Pamela Hay Soprano

Excited to be immersing myself in the glories of Gershwin for 2017’s appearance with the City of Oxford Orchestra. Come along on 14 January!

I’ve returned from Cambridge where our National Tour of Ulla’s Odyssey has kicked off. We gave two performances at Cambridge Junction of this award-winning opera. Please check my gigs calendar for information on our next dates!

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be playing Sylla, the baddie in award-winning new opera Ulla’s Odyssey, as it embarks on a national tour. The opera met with praise when we premiered it at London’s Kings Place last year, and is in demand with more dates to follow. Please visit my gigs calendar for performance details, and come along!

Today is the day! Come down to the Royal Festival Hall’s Clore Ballroom for our free, family-friendly production of Opera Blocks. A one-hour comedy introduction to opera, performances are at 12:30 and 3:30 and are free, just turn up.

Tomorrow is the big day: English Pocket Opera will publicly premiere their new Opera Blocks production, featuring a 20-min Ring Cycle, at the Clore Ballroom, Royal Festival Hall. Performances are free; just turn up at 12:30 or 3:30 and you and your children can learn all about the building blocks of opera in this comedy production at London’s beautiful Southbank Centre. See you there!

I’m on my way to show 2 of English Pocket Opera Company’s new 20-minute Ring Cycle. It’s part of the Power of Power series at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.  These 2 performances are our warm-up for Saturday 2 July at the Clore Ballroom. All welcome! 

I’m about to sing in the first performance of English Pocket Opera’s new mini-Ring Cycle at the Southhbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. What a venue!  

I’ve been invited to join English Pocket Opera’s production of a mini Ring Cycle at the Royal Festival Hall. This special performance will present Wagner’s epic work in a shortened performance for children on 2 July at 12:30 and 3:30 in the Clore Ballroom, as part of the “Power of Power” series.

Just finished our second day at Big Wheel Theatre devising workshops for Opera Up Close’s production of Ulla’s Odyssey. Can’t wait to get the finished product on tour! 

Great first day at Big Wheel Theatre as we devise new outreach workshops for children.  Big Wheel, based in the gorgeous Exmouth Market, are taking Opera Up Close’s production of Ulla’s Odyssey and creating highly entertaining workshops that we can present on our national tour. Watch this space for more details!

In honour of Shakespeare’s 400th birthday English Pocket Opera have staged Purcell’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Fairy Queen. I had the good fortune to play the title role, at the Royal Albert Hall. Here are some snapshots; official photos to follow!

It’s been a massive 6 weeks but we’ve done it: toured Carmen to 42 schools across the country.  We’ve been featured in local papers and received hundreds of glowing testimonials.

The national tour of Ulla’s Odyssey has begun! Two performances at The North Wall, Oxford, with more dates to announce soon. Watch this space to see me as baddie Sylla!

I went on tour to Bosnia with English Pocket Opera in November, demonstrating opera for primary school children on both sides of the beautiful ancient city of Mostar. The photos are now in, and I’m so glad to have them to remember this wonderful country by.

We’ve just finished our first week of our National Tour with English Pocket Opera Company. It took in the south coast, beginning in Bournemouth and working our way through Southampton and Portsmouth on our way to Brighton. Some photos of our workshops:

Fantastic to return for the 5th time to the stunning Sheldonian Theatre with the sublime City of Oxford Symphony Orchestra! I was fortunate enough to sing Mozart’s concert aria “Ch’io mi scordi di the” with the brilliant Tom Poster on piano, and Korngold’s lush “Marietta’s Lied” from Die Tote Stadt with the fabulous Stephen Bell conducting.

We’ve had our first preview of Ulla’s Odyssey on Sunday to a sold-out crowd! Production photographs to follow soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy a few photos of our final rehearsals in Brixton, courtesy of Christopher Tribble.  And to purchase tickets please click here!

We have finished our first two weeks of rehearsals for Ulla’s Odyssey, working in a great new studio space in Brixton. All the blocking is in, and our sitzprobe is on Monday near the Bank of England. We’ve had working sessions with professional puppeteer and designer Matt Hutchinson. Here we are bringing Binnacle the cat to life! 

The next role I’m playing is in a delightful new opera called Ulla’s Odyssey, to have its world premiere at London’s Kings Place next month. Here is the brief from Opera Up Close’s Crowdfunder campaign:

The show is inspired by Homer’s Odyssey and uses five professional opera singers, live music and puppetry to tell Ulla’s story, which includes playful modern updates of Homer’s monsters. It is suitable for children aged 7+, families and any adult with a sense of fun and wonder.

This new opera was the winner of the 2014 Flourish competition, an annual opera writing competition run by OperaUpClose to find the hottest new composing talent emerging in the opera world. It has music by Anthony Young (from New Zealand) and words by Leanna Brodie (from Canada), so it is an international team!

Ulla’s Odyssey will run for four performances throughout October and November this year at the beautiful Kings Place in London, with plans underway to tour the production in Spring 2016 to theatres and schools around the UK.

We are an arts charity and receive no regular funding, therefore we rely heavily on our friends and theatre-loving public to help make our ideas a reality. So help us make Ulla’s Odyssey the magnificent adventure it deserves to be by donating towards our crowdfunding campaign!

Thanks to the talented Chris Marlowe who made some excellent HD videos of the Concert for Nepal last weekend. Here is the video of my performance of Rusalka’s “Song to the Moon” by Dvorak, and you can find it in my video gallery too.