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The English conductor and music scholar, Jane Alison Glover, attended Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls. Her father, Robert Finlay Glover MA TD, was headmaster of Monmouth School and it was through this connection that she was able to meet Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears aged only 16. She read Music at St Hugh's College, the University of Oxford, and went on to complete there a DPhil on 17th-century Venetian Opera. She has published a 1978 biography of Francesco Cavalli, and included material derived from her doctoral thesis. In 1990, after a sizeable donation, the Glover Music School was opened at Monmouth School for Boys by Jane Glover, in memory of her father.
Jane Glover first conducted at Oxford, as a student, in a production of Athalia. She made her professional debut at the Wexford Festival in 1975 with the first modern performance of Eritrea and joined Glyndebourne in 1979. She was Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1981 to 1985. She has been both Principal Conductor and Principal Guest Conductor of the Huddersfield Choral Society and continues to work with the choir on a semi-regular basis. She conducted the world premiere of Il Giardino by Stephen Oliver at the Batignano Festival in 1977.
During the 1980's, Jane Glover regularly broadcast on BBC Television including hosting the television series Orchestra with Jane Glover in 1983 and Mozart - His Life with Music in 1985. She was the Music Director of the London Mozart Players from 1984 to 1991. Since 2002, she has been Music Director of the Chicago ensemble Music of the Baroque (MOB).
Jane Glover has appeared with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, English National Opera, Glyndebourne, Berlin Staatsoper, Royal Danish Opera, Opera National du Rhin in Strasbourg, Opera National de Bordeaux, Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Australia, Opera Theatre of St Louis, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and the Metropolitan Opera, New York. A Mozart specialist, her core repertoire also includes Monteverdi, Handel and Britten, but extends widely from the 17th to 21st centuries. On March 18, 2011, she conducted the world premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies' opera Kommilitonen! at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Recently, she has conducted Eugene Onegin and Ariodante at the Royal Academy of Music, W.A. Mozart's Lucio Silla in Bordeaux, and Poppea in Aspen. In December 2013, she became the third woman ever to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, leading W.A. Mozart's The Magic Flute in the production of Julie Taymor; the New York Times wrote, "...Ms. Glover's appearance, and the magisterial performance and nuance she drew from the orchestra, were the news here." She conducted Magic Flute agin at St Louis this summer (2016), followed by L'Allegro in Madrid, Figaro in Gothenburg, Iphigenie en Aulide for the Met Lindemann Program and Juilliard, and Igor Stravinsky's The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Academy of Music. She has been a regular collaborator with choreographer Mark Morris.
In concert Jane Glover has performed with all the major orchestras in Britain, repeatedly at teh BBC Proms, and in recent seasons has also appeared with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's (Carnegie Hall), Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London Mozart Players and City of London Sinfonia, as well as the period orchestras the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston. This year (2016), her concert diary includes her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra, performances of the Creation with Music of the Baroque in California as well as the Chicago area, and her return to the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
Her many recordings include works by W.A. Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Benjamin Britten and William Walton with the London Mozart Players, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Singers. Most recently she has released recordings of Haydn Masses and George Frideric Handel's Messiah.
Jane Glover holds a number of honorary degrees from several universities, has a personal Professorship at the University of London, is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music and has been the artistic director of opera at the Royal Academy of Music since 2009. She was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the British Empire) in the 2003 Queen's New Year's Honours List for her services to music.
In September 2005, Macmillan published Jane Glover's book Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music. The book investigates the extent to which the women surrounding Mozart - his sister, his wife and his wife's sisters - influenced his development as a composer. The book received great critical acclaim and was listed for both the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Non-Fiction. |
