Christopher Webber


Christopher Webber is an English musicologist, dramatist, actor, theatre director and writer.

Biography

Webber was born in Bowdon, Cheshire and educated at The Manchester Grammar School and the University of Kent at Canterbury. Starting his professional career with theatre directing work, for companies such as Orpheus Opera, Kent Opera, the new D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Britain and the USA, and various other English companies, he soon broadened his portfolio to include musical journalism, as Opera and Classical Music Editor for Richard Branson's Event Magazine, as well as Music and Musicians Magazine.
As a writer, his early work included Bluff Your Way at the Races as well as many opera translations into English. Play commissions soon followed, beginning with a new English version of Sophocles's Philoctetes written for Offstage Downstairs. Later successes include Tatyana commissioned by Nottingham Playhouse, with Josie Lawrence in the title role, and Beverly Klein as her sister Olga; Dr Sullivan and Mr Gilbert ; and Green Tea, shortlisted for a Guinness Prize.
He is an authority on the Spanish zarzuela, and his book The Zarzuela Companion is a standard English work on the subject. He contributed the chapter on zarzuela to The Cambridge Companion to Operetta ; has written on Hispanic and Portuguese Music for The [Oxford Companion to Music], Opera Magazine, Opera Now, Royal Opera Covent Garden and many other publications; has provided programme notes and translations for many concert and festival organisations including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Wexford Festival and Edinburgh Festival; and been Visiting Lecturer on the subject at various academic institutions, including the University of Tübingen and University of Valencia. For Oxford University Press's Bibliographies project, he wrote and curates the . In December 2022, he was appointed Editor of the Cambridge History of Spanish Opera and Music Theatre.
He is also an advisory editor and contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, having written over forty entries including those on his Manchester Grammar School contemporary Steven Pimlott, Sir Jimmy Young and Joyce Hatto. Webber has since been featured on British TV's Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4, in documentaries about Hatto, "the fraudster pianist".
As an actor, he has worked in England's West End and Repertory Theatre, creating the role of Owl in the first stage version of Winnie-the-Pooh and taking part in world and/or international premières of plays by Alan Ayckbourn and Alan Bennett amongst others. He has also been an exponent in the field of corporate and medical professional actor-based roleplaying, especially noted for his work on development of feedback techniques, including his formulation of Advocate Feedback.

Plays

Books