Oxford Opera Company is set to return to the stage for their first performance in 20 months, after the Covid-19 pandemic had a ‘brutal’ impact on them.
A Night at the Opera: Making Magic will see the opera company return to the Oxford Playhouse for a night featuring music from composers including Puccini, Bizet and Mozart.
The show will celebrate the return of Oxford Opera Company as well as help raise funds and support for their 2022 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Stuart Pendred, founder and artistic director of Oxford Opera Company, described the impact of Covid-19 on the arts sector as ‘brutal’.
The company’s production of La Bohème was the last show at the Oxford Playhouse to finish its full run before the first national lockdown.
Mr Pendred said: “On the one level we were fortunate but I don’t think any of us, nationally or globally, anticipated the crisis Covid-19 turned out to be.
“We have literally earned nothing in 20 months and that is why I use the word ‘brutal’. We are fighting for our survival to provide the city of Oxford with what I set the company up to do, which is to bring the very best singers to the city.”
As well as being left without any work, Pendred and the company fell through the gaps in the Government’s furlough scheme and Culture Recovery Fund.
Mr Pendred said: “I personally have struggled to understand why a sector of our society that brings so much, not just creatively but financially, has been left behind.”
He also questioned whether the Government ‘genuinely values the arts in the way they should be valued in our country’.
He added: “We have seen in many ways that it was the arts which kept the nation sane during the first lockdown. It was access to shows, films, podcasts and music that really brought comfort to the nation.”
Mr Pendred went on to describe how he ‘unexpectedly burst into tears’ at the first orchestral concert he went to after restrictions were lifted.
He said: “There is nothing that is quite so striking as being in a theatre with the visceral impact of live theatre and music.
“Music is a hugely unifying element of our humanity.”
Oxford Opera Company will be joined on stage by members of the Oxford Opera Orchestra and Oxford Opera Children’s Chorus during the show.
A Night at the Opera: Making Magic runs at the Oxford Playhouse on November 7 at 3pm and 7pm with tickets from £10.
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