MEET THE CAST
Hazel Neighbour
Soprano
Hazel Neighbour is a recent graduate of the Royal Academy of Music opera studio where she studied with renowned soprano Nuccia Focile. She has worked for companies such as Glyndebourne, Mid Wales Opera, and Grimeborn Festival and is an alumna of British Youth Opera, Dartington International Festival, and the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden bei Wien. Before studying singing, Hazel read Chemistry at Imperial College London. Her operatic roles include Mimì, La bohème; Contessa Almaviva, Le nozze di Figaro; Micaëla, Carmen; and Governess, The Turn of the Screw. A passionate exponent of contemporary music, Hazel created the role of Atalya in The Butt, adapted from the celebrated book by Will Self at the contemporary music festival Musiktheatertage Wien in Austria. Highlights of Hazel’s concert and oratorio experience include A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams at Dorking Halls, Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder and Mozart’s Vesperae solemnes de confessore at West Road Concert Hall. During the pandemic, she made her theatre debut touring Shakespeare plays around the UK. Hazel’s forthcoming engagements include a summer tour with Rogue Opera and performing Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel at the Vienna Opera Festival as well as role debuts of Violetta Valéry, La Traviata and Rosalinde, Die Fledermaus.
Guy Murgatroyd
Music Director
Pianist
British pianist Guy enjoys a modest reputation as one of a leading generation of pianists pliable to many musical roles.
Having worked with diverse musicians, including Leslie Howard, Elly Ameling and Andrew Lloyd Webber, along with contemporary composers including Rolf Hind, Edward Rushton and Nikolai Kapustin, Guy is no stranger to most corners of the repertoire. He had a scholarship at Birmingham Conservatoire in 2012 and recently completed postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Guy is also the founder and director of the London Art Song Collective which aims to further the performance of 20th century art song, an undervalued and untapped repertoire. The collective features over 50 singers, hand-chosen for various projects spanning over 450 composers and 25 languages.
Having assisted with Carmen in 2018, Guy took on full musical direction for Rogue Opera in 2019 and was integral to the company’s 2020/21 pandemic online program. Guy has the superhuman ability to fill in for a whole orchestra in Rogue Opera’s compact productions and is the essential fifth character in Fuller’s Opera in the Garden.
Bronwen Stephens-Harding
Founder, Director, Mezzo-Soprano
At the age of eight, Bronwen declared her wish to be an opera singer. After a varied career, combining corporate marketing with busking, choral singing, opera performance and singing studies, she is now pursuing her dream full-time. After achieving a Diploma in Opera & Performance from Associated Studios in London and working in the UK and Europe, Bronwen founded Rogue Opera in 2018 with a vision of bringing opera to new audiences and unconventional spaces. As well as singing the title role in Rogue Opera’s inaugural season of Bizet’s Carmen, Bronwen directed the production and saw it performed in a variety of venues.
Working with a dedicated troupe of musicians and seeing her concepts come to life on the stage have been a high point in her musical career, which continued with the company’s second season, presenting a vibrant, contemporary reimagining of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 2019, which Bronwen directed. In the second revival tour she also performed the role of Donna Elvira. The challenges presented by Covid-19 in 2020 have taken Bronwen and Rogue Opera into new ventures, broadcasting over 45 livestream performances and building an archive over 100 video performances of arias and ensembles, providing creative work for Rogue Opera artists and introducing new audiences to opera. Delighted to be back to in-person events, Bronwen has created, written the English libretto and directed this new production 'A Modern Opera Love Story' for Fuller’s Opera in the Garden.