University College Opera The brainchild of the conductor Anthony Addison, (UCL's then Director of Music), University College Opera gave its first performance in 1951 with an all-student production of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas", followed by Mozart's "Bastien und Bastienne". Even in its earliest years, the company's annual repertoire concentrated on rarely performed operas including: Nicolai's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (1952), Bizet's "Don Procopio" (1955) and Lortzing's "Der Wildschütz" (1958). In 1961, the company staged its first UK premiere, Moniuszko's "Halka". During its first 17 years, UCOpera's performances took place in the old gymnasium at University College. With the opening of the college's
Comic opera aiming to establish an English school of family-friendly light opera by composers such as Frederic Clay and Edward Solomon as a countermeasure to the continental operettas, commissioned Clay's collaborator, W. S. Gilbert, and the promising young composer, Arthur Sullivan, to write a short one-act opera that would serve as an afterpiece to Offenbach's "La Périchole". The result was "Trial by Jury"; its success launched the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership. "Mr. R. D'Oyly Carte's Opera Bouffe Company" took "Trial" on tour, playing it alongside French works by Offenbach and Alexandre Charles Lecocq. Eager to liberate the English stage from risqué French