Eleanor Burke
Artistic Director
Eleanor is a director and movement director, working internationally. She is currently a Staff Director at Theatres Krefeld and Mönchengladbach, Germany. A trained ballet and contemporary dancer, Eleanor studied stage combat with the British Association of Dramatic Combat and was a Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (2020/21). Eleanor read English at Trinity College, Cambridge where she was a choral scholar.
For Green Opera, Eleanor directed Isolated Incidents; Iolanthe: a lockdown operetta; Gesualdo, Karolina Csáthy. She wrote and directed Green Opera’s first production, the Lieder-opera Fillu.
Most recently Eleanor directed The Rape of Lucretia for Opera Asteria in aid of Refuge. Other recent productions include A Rose by another name: Juliet & Romeo (Marginalia Performance); Tosca (Bridgetower Trio); Die Zauberflöte (Opera Kensington); Carmen, The Mikado (Cambridge University Opera).
Upcoming productions include Bluebeard’s Castle, Bartók (Green Opera); Příhody lišky Bystroušky, Janaček (Hampstead Garden Opera); the UK-premiere of Louise Bertin’s Le loup-garou (Gothic Opera); and the premiere of her latest devised work, 555: Verlaine en prison as part of the La Monnaie Young Artists Program 2023.
Eleanor has assisted and worked with companies like Opera Holland Park, English Touring Opera, Silent Opera, British Youth Opera, Royal Academy Opera, Hampstead Garden Opera and Grimeborn Festival. This summer she will be reviving Rebecca Meltzer’s production of Mansfield Park, Jonathan Dove, on a UK tour for Waterperry Opera and is the Staff Director for English Touring Opera’s Spring 2023 Tour.
Lizzie Thomas
Producer
Lizzie read Modern Languages at UCL, graduating with a First in French in 2019. Prior to going to university, Lizzie attended the Royal College of Music Junior Department. Whilst there she won the national Catherine Lambert recital Prize and, on leaving, the Concordia Foundation Singing Prize. Throughout her time at university Lizzie was Press Officer for the semi-professional UCOpera company and sang in their productions of La Favorite (Donizetti) and Aroldo (Verdi). In 2019, she was the Producer for UCO’s British staged premiėre of Smetana’s Libuše at the Bloomsbury Theatre and in her final year was one of four UCL students nominated for the university’s ‘Best Contribution to the Arts’ Prize. After graduating, Lizzie was Assistant Producer for Spectra Ensemble’s Treemonisha at the Grimeborn Opera Festival. Lizzie’s day job is in marketing but she’s delighted to have the opportunity to continue her involvement in the Arts through the work she does with Green Opera.
Jonathan Whiting
Composer-In-Residence
Jonathan is a freelance award-winning composer who specialises in vocal and theatrical music. He graduated from King’s College London with a First Class degree in Music where he was taught composition under Dr Edward Nesbitt. As an academic, he specialised in musical theatre, particularly the analytical approach to the music of Stephen Sondheim. Currently Jonathan is studying for a Masters in Composition at St. John’s College, Cambridge. Jonathan has received commissions and performances from the Modern Music Society of King’s College London and Guy’s Chapel Choir and has two publications with Queen’s Temple Publications. He also works as editor and typesetter for world-renowned musical pedagogue and composer, Paul Harris, and assists in the running of the annual International Malcolm Arnold Festival. Upcoming projects include the premiere of his operatic scene, ‘The Porter’ as part of Green Opera’s Isolated Incidents project and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (Cambridge Footlights).
Nina Vinther
Environmental Officer
Nina is a First Class Modern and Medieval Languages Graduate of Cambridge University. She studied French, German, Dutch, Polish and Danish alongside lots of singing, from jazz, to lieder, to musical theatre, to Trinity College Choir. In her final year she worked with various students, academics and staff on environmental questions from divestment to subsidised rail travel. Besides her love of performance, Nina is passionate about outreach and education and never takes music for granted – she believes that musicians should be stewards of the human habitat and the arts alike. Music has huge potential to connect people to their emotion, to communicate truths not easily communicated, and to build communities in times of crisis. She is determined that our conversations about “eco-friendliness” shouldn’t be a gimmick; they must be formalised and sustainable change organisationally implemented.