librettist
Olivia is reading for a PhD at the Guildhall, investigating the role of verbatim text in contemporary opera. She was previously a junior fellow at the conservatoire, having graduated with distinction from the Opera Makers MA, where she studied with scholarship in collaboration with the Royal Opera House.
Upcoming works include a full-scale youth opera, Spark, at Glyndebourne Opera House, with the composer Lucy Armstrong in Winter 2027; a full-scale community opera with East London Music Group, Nellie Cressall, about the 1921 Poplar uprising to premiere in autumn 2027, also with Armstrong; and a chamber opera, In the Cards, about a couples therapy session-come-Tarot reading, for the Guildhall's Undisciplined project next April with Anna Disley-Simpson.
Olivia’s work uses the micro and mundane as a portal into deeper analogy, using humour and wit to offset emotional twists. She is equally at home writing for chamber ensemble, full opera forces, song duos or solo voice, such as her micro-opera The Queue written with Disley-Simpson, about the wait to view the late Queen lying in state. Their chamber opera, Lost Property, a magic realist piece where the lost property office contains everything that has ever been lost - but for a price - was performed by the Guildhall's opera studio, while The Machine Stops, a chamber opera for two singers and 15-piece band with the composer Sam Meredith, inspired by the Forster short story, premiered last year at the conservatoire.
Recent song commissions include Purgatory A Waiting Room for Helen Charlston at the York Early Music Festival and broadcast on Radio 3 this summer, and a Shakespeare-themed song for the Ludlow English Song weekend next year, with composer Greg May. Her poem Fall, set for soprano, piano and violin by Ben Pease Barton, premiered in Carnegie Hall in January last year. She was commissioned to write a Christmas carol for the London Mozart Players with Georgia Barnes (2021), Let the Carols Ring, and a micro-opera commission from the Royal Opera House and Casco Phil, Everything You Carry, which premiered at St Pancras Station for International Women’s Day in 2022.
Lost Property | composer: Anna Disley-Simpson
Guildhall School of Music Opera Studio, July '23
25 minute chamber opera for three voices, 12 instruments
A TRAVELLER stumbles into a lost property office in search of a bag left behind on a train the previous evening. Greeted by an eccentric and enthusiastic ATTENDANT, she quickly finds that all is not what it seems, and she is confronted with everything she has ever lost — from bags to books, bracelets to woolly hats, and even her beloved stuffed bunny. But her initial joy is tempered by the realisation that collecting these objects comes at a price, and she is forced to make decisions beyond her wildest dreams.
The Machine Stops | composer: Sam Meredith
Guildhall School of Music, Milton Court Band, July 23
~ 25 minute opera for two singers and orchestra
~ 75 minute opera for two singers, orchestra and electronics
Based on the EM Forster novel of the same name, set in a dystopian future where humanity lives isolated underground from each other, with ‘the machine’ guiding all daily tasks – but it is not infallible.
Scarlet | composer: Georgia Barnes
Blackheath Halls, June 23
45 minute opera for four soloists, chorus and orchestra
A retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale with an Imperialist slant, with colonisers pillaging Scarlet’s home, a recently- discovered island. The eyes of Colonel Wolf and his men are firmly fixed on the treasures at Grandmother’s House, which they will attempt to seize at any cost.
The Hollow After | composer: Dominic Veall
Polish Hearth Club, February 2022
10 minute piece for baritone, SAT chorus, cello and piano
A narrative based around the shell of a Hermann’s tortoise among the Greenwich museum’s collections concerns themes of migration, trauma, alienation and the treatment of refugees.
Everything you Carry | composer: Georgia Barnes
Royal Opera House and Casco Phil, St Pancras Station, March 2022
10 minute piece for baritone, piano, flute and violin
As part of the Lost & Found festival, the microopera is concerned with the metaphorical and physical things we carry with us every day.
The Queue | composer: Anna Disley-Simpson
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, July 2023
Micro-opera for solo mezzo
In the Queue to view the Queen lying in state, a woman remembers waiting for her own loved one to die