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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.

I left feeling that the future of British civilization is in good hands, larynxes, and batons.

The Express

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.

Helios Collective is something to be excited about: our music is in their hands.

Broadway Baby

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.

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

Copenhagen Opera Festival Audience Feedback

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.

Cavalier’s Rock Tosca is basically one of the best ideas anyone has ever had. Big, sweaty, loud and brilliant, rock’s ego-heavy aesthetic is ideal for Puccini’s personality-driven thriller. Ella Marchment’s direction makes the most of this, focusing us on individual characters in turn, keeping the crucial claustrophobic air of persecution in each scene while blasting us with big volume and bigger emotions.

Bachtrack

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

Tremendously enjoyable and accomplished…what a delightful operatic experience.

Rupert Christiansen‏, The Telegraph

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
• Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Copenhagen Opera Festival
• 2019

Synopsis

Tryl – Danish for Magic – is Copenhagen Opera Festival’s family-friendly version of Mozart’s masterpiece The Magic Flute, with the storyline streamlined to focus on the opera’s three central couples: Papageno and Papagena; Tamino and Pamina; and the Queen of the Night and Sarastro.

We begin in the living room of the ageing Papageno, surrounded by his playful grandchildren. When they accidentally destroy the picture frame holding their grandparents’ wedding photo, they inadvertently cause an unexpected rip in the fabric time, and it’s as if the two lovers never met. The rip can only be repaired by reliving the story exactly as it originally happened, and time winds back to when Papageno was a lonely bird catcher in search of love.

The present day is presented through video, with grandfather Papageno – as the all-knowing narrator – recounting events from his earlier life as they take place on the stage, trying to guide the story towards its well-known happy ending.

Children in the audience can identify with the grandchildren in the video, who disappear after the chaos of the opening scene to be represented by the all children in the theatre.

Grandfather Papageno speaks to them throughout, asking for their help and to sing along at chosen points of the the story, bringing the magic of the play to life.

Copenhagen Opera Festival Feedback ★★★★★

Absolutely Trylling!

– Copenhagen Opera Festival Feedback

Video

Photos

• 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

• Directed by Ella Marchment
• Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Copenhagen Opera Festival
• 2018

Synopsis

Tryl – Danish for Magic – is Copenhagen Opera Festival’s family-friendly version of Mozart’s masterpiece The Magic Flute, with the storyline streamlined to focus on the opera’s three central couples: Papageno and Papagena; Tamino and Pamina; and the Queen of the Night and Sarastro.

We begin in the living room of the ageing Papageno, surrounded by his playful grandchildren. When they accidentally destroy the picture frame holding their grandparents’ wedding photo, they inadvertently cause an unexpected rip in the fabric time, and it’s as if the two lovers never met. The rip can only be repaired by reliving the story exactly as it originally happened, and time winds back to when Papageno was a lonely bird catcher in search of love.

The present day is presented through video, with grandfather Papageno – as the all-knowing narrator – recounting events from his earlier life as they take place on the stage, trying to guide the story towards its well-known happy ending.

Children in the audience can identify with the grandchildren in the video, who disappear after the chaos of the opening scene to be represented by the all children in the theatre.

Grandfather Papageno speaks to them throughout, asking for their help and to sing along at chosen points of the the story, bringing the magic of the play to life.

Copenhagen Opera Festival Feedback ★★★★★

Absolutely Trylling!

– Copenhagen Opera Festival Feedback

Video

Photos