Clive Timms

Clive Timms won an Open Scholarship and subsequently a Barber postgraduate scholarship at Birmingham University, where he gained a BMus with First Class Honours.  After training as a repetiteur at the London Opera Centre he spent a year with Welsh National Opera before joining Sadler’s Wells/English National Opera as a member of its music staff and conductor. 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.  

He was appointed Head of Opera Studies at Guildhall School in 1989 and devoted himself to the development of the School’s Opera Course, which was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2007 and remains one of the finest available anywhere.  He masterminded many notable productions, often of unusual and stimulating repertoire and the majority of which he himself conducted. He also provided English translations and surtitles for many of the operas performed.  Since his retirement from the Opera Department in 2012 he has continued to coach advanced and aspiring singers at the School. He has also enjoyed a long association with Clonter Opera where he was Musical Director from 2010 until 2019, conducting the annual opera productions and taking an active role in all its operatic activities.