a nice write-up by some officials
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2009091504
Shadwell Opera receives the Herald Angel Award
16 September 2009
A Cambridge student-led opera company has won a prestigious award in Edinburgh.
The Shadwell Opera is among a small number of student groups to win one of the top annual Fringe awards in recent years.
The Shadwell Opera’s recent production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute has received the prestigious Herald Angel Award as part of the Fringe festival.
This year was the Shadwell’s debut at the Fringe. It was also the first time Mozart’s Masonic masterpiece The Magic Flute had been performed in the Rosslyn Chapel, Edinburgh.
The award was presented to all 53 members of the company on the final morning of the festival by Kath Mainland, chief executive of the Fringe.
Elly Brindle, a second year student at Homerton College and Producer of The Magic Flute said: “Winning the highly prestigious award was a great surprise for us all. We were overjoyed as it’s so rare for a student production, let alone an amateur company, to be awarded an Angel.”
Since their inception in 1996, The Bank of Scotland Herald Angel Awards have been an integral part of the Edinburgh Festival scene, celebrating and rewarding the diverse talent from the various festivals including: the International Festival; the Fringe; the Jazz & Blues Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
The Angel awards have been given to a veritable who’s who of the arts world, including chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov, and former musical director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Claudio Abbado.
Shadwell Opera is a not-for-profit student opera company established in January 2009 by four Cambridge undergraduates. Its aim is to offer promising students the opportunity to take part in operas given to discerning, paying audiences.
The company places an emphasis on performing operas in English, in an effort to make them more accessible to younger audiences and also uses new and imaginative venues.
Its productions to date include Cosi Fan Tutte and The Magic Flute. The company’s second year promises three more operas in Cambridge, a tour to America and possibly a return to Edinburgh.
