Founded in 2012 by artistic director Ella Marchment, Helios Collective was an award-winning opera company that had development and connectivity at its heart. Through innovative and imaginative programming, Helios enabled an international community of performers, creatives, and arts partners to work together to shape the future of opera.

Among its many critically acclaimed successes, the company produced a diverse range of sell-out operatic events, including canonical, reimagined, and new operas; masterclasses conducted by world-renowned industry professionals; Toi-Toi opera club nights; and opera-plays.

Helios toured nationally and internationally to leading opera venues, including Copenhagen Opera Festival, St Petersburg Philharmonia, Rose Theatre Kingston, Sage Gateshead, and Buxton Festival.

The company provided ongoing professional development opportunities to over 1,500 artists and commissioned numerous new operatic works, spearheading a range of groundbreaking initiatives.

Ella Marchment was the Artistic Director of Helios Collective from 2012 to 2021. Under her leadership, Helios Collective flourished into a hub of creativity, innovation, and collaboration. With an unwavering commitment to nurturing emerging talent, Helios championed the development of new works and provided a platform for seasoned and emerging artists to showcase their skills. The dedication to fostering interdisciplinary collaborations resulted in cutting-edge performances that pushed the boundaries of traditional operatic performances.

Throughout her tenure, Ella curated a wide array of works, synergizing elements of opera, theatre, and multimedia in trailblazing productions. Ella’s inventive approach to directing and producing garnered critical acclaim worldwide, attracting a loyal and diverse audience to Helios Collective.

Helios Collective – Highlights

• A Celebration Before and After Verdi & Wagner, 2013
• Canerentque Aeterna, 2014
• Dido & Belinda, 2016
• Die Meistersinger, 2015
• Façade and Eight Songs For A Mad King, 2014
• Formations Masterclasses, 2015–2017
• Hathaway – Eight Arias For A Bardic Life, 2016
• Il Letto, 2017
• Mozart Mixology, 2014
• Salon Russe, 2016
• Stravinsky Double Bill, 2015
• The Bear Goes Walkabout, 2013
• Toi Toi (opera club nights), 2015

See also Opera Harmony.

• Director, Ella Marchment
• Il Letto (The Bed) was a co-production created by Helios Collective, Buxton International Festival and Copenhagen Opera Festival
• Buxton, England
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• July / August 2022

It is where we give birth,
It is where we would like to die.
It where we make love,
It is where we lie next,
(to each other).
Each day we make it,
Leave and come back again.
The infinite variation in repetition.
We pray at its feet when we feel our pain.
Il Letto, our consoler.
The house of our nights,
Where we sleep our lives.

Wives and Heroines and Muses

Elvira Bonturi – wife of the celebrated composer Giacomo Puccini – prays at the foot of her bed, trying to hold back a rage that no woman could be expected to bear.

Rage when she realises that every aria Giacomo ever composed was about a woman he was having an affair with.

Rage when she realises that her personal maid has been humiliating her in her own home.

Rage when she realises that none of Giacomo’s lauded and most beautiful music is about her.

Rage when she realises how easily she has been fooled.

Rage, rage, rage, and rage again.

Three days later a body will lie dead.

Life in the Puccinis’ lakeside house will never be the same again.

• Directed by Ella Marchment
• Cover Production
• Buxton International Festival, Buxton, UK
• 2014
• Buxton International Festival

Buxton International Festival Audience Feedback
★★★★

So full of promise and potential.

– Buxton International Festival Audience Feedback

Photos

(c) Buxton International Festival

Ella Marchment

Award-winning Opera Director and Artistic Director

USA & North America

Kathy Olsen
Encompass Arts, LLC
119 West 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023
United States of America

+1 (212) 439 8055
kathy (@) encompassarts.com
encompassarts.com

Rest of the World

Day Macaskill
Cruickshank Cazenove Ltd
97 Old South Lambeth Road
London SW8 1XU
United Kingdom

+44 (0)20 7735 2933
day (@) ccagents.co.uk
cruickshankcazenove.com

• Directed by Ella Marchment
• Composed by Gioacchino Rossini
• Buxton International Festival, Buxton, UK
• 2014
• Buxton International Festival

Planet Hugill
★★★★★

This was a wonderfully enthralling performance with some vividly virtuosic singing.

– Planet Hugill

Photos

(c) Buxton International Festival

• Assistant Director, Ella Marchment
• Director of Children’s Choir, Ella Marchment
• Director, Stephen Unwin
• Buxton International Festival, Buxton, UK
• 2014
• Buxton International Festival

The Guardian
★★★★

A rare and delightful revival of Dvořák’s comedy

– The Guardian

Photos

(c) Buxton International Festival

• Assistant Director, Ella Marchment
• Director, Stephen Unwin
• Buxton International Festival, Buxton, UK
• 2015
• Buxton International Festival

Manchester Evening News
★★★★

Those eerie motifs which foreshadow Lucia’s lunacy are cleverly brought out, and the singers are skilfully supported.

– Manchester Evening News

Photos

(c) Buxton International Festival

• Assistant Director, Ella Marchment
• Director, Stephen Medcalf
• Buxton International Festival, Buxton, UK
• 2016
• Buxton International Festival

The Telegraph
★★★★

Buxton Festival at its best

– The Telegraph

Photos

(c) Buxton International Festival

• Assistant Director, Ella Marchment
• Director, Harry Silverstein
• Buxton International Festival, Buxton, UK
• 2017
• Buxton International Festival

The Stage
★★★★

Harry Silverstein’s modern-dress production gives credibility to the characters and their situations, however high-flown, while the general standard of singing in an opera that demands virtuosity from all its principals is never less than honourable and regularly more.

– The Stage

Photos

(c) Buxton International Festival

• Assistant Director, Ella Marchment
• Director, Stephen Medcalf
• Buxton International Festival, Buxton, UK
• 2018
• Buxton International Festival

Planet Hugill
★★★★

An Idomeneo riven by his own demons in this striking new production

– Planet Hugill

Photos

(c) Buxton International Festival

• Directed by Ella Marchment
• Written by Briar Kit Esme
• Helios Collective and Copenhagen Opera Festival
• Buxton Festival, Derbyshire; Copenhagen Opera Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
• 2016

Hathaway—Eight Arias For A Bardic Life is a plaria (play–opera aria) script, written and first performed in 2016 to mark the quatercentenary of William Shakespeare’s death in 1616.

Full script available from this link.

Synopsis

Anne Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare and mother to their three children, sits in the parlour of New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire—the family’s home for the last nineteen years. Her only son – Hamnet – has been dead some twenty years. Her two daughters – Susanna and Judith – have both married and fledged. Her husband, England’s greatest ever dramatist, hasn’t written a play for three years. And now, he never will.

It is 23 April 1616. St George’s Day. And William Shakespeare is dead.

Anne has stripped and washed William’s 52-year-old body. She has tied his hair. Combed his beard. Bound his cadaver from head to toe with a simple white sheet. Laid him to rest on the refectory table that stands next to her.

Anne Hathaway is alone in the world.

She speaks into the blackened silence…

Buxton Opera Festival Audience Feedback
★★★★★

A brilliantly staged and wonderfully moving production. I felt I was right there in the minutes after Shakespeare’s death, sharing Anne Hathaway’s memories as she recalled and relived intimate moments from her life with William. A triumph of both opera and storytelling.

– Buxton Opera Festival Audience Feedback

Copenhagen Opera Festival
★★★★★

An outstanding and beautiful performance.

– Copenhagen Opera Festival

Buxton Opera Festival Audience Feedback
★★★★★

A fantastically rich, superbly constructed operatic feast.

– Buxton Opera Festival Audience Feedback

Copenhagen Opera Festival Audience Feedback
★★★★★

Hathaway is simply the most moving production I have ever seen.

– Copenhagen Opera Festival Audience Feedback

Buxton Opera Festival Audience Feedback
★★★★★

A real emotional rollercoaster that will remain clear in my memory for a long time. I simply didn’t know it was possible to get so much passion and drama into a one-actor show.

– Buxton Opera Festival Audience Feedback

Photos