You don’t have to look very far in the UK’s opera world to find someone who started their career with BYO. Onstage, backstage, in the rehearsal room, the dressing room and in front of the orchestra – for more than 25 years we’ve been helping young people find their feet in the professional world.
about byo
what we do
A thriving opera industry depends on interesting and promising individuals being able to succeed. We all know that. At BYO we’re all about widening access and helping creative and ambitious young people build careers in opera.
It’s a three step process:
BYO ‘finds’ those individuals, whether that’s young people who are already hooked and actively looking for opportunities, curious individuals in colleges and universities, or younger children whose eyes we can open to the hundreds of different jobs in opera.
Then, we train them. From our online training platform, BYO hub, to our full-time summer programmes, our participants get to learn from the best in the business.
Finally we launch them into their careers – by showing them off to the world, to the public and people like casting directors. And the networks they build help them get jobs and agents and other career-building tools.
widening access
Our Serena Fenwick programme develops the careers of people who can’t access more ‘traditional’ routes into their chosen careers for personal, financial or logisitcal reasons.
In 2024 our intake includes 15 young stage managers with little or no professional experience – they’ll leave the programme with everything they need to get their first stage management job.
Plus eight singers joined the programme from a diverse range of backgrounds, including care leavers, disabilities and caring responisbilities.
digital first
The next generation of singers, directors, designers, stage managers and music staff grew up online and so that’s where we are too.
BYO hub is our online training portal, offering online learning, career events and applications to BYO’s face-to-face programmes to tens of thousands of visitors each year.
new creative pathways
In 2023 we asked young opera directors, conductors and designers what they needed most to be able to grow their careers, and their answer was overwhelming – they needed opportunitied to direct, conduct and design their own productions.
Our summer productions are created entirely by the young professionals on our programmes, with support, guidance and mentoring from some of the biggest names in opera. It’s a real and tangible way for young creatives to build and showcase their skills, launching them as ‘names to watch’ in the opera wolrd.
alumni
We’ve been serving the UK’s opera industry for over 30 years. And with hundreds of participants passing through our programmes every year, our alumni are everywhere – planning, creating and performing the work that keeps our opera scene vibrant and thriving. And they all built the foundations of their careers here at BYO.
selected alumni highlights
who we are
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Anna Patalong
Chief Executive
Charles Lewis
Head of Communications
Emily Louise Palmer
General Manager
Carla Pannett
Development AssociateKezia Bienek
Fundraising Ambassador -
President
Dame Sarah Connolly DBE
Vice Presidents
Dame Janet Baker CH
Susan Bullock CBE
Lucy Crowe OBE
Chevalier Jose Cura
Timothy Dean
Edward Gardner OBE
Professor Dame Jane Glover DBE
Sir John Hannam
Dame Felicity Lott
Valerie Masterson CBE
Hugh Merrill MVO
Rt Hon Baroness Perry of Southwark
Peter Robinson
Nicky Spence OBE
Sir John Tomlinson CBE -
Chairman
Richard Greenhalgh
Trustees
Claire Barnett-Jones
Richard Brooman
Julia Burbach
Holiday Donaldson
Vivek Haria
Tessa Marchington
James McNaught-Davis
John Richards
John Rothenberg
Jennifer Smith
Simon Spence KC
John Sunnucks
Toby Young -
29 May 1961 Charitable Trust
The D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust
The Fenton Arts Trust
The Fidelio Charitable Trust
Foyle Foundation
The Garrick Charitable Trust
GC Gibson Charitable Trust
Idlewild Trust
The Leche Trust
The Rowlands Trust
Stichting Horizon
Vaughan Williams Foundation