Together with Karen Gillingham, Suzi was joint artistic director of The Royal Opera House’s Youth Opera Company (ROH YOC) from 2009 until 2017. Under their tenure, the company was made up of around fifty 9-13 year old children. ROH YOC was established following an extensive series of audition workshops involving hundreds of children, recruiting from a broad base in order to give opportunities to everyone, irrespective of whether they had previous experience of or interest in opera.
Since their debut performance in the Linbury Studio Theatre in May 2011, YOC have provided the children’s cast for numerous productions on the main stage including Carmen and Otello. They have also been featured on the main stage in their own right, in a gala evening on the main stage of the Royal Opera House when they performed a new work, Out of the Ruins, by Charlotte Bray specially commissioned for the event.
YOC’s short film, The Watchers In The Wings, (opposite) is a miniature opera by John Barber, with a libretto by Steven Butler. It was launched in October 2016. You can find out more information about the project here.
Other performances of note include –
- A triple bill of short operas in the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House – Mighty Oaks by John Barber, with a libretto by Denton Chikura; Colony by Evan Kassof, with a libretto by Ruth Willow-Mariner and Aleksander Hut-Kono and Out of the Ruins by Charlotte Bray, with a libretto by Kate Kennedy (2015)
- The Crackle, a new opera by Matthew Herbert (2014)
- Gone Fishing, devised from existing opera repertory by Karen and Suzi and arranged by composer Richard Taylor. In Gone Fishing, the children got to grips with a wide range of material and languages, and they encountered all sorts of music along the way – from extracts from Nixon in China and El Niño by contemporary composer John Adams, to fragments from Rameau’s Platée and Monteverdi’s Orfeo via Britten, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Ravel and others. Director Karen Gillingham, designer Bernie Roberts. (2013)
