La Calisto

‘In a world devastated by natural disasters, tender love and unbridled desire are notable survivors.  As part of the struggle to control the planet’s dwindling resources and rebuild a crumbling society, both the big guns and the little fellas are soon up to all their old games – seduction, adultery, trickery and all manner of earthy comedy familiar to readers of 21st century tabloids. The big question is, who can afford love?  With music of exquisite eloquence, Cavalli gives us the answer.’  Joe Austin, Director

Award-winning North London opera company Hampstead Garden Opera will be staging a new production of Cavalli’s masterpiece La Calisto (1651) this spring, with an English translation by Anne Ridler.  The performances are conducted by HGO’s Music Director Oliver-John Ruthven with period ensemble Musica Poetica London.  Director Joe Austin, fresh from assisting David Alden in his revival of Peter Grimes at ENO, introduces us to a world that is becoming increasingly familiar to us from the daily horrors of TV news bulletins and documentaries – a world reeling in chaos from disasters not a million miles from those described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses on which the opera is based.

Hampstead Garden Opera, set up in 1990, is a semi-professional opera company based in North London which presents fully-staged new opera productions with orchestra twice a year at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate.  It is highly acclaimed for the excellent standard of its productions, its demanding musical standards, and the quality of professional and amateur singers, conductors and production staff that it attracts.

 Hampstead Garden Opera won the Off West End (Offies) Opera Production Award 2013 for its 2012 staging of Così fan tutte. HGO’s production of Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park in April 2013 was a finalist for the 2014 Offies.

"Hampstead Garden Opera at Upstairs at the Gatehouse has been proving for 22 years that you can perform with respect and honour with young professionals in a back room; for a start they take the pieces - and the old stuff like musical standards - seriously.” Robert Thicknesse review of 'Così fan tutte' for Opera Now.