The society was founded in 1920 as the Cambridge University Opera Society by Bernhard (Boris) Ord (1897-1961), then an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, and a small band of amateurs anxious to preserve the enthusiasm caused by the first performance at Cambridge in that year of Purcell's 'Fairy Queen'. It sang both operas and madrigals for its own amusement and changed its name to the Cambridge University Madrigal Society in 1924. Its first public performance, with Ord by then a Fellow of King's College as its conductor, was of Byrd's 'Great Service' in Little St Mary's church in 1924. From 1928, it sang annually in May Week on the river Cam. It gave concerts in Paris, Leiden, Berlin, Hamburg and London and made recordings. In 1958, when Boris Ord became too ill to conduct, he chose Raymond Leppard (b.1927, Trinity College, MA 1955) as his successor. On the departure from Cambridge of Leppard in 1968, the society was dissolved. The society should not be confused with the Cambridge University Opera Society established in 1966 and formerly known as the Cambridge University Opera Group, whose records 1972-95 are catalogued as UA SOC.XI.