| Biography | Early in 1950, two young musical enthusiasts, David Cairns (now a leading music critic and biographer of Berlioz) and Stephen Gray (later to become general manager of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra), persuaded a twenty-two year old Colin Davis (then a clarinettist) to put on a concert performance of Mozarts Don Giovanni in the Holywell Music Room, Oxford. Thus the Chelsea Opera Group was born, so called because both its co-founders were then living in Chelsea. |