Quinlan Opera Company

The Quinlan Opera Company was a British opera company founded by Thomas Quinlan (1881–1951)[1]

The company

Founded in Liverpool, the company was led by Quinlan who personally supervised everything, casting the operas himself, and seeing every act of every opera before it was presented to the public.

After rehearsing in London for five months, the company set of to tour the provinces, opening in Liverpool. They next visited Ireland at the end of 1911, then set for a season in Australia.

Contribution to South African theatre

En route to Australia, the company gave performances in Cape Town (in collaboration with the Cape Town Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society) and in Johannesburg during of February of 1912 where they performed operas by Wagner for the first time in South Africa. In Cape Town, they presented Wagner’s Die Walküre, Tristan and Isolde and Tannhäuser, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and La Bohème, Bizet’s Carmen and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann (all sung in English). After a few weeks in Johannesburg (where they also presented Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel in Johannesburg in March 1912), the Quinlan Opera Company returned to Cape Town for three final performances billed as a ‘Great Musical Festival’ in the Cape Town City Hall before embarking for Australia.

They returned to South Africa in 1913 to perform at the Wagner Centenary Festival in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser and Die Walküre were all performed in English.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Quinlan_(impresario)

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman, 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p.301

Antoinette Johanna Olivier. 2014. 'Exploring contributions to opera by The Black Tie Ensemble: a historical case study'. Mini-dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master‟s in Music at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University.

Greyvenstein, Walter 1988. The history and development of children's theatre in English in South Africa. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Johannesburg: Rand Afrikaans University.

Frederick Hale. 2013. The first scholarly South African interpretation of Wagner? Ramsden Balmforth's Fabian analysis of the Ring and Parsifal, Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa, 10:1, 53-69.

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