A blog for Birmingham Opera's production of Othello in December 2009. Birmingham Opera Company is not what you expect from opera! Born of a passion and a belief that opera can speak directly to all kinds of people, Artistic Director, Graham Vick, set out to create a company that the people of Birmingham - a city of many peoples - could be proud of. This means creating and staging opera in unpredictable and unusal places close to the streets of the city. 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. We don't have an opera house and we don't work in conventional theatres. We conjure our theatres out of spaces used for other purposes or maybe just abandoned. A brief period of illumination and then we move on - not tied to bricks and mortar... ...nor tied to having a big organisation. By having only 3 people working full-time from a single office in the Jewellery Quarter we can reinvent the company for each project. This way the company exists to make the art and not the other way round. Birmingham Opera Company

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21st November 2009

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Singing from the heart

Birmingham Opera Chorus is famous for its sound. Famous because it is made up of local Birmingham people of any vocal standard. But that said, they sound ABSOLUTELY AMAZING (!!!!!!), as we heard when we went into the space today!

There’s something about this strange space, with its various random elements and surprises (for the audience), that is just so exciting. Everyone was on a real high all through the rehearsal.

This is good preparation for tomorrow, where we put all the elements of Chorus, Actors, Singers, and the Conductor together for the first time. It’s going to be a real challenge - and as ever with these kinds of massive juggling events, there’s going to be a lot of ironing out to do. 8 hours straight of co-ordinating over 200 people. The production team are saying their prayers tonight…!