ENO Teams Up With Smartify For Digitalised Version of the ENO's Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour

Launching on Friday 29 September 2023, the English National Opera (ENO) joins forces with the Smartify app after the sell-out success of the ENO’s Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour in August 2023. Available for everyone to take part in for free via the Smartify app, this experience offers a unique guided walking tour of Victorian London, celebrating the operettas and history of the famous operatic duo, Gilbert & Sullivan.

The ENO’s Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour has been curated for the ENO by leading Gilbert & Sullivan singer, actor and director, John Savournin. This walking tour will take audiences on a musical journey around Westminster starting from outside the Savoy Theatre, which was the 19th century home of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operas, and ending at the ENO’s home, the London Coliseum, where many of Gilbert & Sullivan’s works are performed today. 

As a part of the walking tour hosted on Smartify, audiences can listen to music performed by the world-class ENO Chorus and Orchestra, as well as internationally renowned soloists performing the iconic arias by Gilbert & Sullivan. Audiences can expect to listen to a local bobby, a wondering prisoner of the Tower, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and even fairies at famous London landmarks, while learning all about the operettas they came from as well as the writers who created them, stopping at their relevant landmarks mapped out on the Smartify app. 

If you are new to opera or a Gilbert & Sullivan fanatic, this tour offers a fun, immersive and unique way to experience the music. All you need to do is:

1. Download the Smartify app to your smartphone for free. 

2. Search for the ENO’s Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour. 

3. Go to the D’Oyly Carte Monument in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London WC2R 0BP; near the entrance of the Savoy Hotel. 

4. Plug in your headphones, follow the map and start walking!

Whether you’re on the go or looking for your next cultural experience, the Smartify app can provide the inspiration on what to explore next. Smartify is the ultimate cultural travel app with quick access to finding out more about museums, galleries, experiences and much more with tours to guide you on your selected journey. Forging the gap between technology and art, the Smartify app allows people to connect with the culture around them in an accessible format.

Annilese Miskimmon, Artistic Director of the ENO, says: ‘we are delighted to collaborate with the Smartify app to continue our celebration of the history and work of comic operettas most famous duo, Gilbert & Sullivan. After the huge sell-out success of the ENO’s Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour this summer that was a part of Westminster City Council’s Inside Out Festival, this is an exciting new way for the ENO to continue to bring opera to a wider audience and celebrate the history of the artform.’

Christopher Bazley, Smartify’s Head of Global Relationships, says: ‘we are delighted to work with the ENO on this wonderful project. We are particularly pleased with how the Smartify platform makes such a user-friendly and elegant solution for the ENO’s Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour experience. It has been a real pleasure seeing how Smartify can help make the world of Gilbert & Sullivan accessible for all in the streets of the city they both loved, and that features so strongly in their work.’

The ENO’s Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour on Smartify features recordings from the ENO’s G&S archive, alongside newly-recorded performances by the ENO Chorus & Orchestra conducted by Chris Hopkins and with soloists John Savournin, Zoe Drummond and Anthony Gregory. The actors hosting the tour are Charlotte Gittins, Dom Hodson and John Savournin. The map showing the route is illustrated by Rosie Brooks. Photographs from the live tour by Lloyd Winters.

To find the ENO’s Gilbert & Sullivan Walking Tour on Smartify, download the app or go to: https://app.smartify.org/en-GB/tours/enos-gilbert-sullivan-walking-tour?lang=en-GB

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