BOARD & FOUNDERS

Francis Parham co-founded the Mascarade Opera Foundation with Roger Granville and Max Fane.
As an opera and music festival producer, credits include The New Generation Festival, in collaboration with the 23Arts initiative, and Andermatt Music, a programme designed for a brand new concert hall in Switzerland that included, among others, Daniel Barenboim, Maxim Vengerov and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Other producing credits include represent.’s production of Trueman and the Arsonists by Max Frisch in a new version by Simon Stephens with songs by Chris Thorpe at the Roundhouse, Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre Kingston, the UK première of Luce by JC Lee at the Southwark Playhouse and an international tour of Henry V for OUDS/Thelma Holt. He has also worked for the RSC, Cheek by Jowl, Shakespeare’s Globe, Theatre Royal Plymouth, the Sovremennik Theatre, Antic Face and Shakespeare in Italy. Francis read Classics and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, after which he studied Law at both SOAS and BPP University in London. He qualified as a solicitor with White & Case LLP and worked for the firm in London, Moscow and Paris.

Roger Granville is the Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of the Mascarade Opera Foundation in Florence which he established in 2019 with Francis Parham and Max Fane; the same trio that also founded The New Generation Festival in 2017.
After three years of critical success in the gardens of the Palazzo Corsini, The New Generation Festival moved to the larger Boboli Gardens of the Palazzo Pitti in 2020 as ‘The ReGeneration Festival’ in partnership with the Uffizi Galleries in order to support hundreds of performing artists at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Roger has led international theatre productions at the Young Vic Theatre, The Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai and Shakespeare’s Globe, with whom he co-produced a project in 2012 to encourage the revival of the performing arts in Afghanistan, culminating with an Afghan touring production of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. Other producing credits include Oliver Dench’s One-Man Hamlet at the Théâtre National de Nice, Waiting for Godot at the Arcola Theatre, and Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre Kingston. For the New Generation Festival, he directed Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, as well as assisting with the direction of The Three Divas, co-produced with the 23Arts Initiative at the Boboli Gardens in Florence. He has directed Sir Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love at the Oxford Playhouse and worked as an assistant director at both St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Alongside his co-founders, Roger was appointed Honorary Ambassador of the City of Florence and was honoured with the city’s Silver Florin decoration. He was educated at Eton College followed by Christ Church college at the University of Oxford where he was elected as an Exhibitioner and took a First in Middle Eastern Studies and Modern Languages (M.A. Oxon). 

Max Fane is a Co-Founder of the Mascarade Opera Foundation and its former President and General Director.
Before establishing the jazz project Daisy’s Firenze and co-developing Club Nine in Florence, Max oversaw the work of the Mascarade Emerging Artists programme, as well as the foundation's non-classical and outreach programmes, including a partnership with the Alsama Project in Lebanon.
He co-founded The New Generation Festival in 2017 and Andermatt Music in 2019 alongside Francis Parham and Roger Granville.
Max is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland where he studied voice and piano and ran the touring opera company Raucous Rossini and chamber music series Westbourne Music.
He enjoyed an early career as a conductor before turning to arts management. He holds an MSc in Business and Management from the University of Strathclyde where he was the European Visionary Scholar.