The Making of an Opera: A Curtain Raiser to La Fedelta Premiata

Mark Troop, pianist, broadcaster and writer, is the founder of The Chamber Music Company, a creative performance group. As a solo pianist, he recorded Beethoven for BBC Radio 3, but soon branched into chamber music and song, founding the Chamber Music Company (CMC) with his wife, soprano Patricia Rozario, in the 1990s. The first of their festivals was the CMC Summer Solstice, which fused classical, new music and jazz and became the Ronnie Scott’s of Classical Music (The Guardian). The Latin American Roadshow was the live version of a ground-breaking series of BBC recordings exploring Spain, Portugal and Latin America through music, literature, mime, dance, performance poetry and art. The CMC Rare Music Series restores unjustly neglected masterworks to public view, and works by Volkmann, Fibich, Rozycki, Jadassohn and even Mozart have been rediscovered. Second Glance Festival – a festival of second performances – was another ground-breaking festival, bringing new music more generally to public attention. It ran twice and toured British new music in South Africa, and is awaiting its own third glance. Mark Troop’s excursion into European culture continued with I’m A Stranger Here Myself, a theatre piece featuring German Jewish cabaret between the wars. Following the China Now Festival in 2008, Mark Troop formed Yin Yang Collective, a collaborative East-west band featuring Chinese, Korean and Japanese instruments, traditions and musicians. Mark Troop’s work in India, with his wife, has been to encourage interest in western music. Their foundation, Giving Voice Society, trains Indian vocalists of the future and provides opportunities for them both abroad and in India. The group has produced operas with entire Indian casts, a first in the sub-continent, and generates real excitement about Western arts. In 2012 Mark Troop was invited to become a guest lecturer at Goa University, renewed lecturing on music in 2017, and in 2015, with Indian pianist Parvesh Java, founded In Good Form, a high-level piano course training the next generation of Indian pianists and teachers.

Massimo Taddia has degrees in Composition, Piano and Orchestra Conducting. In 2001 he achieved the honorable mention at the Lugano International Conducting Competition. In 2007 he has been assistant conductor at Fondazione Arena di Verona and at Carlo Felice Opera house. In 2011 he started a first international collaboration with the Colorado College of Music. He has been Music Director of the Fondazione Teatro Ferrara, Italy from 2008 to 2012. In September 2014 he has been appointed as artistic director of the Pafos Aphrodite Festival. Among his most recent debuts in Italy and abroad are: at the Hungarian State Opera and the Palais des Festivals in Osaka in 2017 and at Teatro Rossini of Pesaro in 2018. Since 2016 he has been CEO and artistic director of Opera Line SRL, a Private Company producing and renting operas worldwide. Since 2017 he has been developing international educational project partnerships with prestigious Italian opera academies in Bologna, Milan and Verona.