HGO Trust

Hampstead Garden Opera (HGO) was founded in 1990 by the late Dr Roy Budden as an evening class at the Hampstead Garden Institute, and became a charitable trust (registered charity no. 1092649) in 2002. HGO is affiliated to NODA and Barnet Borough Arts Council. Each year it performs two fully-staged operas with orchestra and in English, at Jacksons Lane Theatre, a 166-seat community theatre in Highgate, North London, which has been its base since 2016.

As a company we aim to provide opportunities for talented young singers, orchestral players and répétiteurs in the early stages of a professional career to gain on-stage and workshop experience, working creatively in a friendly culture, and without the pressures inherent in the world of professional opera.

We have deliberately chosen to be part of the regular programme offered by a small, informal local community theatre, partly in order to attract people who may never have set foot in the big opera houses, and to revolutionise their whole concept of what opera is, and who it is for. In the intimate setting of Jacksons Lane, audiences are drawn into the action, and feel the full emotional impact of operas both well-known and unfamiliar in a new and exciting way. We do our utmost to keep our costs and our seat prices well below West End levels, but without subsidies or substantial sponsorship, we still have to rely on ticket sales for around two thirds of our income.

The original intention was to concentrate on the major operas of Mozart, but the repertoire has since expanded to encompass works ranging in period from Monteverdi (1607) to Jonathan Dove (2011).

See http://www.hgo.org.uk/videos.htm for videos of past productions.