director, and their daughter Chloe Sutcliffe is working on her doctorate on climate change vulnerability assessments for dryland farming (for the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University).
Publications
- Believing in Opera (Faber and FaberFaber and FaberFaber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
, 1996). ISBN 9780571178094 - The Faber Book of Opera (Faber and Faber, 2000). ISBN 9780571206841