Meet our fabulous Creative Team
Valentina Ceschi
Stage Director
Alastair Chilvers
Music Director
Alastair is a freelance musician and arts education specialist who is particularly passionate about commissioning and conducting new works for young people. He is delighted to be working with the wonderful LYO creative team again for this year’s opera!
Valentina studied at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq and at the L.E.M., in Paris. She has been working as a performance maker and theatre practitioner for over ten years. She is co-artistic director with Thomas Eccleshare of the award-winning contemporary theatre company Dancing Brick, a resident Ensemble Company at the Royal & Derngate in Northampton and associate artist at Farnham Maltings; and co-founder of experimental costume-led performance collective Ceschi + Lane.
Valentina and Ali
“The company has such a great ethos, we’re really exited to work with young people”
“London Youth Opera is a family”
“Empowering for young people to be treated like prefossionals, this can be transformative“
“We set the bar high and kids always surpass us!”
Maggie Rawlinson
Choreographer & Movement Director
Maggie trained at the Arts Educational School. As an associate artist of London Youth Opera (formerly W11 Opera) Maggie has had the pleasure of working on over a dozen productions for the company to date. Her first production was with Annilese Miskimmon, working as Movement Director on Shadowtracks and since then has collaborated with four other directors and twice previously with this year's composer Stuart Hancock and librettist Donald Sturrock on The Cutlass Crew and Rain Dance.