Stephen Oliver (composer)

Stephen Michael Harding Oliver (10 March 1950 – 29 April 1992) was an English composer, best known for his operas. Early life and education Oliver was born on 10 March 1950 in Chester, a son of Charlotte Hester (née Girdlestone; born 1911-2006), a religious education adviser, and Osborne George Oliver (b. 1903-2001), an electricity board official. His maternal great-grandfather was William Boyd Carpenter, a Bishop of Ripon and a court chaplain to Queen Victoria. Oliver was educated at St Paul’s Cathedral School, Ardingly College and at Worcester College, Oxford, where he read music under Kenneth Leighton and Robert Sherlaw Johnson. His first opera, The Duchess of Malfi (1971), was staged while he was still at Oxford. Career Later works include incidental music for the Royal Shakespeare Company (including The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby), a musical, Blondel (1983; with Tim Rice), and over forty operas, including Tom Jones (1975), Beauty and the Beast (1984) and Timon of Athens (1991). Oliver also wrote music for television, including several of the BBC’s Shakespeare productions (Timon among those), the soundtrack to the 1986 film Lady Jane, and some chamber and instrume