John Copley (producer)
John Copley | |
|---|---|
| Born | 12 June 1933 |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Theatre and opera producer |
| Spouse(s) | John Hugh Chadwyck-Healey (civil partner 2006–2014) |
John Michael Harold Copley CBE (born 12 June 1933),[1] is a British theatre and opera producer and director.
He was born in Birmingham to Ernest and Lilian (née Forbes) Copley, and attended King Edward VI Five Ways grammar school. After a brief career as an actor, he became stage manager at Sadler's Wells in 1953 and resident producer for The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, in 1972. He has produced most of the standard operatic repertoire for many opera houses and festivals in Europe, the United States, and Canada. He is also an accomplished pianist and singer. He has had a long association with Opera Australia, including the Australian premiere of Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa in 1974.[2][3]
The filmed operas he has been associated with are:
- Semiramide (1990)
- Adriana Lecouvreur (1984)
- Giulio Cesare (1984)
- La bohème (1982)
- Lucrezia Borgia (1980)
- Lucia di Lammermoor (1986)
For over 50 years Copley was the partner of John Hugh Chadwyck-Healey (1922–2014), grandson of Charles Chadwyck-Healey, 1st Baronet. In 2006, they contracted a civil partnership, which Copley described when he was a guest on the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs programme on 3 January 2010.[4]
Copley was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to opera.[5]
In January 2018, during choir rehearsals for a revival of Copley's 1990 production of Rossini's Semiramide at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City,[6] Copley coached the singers to show reactions to the appearance of Nino's ghost at the end of act 1. He suggested that he would "imagine the character naked" which prompted a complaint from a chorister. The Met's manager Peter Gelb then fired Copley, citing a different account of the complaint. Gelb's action has been described as a "witch hunt" and been widely criticised by other cast members, opera singers and managers.[7]
Footnotes
- ^ "Birthday's today". The Telegraph. 12 June 2013. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
Mr John Copley, opera director, 80
- ^ Jenůfa production details, ausstage.edu.au
- ^ Paul Wingfield (1999). "Appendix – Janáček Premieres in Australia". Janácek Studies. Cambridge Composer Studies. Cambridge University Press. p. 167. ISBN 9780521573573.
- ^ Presenter: Kirsty Young (3 January 2010). "John Copley". Desert Island Discs. London, UK. BBC. BBC Radio 2.
- ^ "No. 60728". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2013. p. 8.
- ^ "Met Opera Fires Stage Director, Citing 'Inappropriate Behavior'" by Michael Cooper, The New York Times, 31 January 2018
- ^ "Britain's leading Opera director John Copley sacked after making 'sexually inappropriate' joke about naked ghost" by Olivia Rudgard and Rozina Sabur, The Daily Telegraph, London, 4 February 2018
External links
- Information Britain
- John Copley at IMDb
- "Copley, John Michael Harold", The Riverside Dictionary of Biography
- Interview with John Copley by Bruce Duffie, January 14, 1989
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