improvised opera course
Learn how to improvise opera with Niall Ashdown and Anthony Ingle from Impropera, the world’s first improvised opera company!
Niall is a regular performer with The Comedy Store Players and a original cast member of Whose Line is it Anyway!
Anthony is the Musical Director for Impropera the improvised opera and director for music at LAMDA.
Impropera have hugely successful improvised opera shows in London’s West End, at the Edinburgh Fringe and across Europe. The company have an international reputation for their unique mix of virtuoso musicianship, agile wit and ingenious storytelling.
This course is suitable for people with previous improvised singing and long form experience.
dates, time, location
Dates: Every Saturday for 8 weeks from Saturday 4th October 2025, plus a show on Thursday 4th December 2025. BOOK NOW
Time: 11am – 1pm each week.
Price: £250. Either payable all at once or £125 at time of booking and £125 when the course starts.
Teachers: Niall Ashdown and Anthony Ingle.
Workshop Location: Umbrella Rooms, 239 Shaftesbury Ave, London, WC2H 8EH.
Tube: Tottenham Court Road or Holborn.
This course is suitable for people with previous improvised singing and long form experience.
Niall Ashdown
Niall is one of the UK’s finest improvisers and a regular performer with The Comedy Store Players and original cast member of Whose Line is it Anyway!
He is the baritone singer and improviser in Impropera the improvised opera.
He has worked with a wide range of improvising companies including Impropera, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Improbable’s Lifegame and The Improbable Musical and The Suggestibles. He has also performed a story-telling and sketch show with improvising quintet Between the Notesled by cellist Matthew Barley.
He has co-devised and performed with some of the UK’s most innovative theatre companies including Improbable, Cartoon de Salvo, Punchdrunk and Told By An Idiot.
Niall has also performed two solo shows Hungarian Bird Festival and The Man Who Would Be Sting both of which were made into radio plays for the BBC, and has appeared at the Young Vic in Annie Get Your Gun and Public Enemy.
He has appeared many times on television comedies including Outnumbered (BBC1),
On radio he has written and performed two series of Losers for BBC Radio 4.
He has a written songs for radio plays and stage shows, poetry for Radio 3’s The Verb, and was the author and voice behind Robbo Robson, the Voice of Sport on BBC5 Live’s The Treatment.
Anthony Ingle
Anthony Ingle read Music at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and followed that with a Repetiteur’s Diploma from the London Opera Centre. Since then he has been recital accompanist, chamber music pianist, composer and arranger for concert hall and stage, musical theatre MD, jazz bandleader, folk/rock keyboard player and bassist, music editor and occasional accordionist. All these activities have trespassed into each other’s territories, and met in the green room of Impropera, the world’s only (and probably best) improvising opera company, extemporising (by now well over four hundred) brand-new operatic experiences in every detail in front of audiences who requested them and provided the subject matter.
For a very long time until 2020, he was on the music staff of the theatre academy LAMDA, where he was involved in well over a hundred stage-works of all kinds, many as composer and/or musical director. Since then, Impropera has kept right on going, and he has remained in touch with properopera through Destination: Opera in Dorset and through individual coaching work with many singers, including our youthful rivals the Improvesarios, whom we taught (almost) everything they know.
faqs
Who is this suitable for?
People with previous improvised singing and long form experience.
What comes after this course?
We have a variety of other advanced improv courses that would be suitable and help you get different inspirations and experience the full wondrous word of improv!
What if I’m running late?
We’ll be starting each session at 11am. This is an advanced course and we’re trying to form a team, so please don’t book this course if you are likely to be late on a regular basis.
What’s the class size?
Our workshops are usually around 14 people.
Can I pay by instalments?
Yes. You can pay half at time of booking and half once the course starts, please see details at top of page.
Do I have to know anything opera to do this course?
No.
How often will you be running this course?
Not that often, about once a year at the most, as the teachers are busy with other projects.