Events – Co-Opera

Bookings

O C T O B E R 2 0 2 5 :

Franz Lehar: The Merry Widow

This staging of Lehar’s masterpiece accentuates the comedy and glamour in its unforgettable melodies, including The Merry Widow Waltz, Vilja, I’m off to Chez Maxim’s and the number made famous by a young Maurice Chevalier, Girls, Girls, Girls.

Macintyre Howie Reeves and James Nicholson have conceived a production that transports the original Operetta’s European setting into Hollywood’s glistening Golden Age. With Jessica Mills and Joanna McWaters sharing the title role… glitz, romance and laughter take over the stage.

Creative Staff

Stage Director: Macintyre Howie Reeves

Designer: James Nicholson

Musical Director/Pianist: Joseph Ingram

Cast

Hanna Glawari: Joanna McWaters, Jessica Mills

Bookings

D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 5 :

Sir Aurthur Sullivan: The Zoo A Musical Folly

In 1875, three months after writing the sensationally successful one act opera, Trial by Jury, Sullivan wrote another one-acter, The Zoo, with Bolton Rowe as librettist. A farcical story concerns two pairs of lovers: one involving a nobleman, who goes to the zoo to woo the girl who sells snacks there and tries to impress her by buying and eating all of the food. And another couple involving a young chemist who believes that he has poisoned his beloved by mixing up her father’s prescription with peppermint that he had meant for her. A light-hearted tale elevated with sprightly, charming music from the hand of the composer described by WS Gilbert himself as “incomparably, the most accomplished English musician of his age”. The stage was ripe for the remarkable successes struck by these two icons over the following twenty years.

The Zoo project is conceived and managed by Deborah Johnson, who has an association with Co-Opera going back to Co-Opera’s first production of The Magic Flute in 1994.