Birmingham Opera Company heads back to the factory
Putting a Verdi opera into a deserted factory requires tenacity as well as imagination, writes Terry Grimley.
Most opera companies start a new production by hiring singers and musicians: not many have to create a new opera house every time.
But that is the heavy responsibility which falls each year upon Birmingham Opera Company’s general manager Jean Nicholson. In recent years she and her colleagues have brought us Don Giovanni in the former Municipal Bank on Broad Street and Idomeneo in a disused rubber factory in Ladywood, not to mention La Traviata in the rather more conventional setting of the National Indoor Arena.
This year, it’s back to a post-industrial setting, in Digbeth this time, for Verdi’s Othello. The company has taken temporary possession of the Argyle Works, off Great Barr Street, a surprisingly rambling complex which provides relatively luxurious accommodation for offices and wardrobe, as well as rehearsals.
The actual performance space, on the ground floor, is unexpectedly epic – on my visit already covered in the red carpet, which means that audience members will be required to exchange their shoes for socks at the door for the “walkabout” performance.
You might suppose that a city like Birmingham was rammed with empty industrial buildings just falling over themselves to be used for some site-specific cultural event, but it seems to have been an exhausting business finding one that ticks all the boxes.
“A certain amount of kerb-crawling was undertaken,” says Jean. “It’s how you notice when signs appear on the outside of buildings, and then you embark on a journey to persuade an agent to let you use it.
“It’s a similar situation to last time, in that the previous owners moved not that long ago, so we weren’t taking over a derelict building. That’s really handy, when the services are still in order.”
Since 2001, BOC has specialised in putting on these annual site-specific productions in which sizeable community casts have an opportunity to perform alongside professionals. Before that, under the name City of Birmingham Touring Opera, it toured small-scale opera around the country.
Its origins can be traced back to the Cambridge Opera Group, formed by Graham Vick, now one of the world’s most renowned opera directors, and CBSO chorus director Simon Halsey when they were students. They continued under the name English Touring Opera (since taken up by another thriving small-scale touring company) before establishing a base in Birmingham and adopting the city’s name.
Vick is still at the artistic helm, and the company’s innovative work since the Millennium has attracted a lot of interest in the international opera world.
