The Observer:
'... a daring staging of Verdi's opera, played out on a platform strewn with flowers with a backdrop of soft-porn playing cards, which featured hundreds of local people as extras, singing along with the choruses...  (This) performance took place on a stage. More often, this group performs in disused ice rinks, shopping centres, on canals and once in an abandoned car-parts factory.'

The Daily Telegraph:
'Wow. I am no great fan of monster-sized stadium opera, but this production... is visually an absolute knockout... the chorus and extras – Midlands amateur choirs and community organisations – sang with passion. This was a superior piece of operatic populism.'

The Sunday Times
‘An admirable project, it employed more than 300 community performers, working with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and fine professional singers, and attracted an audience of 10,000 over two nights, BOC’s biggest ever.’

Founded in 1987 as City of Birmingham Touring Opera to produce smaller-scale work suitable for touring throughout the UK. CBTO pioneered a style of opera production now followed by many others. In 2001 Birmingham Opera Company emerged from CBTO to investigate whether it would be possible to create a company that people in the city could be a part of and would support in the broader sense.

‘It means opening the doors and inviting people in to watch you work and to work with you. This means sharing great art with great people. It’s a different way of making opera… not tied to bricks and mortar... nor tied to having a big organisation.’ - Birmingham Opera

PMF involvement:

1996-1997 audience development

April 2005 Monteverdi's Ulysses Comes Home presented in a disused ice rink in Birmingham. Shortlisted for an RPS Award in the Audience Development and Education category.

September 2006 Mozart's He had it coming (Don Giovanni). Shortlisted for the RPS opera and music theatre award.

October 2007 Verdi’s La traviata. Directed by Graham Vick, designed by Paul Brown and conducted by Massimiliano Stefanelli.

3 December 2008