The Company
David Pearl:Tenor & Artistic Director
David began singing at the age of nine at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden where he worked as the boy soprano soloist for four years, which included singing alongside Placido Domingo and creating the role of the Choirboy in the world premiere of Taverner by Peter Maxwell Davies . He worked with Kent Opera and New Sadlers Wells Opera before co-founding Opera Circus in 1990 with Tina Ellen Lee. He presented BBC2’s flagship music series The Score. David is well known as a pioneer in arts in business work around the world. In this he draws on his eclectic experience of the creative disciplines as an opera singer, theatre director and performer, improvisation practitioner, film writer, television presenter and one-time professional serenader! Offstage and undercover, David is the Director of PearlGroup. He lives in London and Piedmont and works as full-time entertainer (unpaid) for his children, Elsa and Zachary.
Anthony Ingle: Musical Director
Anthony started improvising on the piano at the age of three, and learning to play it properly two years later; parts of the latter process involved a music degree from Cambridge and postgraduate work at the London Opera Centre. He has been director of music for productions at LAMDA for many years, and since 2001, the Musical Director of Opera Circus. Anthony has written original scores for over sixty musico-theatrical productions (notable: 'Nana', Almeida 1987/Mermaid '88; 'The Invisible Man', Stratford East 1991; 'A Working Woman', West Yorkshire Playhouse 1992; 'Misalliance', Clwyd 1997), and directed the music for as many others, in particular the recent spectacularly successful production by Tête à Tête (NB, an opera company) of ‘Salad Days’. More recently still, he has decided to return to the world of Properopera and is now Musical Director of Opera A La Carte. As he always suspected, those chaps who actually wrote it all down knew a thing or two….'.
Niall Ashdown: Baritone
Niall is a writer/performer. His stage work includes regularly guesting with The Comedy Store Players, improvising operas with Impropera, and as part of Improbable’s Lifegame and Animo. He has written and performed two solo shows Hungarian Bird Festival and The Man Who Would Be Sting (both of which were made into radio plays for the BBC); and as the Maniac in Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Annie Get Your Gun, Public Enemy and Nobby Stiles in World Cup 1966.
On television Niall has been seen in Live at The Electric, Whose Line Is it Anyway? Parents, Outnumbered, Angel Cake and Barking. On radio he has written and performed two series of Losers for BBC Radio 4.
He teaches improvisation and comedy to a wide range of clients from haulage company managing directors to Scandinavian opera singers.
On television Niall has been seen in Live at The Electric, Whose Line Is it Anyway? Parents, Outnumbered, Angel Cake and Barking. On radio he has written and performed two series of Losers for BBC Radio 4.
He teaches improvisation and comedy to a wide range of clients from haulage company managing directors to Scandinavian opera singers.
Susan Bisatt: Soprano
Susan Bisatt is a versatile artist as well as an experienced vocal & performance skills workshop leader and teacher. She has worked as a soloist with Opera North and ENO, and at the Edinburgh International and Almeida festivals. Her recordings include Baroque operas and Purcell Sacred Music on the Hyperion and Naxos labels. She is a founder member of Opera Circus and a member of the Cornelius Cardew Ensemble. She is a regular workshop leader for National Association of Youth Theatres and since September 2001 she has held the post of Vocal Animateur for Tameside Local Education Authority.
Louise Crane: Mezzo Soprano
Since making her débuts at Glyndebourne, English National Opera and the Belgium Royal Opera, Louise Crane has established herself as one of this country's most sought-after and versatile mezzo sopranos. She studied at the Guildhall and gained a college scholarship, to study at the RNCM. After a season with Glyndebourne Festival Opera Louise won the Peter Stuyvestant Foundation Scholarship to the National Opera Studio where she completed her studies. Some early engagements were Don Giovanni with Opera Factory (filmed for Channel 4), and Dialogues des Carmelites for the Opèra de Lyon (recorded by Virgin Classics), since when her many & varied roles have included performances for the Aldeburgh Festival, Opera East at the Iford Festival, Chelsea Opera Group and English Touring Opera. Louise has enjoyed a long and regular association with Opera della Luna, and is a regular guest soloist at the annual International Gilbert & Sullivan Fesitval at Buxton Opera House. She has once again played Hebe in Raymond Gubbay’s production of HMS Pinafore at the Barbican Centre, Birmingham Symhony Hall and Manchester's Bridgewater Hall. Further performances include Flora in Co-Opera’s production of La Traviata in Dublin and Barbados for the Holder’s Festival, Praskovia The Merry Widow and Minerva Orpheus in the Underworld for Opera Holland Park.
Increasingly in demand for concert engagements at home and abroad, Louise has broadcast Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, appeared on Friday Night is Music Night and toured with the Basque Symphony Orchestra of Spain and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. She has recorded extracts from Handel’s Messiah for Classic FM.
She is a singing teacher at the Birmingham Conservatoire and also runs vocal workshops for choirs and trains business people in the art of presentation and use of vocal skills.
http://www.louise-crane.com
Increasingly in demand for concert engagements at home and abroad, Louise has broadcast Rossini’s Stabat Mater with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, appeared on Friday Night is Music Night and toured with the Basque Symphony Orchestra of Spain and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. She has recorded extracts from Handel’s Messiah for Classic FM.
She is a singing teacher at the Birmingham Conservatoire and also runs vocal workshops for choirs and trains business people in the art of presentation and use of vocal skills.
http://www.louise-crane.com
Peter Furniss: Clarinets, recorders, saxophone
'the man who does everything with the wind'
Having played the recorder since birth, Pete Furniss took up the clarinet at the age of seven and has been making it up as he goes along ever since. He was a proud winner of the 1981 Telford Young Clarinettist Competition and, less proudly, spent the prize money on tickets to an Adam and the Ants gig. He has performed extensively across the planet (often using actual music, written down by real composers), giving recitals at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, London's Purcell Room and the Tenri Institute in New York and has appeared at many festivals from Spitalfields to Jerusalem via Azerbaijan, as well as at a special audience in Salzburg with the Dalai Lama.
Not content with the misery inflicted by one clarinet, Pete now gives performances using live electronic processing and multi-tracked tape, in which the audience finds itself surrounded by a sonic manifestation of his multiple personality in music by Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Richard Dudas, Andrew May and others. Emergency exits are always clearly indicated.
A committed teacher for over 15 years, Pete is also involved in a number of projects as animateur, composer and conductor, particularly with the DaCapo Music Foundation. In July 2005 he conducted a performance of hisFarmyard Suite in Norwich Cathedral with 720 school children. A second piece, Finn and Friends, is due to be performed by the Aurora Orchestra in 2010.
www.peterfurniss.co.uk
Morag McLaren: Soprano
Morag has performed in a wide variety of opera, musicals and music theatre productions, as well as her critically acclaimed one-woman shows and concerts here and in the USA. She played Carlotta in Lloyd Webber's Phantom of The Opera, Her Majesty's; Mrs Segstrom in Sondheim's A Little Night Music at Royal National Theatre as well as roles at Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera Mother. She toured extensively as The Good Wife and The Maid in Opera Circus' naughty tale, Shameless. More about Morag:
http://www.moragmclaren.com
http://www.moragmclaren.com
