Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House is one of the most important cultural institutions in the UK with a history going back almost 300 years at its Covent Garden site. It is recognised worldwide as a centre of musical excellence, but the diversity of the organisation is perhaps not so well known. When the Royal Opera House commissioned Navyblue to produce its 2004/05 annual review, it was this variety that it was keen to reflect.

Appealing to new audiences was a prime consideration, as was the opera house's desire to let people see that it is an outward-looking body (in line with its public funding status). These aims came on top of the normal purpose of an annual review, i.e. a succinct but comprehensive report on everything accomplished in the previous year.

To achieve the Royal Opera House's hopes for its review, Navyblue - in partnership with copywriters, milknosugar - developed a publication that celebrated the year's highlights:  we included statements from performers, the Chorus director and many others, spotlighting a rich variety of voices. Similarly, as far as visual aspects were concerned, we wanted to represent the plethora of events held at the Royal Opera House and avoid the use of traditional opera images, breaking away from the custom of merely showing photographs of singers in performance.

The 'ensemble' treatment we delivered has had even more people sing the praises of the Royal Opera House.