On 23rd October 2025, Cambridge Handel Opera Company launches ‘Opera Makers’ with a production of Handel’s Imeneo. This ambitious, inclusive, hands-on programme creates a space for teenagers to explore opera-making and production. Fully funded thanks to generous support from the Continuo Foundation and Angel Early Music, ‘Opera Makers’ will be led by the creative team of directors, designers, musicians, and stage professionals, offering participants an insight into both the creative and production sides of opera. The professionally staged production will be presented in a four-night run of public performances on 23rd, 25th, 27th and 28th March 2026 at The Cambridge Buddhist Centre’s Festival Theatre. Artistic Director Julian Perkins joins forces with Stage Director Guido Martin-Brandis in this production, aiming to empower young people and nurture talent while giving professional musicians the opportunity to work with the next generation.
With this Imeneo production, Cambridge Handel Opera Company will maintain its core aim of giving persuasive and historically inspired performances while offering an opportunity for young people from the local area to be intrinsically involved in the creative process through workshops, mentoring and performance in a way that the company has never done before. Education workshops have been delivered around previous CHOC productions, but this project seeks to elevate this aspect to a new level, showcasing a ground-breaking model for inclusive, community-driven opera-making.
Artistic Director Julian Perkins adds: “We are thrilled that our staged production of Handel’s Imeneo involves young people at the heart of our creative process. They are the future of our art form, and we can’t wait to see how their energy and our experience come together to ignite various aspects of this project. To do so in a Georgian theatre in Cambridge is an added bonus!”
This initiative invites young participants to explore opera from the inside out through a series of workshops and hands-on performance experience. The young people involved will develop creative and technical skills, helping to bring opera and early music a sense of relevance to new audiences. Workshops will be offered in multiple aspects of opera production and a new Youth Board will empower young people with leadership roles and real ownership of artistic outcomes.
Soloists Bethany Horak-Hallett (mezzo soprano) and Trevor Eliot Bowes (bass) are joined by Timothy Nelson (baritone), Ellie Neate (soprano) and Lisa Dafydd (soprano) in the lead roles, supported by an orchestra in which experienced professionals perform alongside advanced students.
This project will mark a step-change in how CHOC creates and delivers work. By embedding an education programme and Youth Board throughout the production process, coupled with a continued commitment to the highest levels of artistic excellence, a scalable model for future productions will be established in which young people are co-creators, not just audiences. The skills, relationships, and mentoring structures developed here will strengthen CHOC’s organisational capacity, deepen its community roots, and shape a more inclusive artistic identity whilst remaining true to its artistic ethos. By creating a digital legacy and sharing the learning, the project’s impact has the scope to extend regionally and nationally – proving that early music can be developed and presented in new and inclusive ways, without diluting artistic standards.
About Cambridge Handel Opera Company
Imagine an opera company that appeals to all ages and backgrounds without making artistic compromises. That thrives on meaningful interplay between the stage and the orchestra pit. That inspires performers and excites audiences through a fusion of scholarship and artistic excellence. That inspires children to engage in baroque music-making and invites amateurs to quiz international scholars. Cambridge Handel Opera Company is that company.
Shortlisted for a 2021 Gramophone Award in association with the Academy of Ancient Music, Cambridge Handel Opera Company stages events which are ‘simply unmissable’ (Opera Now) and ‘impeccably stylish’ (The Stage). So far, its Talent Development Programme has enabled advanced period instrumentalists from nine institutions to rehearse and perform alongside expert professionals in staged productions, while its unique online discussions between musicians, directors and scholars, Handel’s Green Room, reach global audiences. Its concerts range from revivals of English music dramas to a chamber series that showcases neglected gems
by Handel and his contemporaries.
From 1985 to 2013, Cambridge Handel Opera Group (CHOG) put on biennial staged productions of Handel’s operas. Directed by the leading Handel scholar Dr Andrew Jones, CHOG’s productions stood out for marrying historically informed performances with historically appropriate stagings.
Cambridge Handel Opera Company (CHOC) was formally established, with charitable status, in 2016, and aims to build on CHOG’s distinctive legacy.
In 2019, CHOC joined forces with the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) and Cambridge Early Music for the first time for a recording and concert performance of John Eccles’ Semele. Directed by Julian Perkins, this is the first professional recording of this work. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Gramophone Award and featured as ‘Recording of the Month’ in BBC Music Magazine, ‘Disc of the Month’ in Opera, ‘Record of the Week’ on BBC Radio 3, and ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Gramophone.
Owing to the Covid 19 pandemic, CHOC’s staged production of Handel’s Tamerlano was postponed to April 2022. This brought together an array of leading professionals and emerging artists for a run of performances and related educational events. Described as ‘a triumphant vindication of Handel the musical dramatist’ (Lark Reviews), the production featured on BBC Radio 3’s The Early Music Show.
CHOC released its latest collaboration with AAM, John Weldon’s The Judgment of Paris in Spring 2025, to great acclaim, and is currently planning a staged production of Handel’s Imeneo in Spring 2026, with young people embedded at the heart of the creative process.