HGO Trust


HGO Trust was founded in 1990 by Roy Budden as an evening class at the Hampstead Garden Institute, London. It is a UK charitable trust. Its objectives are " to advance the education of the public in the art and science of music, and operatic music in particular, by encouraging and promoting the study, knowledge and understanding and appreciation of operatic art, and by promoting and/or organising performances, concerts, lectures and readings of opera, operetta and musical works generally to the highest possible standard in Great Britain and elsewhere."

Objectives

HGO brings live opera, fully staged with orchestra, and offers performance opportunity and training to young singers. It performs two fully staged operas each year, usually in original language. Upstairs at The Gatehouse, Highgate Village, in the London Borough of Camden, was HGO's home from March 2001 until May 2016 when it relocated to the Jacksons Lane Theatre in Highgate. HGO is affiliated to the National Operatic and Dramatic Association.

Productions

The original intention was to concentrate on the major operas of Mozart, but the repertoire has expanded to encompass works by Georges Bizet, Gaetano Donizetti, Friedrich von Flotow, Charles Gounod, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni, Jacques Offenbach, Giacomo Puccini, Johann Strauss II and Giuseppe Verdi. Since 2001, HGO has produced operas including Mozart’s Idomeneo, Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, The Clemency of Titus and The Magic Flute, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld and The Tales of Hoffmann, Puccini’s Il Trittico and Madam Butterfly, Bizet’s Carmen, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and Donizetti's Elixir of Love.
The HGO production of Mozart's Così fan tutte won Best Opera Production 2012 at the Off West End Awards.
HGO's productions for 2018 were Verdi's La traviata and Domenico Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto. In May 2019 it produced Georg Frideric Handel's Partenope which was a finalist in the Off West End Awards in 2020. Its 2019 production of La bohème won the NODA London Opera Award in 2020.

Board

The Directors of the Company and Trustees of the Charity as at April 2020 are:
HGO's Co-Presidents are Dame Emma Kirkby and Howard Williams.

Productions 2009 - date

In August 2020 the company will be the first to stage a live opera production in London after the COVID-19 epidemic when it produces Gustav Holst's opera Sāvitri at Lauderdale House.