Clive Timms

Biography

Clive Timms won an Open Scholarship and later a Barber postgraduate scholarship at Birmingham University, where he gained a BMus with First Class Honours.  He subsequently trained as a repetiteur at the London Opera Centre.  He was engaged by Welsh National Opera as pianist for its Opera for All group before joining Sadler’s Wells/English National Opera as a member of its music staff, where he was soon offered the chance to conduct, both at the Coliseum in London and on tour.  He was appointed Assistant Music Director of Opera North on the company’s inception in 1978 and for these two companies he conducted a large number of performances of a broad and varied operatic repertoire.  He also played a full part in Opera North’s Education and Community programmes and conducted many concerts with its resident orchestra, the English Northern Philharmonia.  In addition to a varied career at home, other engagements have included many tours to a variety of countries ranging from USA and Canada to Australasia and the Far East, Iceland and most of Europe.

Since 1989 he has devoted himself to the development of the Guildhall School’s Opera Course.  As Head of Opera Studies he has been responsible  for the development and running of the Course, which is now considered to be one of the finest available anywhere.  He has also masterminded many notable productions, often of unusual and stimulating repertoire, the majority of which he has himself conducted.  He has also provided English translations for several of the operas performed, including the highly acclaimed production of Rimskii-Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden and Rossini’s La scala di seta as well as surtitles for Mignon, Falstaff, Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi.