Founder Patron – David P J Ross
Artistic Director – Nicholas Chalmers
General Manager – Rosenna East
Site & Projects Manager – Joy Brankin Frisby
Financial Administration– Liz Whimperley Dixon
Production Manager – Patrick McLaughlin
Nevill Holt Opera Ltd Board Directors
Guy Farmer, Steven Fox, Fiona Quirk, Fiona Richards, Heneage Stevenson, Chris Thompson, Chris Brown
Nevill Holt Community Arts Board Trustees
James Dunseath, Jane Forman Hardy, Steven Fox, Fiona Richards, Heneage Stevenson, Simon Toyne, Susannah Wass, Ottilie Windsor
Nicholas Chalmers
Conductor Nicholas Chalmers is widely recognised as having established some of the most exciting and highly successful artistic projects in the UK in recent years. Nicholas is the artistic director of the award winning Nevill Holt Opera (Best Festival 2016), conductor with Northern Ireland Opera and a founding artistic director of Second Movement. With his long term collaborator, the director Oliver Mears, he has created over 20 productions and has been at the forefront of promoting young singers and contemporary music; the Rough for Opera series (produced by Second Movement) at the Cockpit Theatre, has commissioned and showcased over 40 composers and librettists over the last 5 years.
With Nevill Holt Opera, Nicholas has conducted; The Magic Flute, La Boheme and The Turn of the Screw, Carmen, Rigoletto and The Elixir of Love. Nevill Holt Opera will open a new opera house in 2018 designed by Witherford Watson Mann. This exciting project will provide a new artistic hub for the performing arts in the East Midlands.
For Second Movement he has conducted Mozart and Salieri , Trouble in Tahiti, The Medium and Impresario, Les Deux Aveugles, Rothschild's Violin and The Knife's Tears.
Conducting engagements with Northern Ireland Opera include The Medium, Tosca (Best Opera – Irish Times Theatre Awards) The Turn of the Screw, Noye's Fludde (Belfast Zoo, Beijing and Shanghai), The Flying Dutchman, The Bear, Macbeth, The Magic Flute, Salome, Don Giovanni and Powder Her Face and Così fan tutte.
Nicholas studied music at Oxford University, conducting at the Piacenza and Milan Conservatoires and was on the music staff at English National Opera from 2008 to 2011. In 2012, Nicholas was the first person to conduct a Benjamin Britten opera in China with Noye's Fludde in Beijing. Recent engagements include; Messiah Opera National de Lyon, The Turn of the Screw Zurich Opera and Noye's Fludde China Philharmonic.
The young British conductor Nicholas Chalmers is establishing a formidable reputation in the opera world as a champion of emerging talent and passionate advocate for the future of the art form
– Opera Now, Artist of the month April 2017.
Rosenna East - General Manager
Prior to joining Nevill Holt Opera in 2015, Rosenna was a co-principal violinist in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, touring nationally and internationally with conductors such as Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Mark Elder, Sir John Eliot Gardener and Robin Ticciati, as well as many other leading international artists.
From 2010, Rosenna also worked as an Arts journalist, contributing regular features and columns to the Herald Scotland, Classical Music Magazine, Gramophone and the Big Issue. She worked as a live commentator for BBC Radio Scotland from 2011-15 while also curating and presenting concerts and live discussion events.
Rosenna was educated in London and studied the Suzuki Method. Rosenna took her degree in Modern History from Brasenose College, Oxford, and her Masters in Music from the Royal College of Music, London. She was a violin teacher and director at Francis Holland School, London and at St Mary's Music School, Edinburgh. She has worked as an examiner for the Guildhall School of Music Masters degree.
In a wider community setting, as well as numerous schools music projects, Rosenna has worked in Dementia wards, in Prisons, and has travelled widely to work in post-conflict situations. She has worked with music in therapeutic and post-conflict situations in Bosnia and Croatia, Sri Lanka, and the Palestinian territories.
Rosenna was invited to join the Executive Board of the SCO in 2009. She was chosen to participate in the Clore Foundation's programme for Leadership in the Arts in 2011, and was appointed Chair of the Board of Noise Opera in 2013, a company dedicated to creating a new operatic repertoire for Scotland.
As well as highly successful revivals of their first opera 'Sloans', during her time as Chair, Noise achieved notable success with the commissioning of its new opera for Shetland, Hirda, which toured Scotland and the Shetland Isles in November 2015. In October 2014 she received, with her Noise colleagues, the annual award for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability from Arts and Business Scotland.