As the Musical Director for Anglia Opera, the semi-professional opera company based at Anglia Ruskin University between 1993 and 2017, I conducted a number of fully-staged operas by Puccini, Verdi, Britten, Purcell, Weill and Orff.
Highlights included the first complete staging of the Alfano completion of Puccini’s Turandot, of which Opera Magazine noted that:
Paul Jackson’s conducting convey[ed] … the grandeur of the work, achieving a fine sense of dramatic momentum.
Opera Magazine
One of the company’s biggest successes was the staging of Benjamin’s Britten Peter Grimes, with stage direction by Cambridge Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director, David Crilly.
The inventive and demanding choruses … were done as well as one could wish. Quite simply, this was one of the best Grimes we will see for a long time.
Cambridge Evening News