About Opera Orchestrations.co.uk
OperaOrchestrations.co.uk is a small library, based in the UK, consisting of orchestral reductions of a number of operas from the opera repertoire. All of the reduced orchestrations in the catalogue are by the conductor Jonathan Lyness who, as co-founder and Music Director of the UK touring opera company Opera Project, has been creating reduced orchestrations for the company over a period of almost twenty years.
Jonathan was born in London and educated at the City of London School and at Bristol University where he won both university undergraduate and British Academy postgraduate arts scholarships. As Music Director of Opera Project since 1993 he has conducted much of the standard repertoire as well as a number of twentieth century and less well-known works including Lampe’s Pyramus and Thisbe, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Walton’s The Bear and Façade, Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole, Lehar’s The Merry Widow, Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and Britten’s three chamber operas The Turn of the Screw, Albert Herring and The Beggar’s Opera. He has also worked regularly for Longborough Festival Opera, conducting A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Cunning Little Vixen, Madama Butterfly, Eugene Onegin, Rigoletto and Falstaff as well as Opera Project productions of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Albert Herring, La Bohème and La Traviata.
In addition to conducting, Jonathan works regularly as a classical record producer with some 30 commercial CD recordings to his credit. These include recordings of instrumental, chamber, orchestral and choral music including a disc of orchestral music by the composer Jim Parker and a recording of Walton’s film music for Henry V and As You Like It, which he made in collaboration with the actor John Nettles.
Please contact us for further information.