Senior Management Team

Ella Marchment – Founder and Artistic Director

Ella Marchment – artistic director of Helios Collective and director of productions for Constella OperaBallet – has worked on over eighty opera and theatre productions throughout Europe and produced over one hundred events that span opera, ballet, musicals, concerts, theatre, comedy, workshops, club nights, art installations, and development programmes.

In 2017 Ella directed the International Opera Awards ceremony held at the London Coliseum in Covent Garden, home to English National Opera.

Ella’s many directing credits include a groundbreaking reimagining of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas as Dido & Belinda in London; Alexander Goehr’s Tryptich at Mariinsky II; an opera–ballet production of Stravinsky’s Renard; an acclaimed international tour of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs For A Mad King; London productions of Verdi’s Macbeth and A Masked Ball with Opera Integra; a semi-staging of Puccini’s Il Tabarro at LSO St Luke’s; the world premiere of Noah Mosley’s Mad King Suibhne for Bury Court Opera; acclaimed performances of Briar Kit Esme’s Hathaway – Eight Arias For A Bardic Life, Christopher Hogg’s Il Letto, Verdi’s Otello, Charpentier’s Louise, and Mozart’s Lucio Silla at Buxton Opera; and a sell-out West End run of An Evening With Lucian Freud, starring Cressida Bonas. Ella is also co-founder of Theatre N16, a London-based arts company that promotes new plays and opera adaptations.

Ella has worked for world-renowned organisations, including the Royal Opera House, the International Opera Awards, Wexford Opera, Copenhagen Opera, Bury Court Opera, Opera Mass Actions, International Opera, Buxton Opera, Melos Sinfonia, and Opera Integra. She is committed to creating professional development opportunities for young and established artists, as well as to solving the problems that impact on opera’s accessibility and reach. Ella particularly enjoys presenting opera with a twist, having written and directed a play–opera adaptation of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, staged an electric rock-opera version of Puccini’s Tosca, and established an opera club-night series, called Toi Toi, in Peckham, London.

In 2015 Ella became the first director to receive an International Opera Awards foundation bursary. Her work is currently supported by Arts Council England and The British Council Artists International Development Fund, in association with Den Jyske Opera (Danish National Opera).

Ella’s past, current, and future productions are detailed in her online diary.

You can find out more about Ella in the following interviews:

• M Magazine, PRS (Performing Right Society) for Music
  
  
  
• Resonance FM
  
  
  

Or you can subscribe to Ella’s mailing list by clicking here.

Francis Mote – General Manager

A former choral scholar at Sherborne School in Dorset, Francis Mote completed his degree in Music at the University of Durham, where he sang with the St Chad Choir, played in the Durham Palatinate Orchestra, and was a leading member of the Ethnomusicology Society, specialising in South Korean music and the gamelan percussion music of Java and Bali. Francis also completed an MA in International Relations at the University of Durham, before going on to work for companies in Switzerland, Kosovo, Hungary, and England. Francis currently works in public relations and communications for Fidelity International. He is a fluent speaker of both French and German.

Matthew Mcguigan – Producer

Biography coming soon…

Eva Mason – Media Manager and Producer

While studying music at King’s College London, Eva was a member of KCL Opera Company, a digital-media intern and student ambassador at the Royal Opera House, and a volunteer reporter for Making Music. She also gained experience in events and hospitality programming. Since graduating, Eva has worked for the arts communications agency Albion Media and the BBC, where she is currently part of the classical music press team. A musician and composer in her spare time, Eva sings with The Bach Choir, teaches singing, performs as a singer–songwriter, and is a keen amateur film-maker.

Hugo Shirley – Development Manager

Hugo Shirley completed a master’s degree in Historical Musicology at King’s College London. He then spent two years working as a translator in Vienna, before returning to King’s to complete his PhD under the supervision of John Deathridge and Roger Parker.

Hugo’s thesis attempted to reposition Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without A Shadow) as being the pinnacle of the collaboration between the two men, while examining the piece within the discourses of modernism as a work that heralded the collaboration’s decline. Part of his research formed the basis of a feature published in Opera magazine in July 2011, and he is further adapting sections of his thesis for publication in academic journals. New avenues of research include an examination of the questions of ideology and musical ontology raised by early studio recordings of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, as well as a broader exploration of trends in opera in the internet age.

Hugo was an Early Career Research Associate at the University of London’s Institute of Musical Research, and his work has been published by both Music & Letters and The Wagner Journal. Beyond the walls of academia, Hugo regularly contributes to Opera magazine and The Daily Telegraph, as well as publishing reviews and articles on his blog, Fatal Conclusions.

Charlotte Nohavicka – Outreach Manager

Charlotte studied Music at King’s College London, where she sang in the renowned chapel choir under the late David Trendell. In her final year at King’s, Charlotte was the Outreach and Education Officer for the University Opera Society, during which time she produced and directed a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde that featured children from schools across London.