Our summer season is not happening
We’re sorry to have to let you know that we’ve decided that we can’t go ahead with this summer’s workshops, training and performances.
It’s a big blow for us. During our summer season we train, mentor and offer rare hands-on production experience to hundreds of people right at the beginning of their careers. We had our fingers crossed that the situation in the UK might improve enough to be able to do our summer season in some form but it’s become clear that that won’t be possible. It’s not a decision that we’ve taken lightly but it just wouldn’t be practical or safe to go ahead.
It’s a scary time for anyone starting their career in opera – for the hundreds of young professionals who were either applying or had already secured a place on one of our training programmes, this news will be a huge disappointment.
We’re determined to carry on offering accessible and useful training opportunities to singers, artistic, musical and backstage staff. We are talking to our applicants and other people in the industry to figure out what they need at this time, because BYO’s role will now be more important than ever.
If you have bought tickets already, the Hackney Empire will be in touch. They’re working with a reduced team, so please be patient. If you were planning on buying tickets, why not consider making a donation to BYO’s future instead? Just click the button below.
At the moment the BYO team is smaller than usual so please keep that in mind if you’re trying to contact us (and thanks for being patient). If you want to post anything to us, please email info@byo.org.uk first – we’re all working from home so we might ask you to send it somewhere different.