Artistic Director Hamish comes from the performance side of opera. His main goal in co-founding The Opera Story is to contribute to ensuring the future of opera, by commissioning new works to be written and performed.

Executive Director and co-founder Manuel has a professional career in the financial services industry, and is now applying his expertise to the administration of the company and to securing resources for its stable funding.

Saima is Managing Partner of a renewable-energy and plant-based solutions investment outfit, an MBA & ACMA and a huge proponent of Circular Economy. She has over twenty years of strategy and financial leadership experience at global corporates, and is now applying her career skills to help strategy, business planning, and growth for the The Opera Story. Her passion project is an urban organic flower farming business supporting the environment and community.

“Many more people today deserve to discover the satisfying and truly accessible riches that opera can offer.”

Andrew enjoyed a 30-year career in investment and development banking culminating in board-level responsibilities, afterwards joining the boards of other major international banks and companies. This was followed by a second, 11-year stint as a senior Oxford University fund-raiser. He has since retired but remains an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College. He is a keen amateur pianist.

Thomas has spent many years working with opera companies in the UK as a director and assistant director. With a strong background in devising and creating new work – from pastiches for the Edinburgh Fringe to involvement as a writer – he is very aware of the importance of bringing regular new commissions to the opera genre for all those artists and audiences who thrive in it.