Surrey Opera performs a broad range of operas and shows, with professional and up and coming principals, the "Surrey Opera chorus" and a full orchestra, providing affordable performances across Surrey, Sussex and Kent In June 1970, she embarked upon the most ambitious project of her career, staging the Mozart operas, starting with the Magic Flute in Redhill's Market Hall. Russell Smythe, who playe
d Papageno, went on to the Guildhall School of Music and subsequently to a successful professional career, singing at Covent Garden and with the English and Welsh National Opera companies. With the financial success of this first opera, all the Mozart operas followed together with Beethoven's Fidelio, for which a tenor, Martin Cutze, was prepared to travel all the way from Germany to sing Florestan. Realising, in 1976, that she would like a younger conductor to take over, Joyce heard of a brilliant young musician who was conducting The Marriage of Figaro at Blindley Heath. She handed over the baton to Jonathan Butcher, the present Artistic Director, who has continued so remarkably what Joyce Hooper started. Patron: Sir John Tomlinson
President: Ted Van Loock
Vice-President: Peter Sidhom
