Steyning date as Heber Opera promise “a bit of a gem”

The company, which specialises in performing full operas, in the round, in English, at a variety of community venues in Sussex, bring their production to King Edward's Hall, Lindfield (May 17, 7.30pm); to the Civic Centre, Uckfield (May 18, 6pm); to the Steyning Centre, Steyning (May 24, 7.30pm); and to the Village Centre, Hurstpierpoint (May 25, 6pm). Tickets via https://heberopera.co.uk/

Music director Michael Withers has been with the company right from the start: “Roger Clow was probably the founder, but I was there at the very beginning, and we ran it together until about ten years ago when Roger wanted to retire and I have carried on.

“To see any company that has been going for 30 odd years like this, in comparison to some of the rather more short-lived groups, feels like it says a lot for the singers and everybody involved. We are very lucky to have like a regular repertory company in effect. We have very strong support from people who like to come back to us. They get to sing different parts in different operas.

“A lot of opera companies will say we would like to do such and such next year and then they start looking for the cast but really we are the other way round. We think what we would like to do but then we look at the people that we've got to see if we can make it happen.

“And I think the company like working with us because they get to sing some really good roles. They're getting four or five performances to get really in their sights. But they also like the way that we work. What we do, what Roger was very keen on and what I am very keen on, is to try to get away from the myth that opera is somehow elitist. It is not. If you ask the average Italian, they would say that it isn't. It's just maybe in this country and perhaps in America that people think it is.

“And so we do things to try to get around that. We sing in English. That's the most important thing. You'll be sitting in a village hall listening to your own language. You are in a much better position to follow the story, and that's what opera is: it is musical storytelling. There's no real difference between opera and musical theatre. It is just a different style of singing. But also we do it in the round. We have the audience on three sides of the acting area and that means that you are never more than two rows away from professionally-trained voices singing the story to you in English. The third leg of the tripod is that we are really not expensive. We really do try to keep it affordable for people.”

As for the latest show, it is not one that is performed terribly often though rather more so in more recent years: “It depends partly on which biographer you read but you've got Verdi who is 27 years old and he's written his first opera. He is desperate to get it staged somehow and eventually a guy at La Scala takes it on. It goes very well and he is commissioned to write another three operas, one of which is King for a Day

“Verdi gets the libretto and he starts writing but he falls ill and his wife falls ill and dies. In the previous two years they have lost two of their children. You would say these days that he is not in the best of places to write comedy. But he does it, and in my view it is an absolutely sparkling piece. You can hear him in this piece starting to work out how he was going to write for the rest of his career. Historically it's a very exciting piece of music.

“But after the first night it bombed. It was pulled. It got just one performance and all the historians look back and say actually it was not worth reviving but that was not the end of it. It had another two or three successful runs in the 19th century and then it got forgotten for most of the 20th century until the 1960s when it was revived and that alerted people to the fact that it was not half a bad opera. And then in the 21st century it has been picked up by quite a lot of companies. I think it has just taken people a while to realise how good it is, and as comedy goes it really is a bit of a gem.”