In my mind, the clocks going forward and the buzz of the first lawnmowers of spring can only mean two things: the start of the new cricket season and, a month later, the summer opera scene – at Garsington, you can actually experience both on rare, golden afternoons when the weather gods are kind. So it’s time to dust off the picnic hamper, dry clean the dinner jacket and explore what the UK’s opera festivals have to offer this year.
Glyndebourne Festival
The oldest – and still the UK’s flagship opera festival – is Glyndebourne, set in the rolling Sussex Downs a short coach ride from Lewes. It all started in 1934 when John Christie had a small opera house built in the grounds to stage a short festival starring his wife, soprano Audrey Mildmay. Ninety years on, Christie’s grandson, Gus, presides over a state-of-the-art opera house and this year’s festival features his soprano wife, Danielle de Niese, in a new production of The Merry Widow.
Given the fun he’s had staging Gilbert and Sullivan at English National Opera, Cal McCrystal should have a ball directing Lehár’s frothy operetta – a perfect festival showpiece with all that champagne flowing out on the picnic lawn. The role of Hanna Glawari should suit the vivacious de Niese like a velvet glove. Performances will be sung in English, conducted by John Wilson and will feature the veteran baritone and opera legend Sir Thomas Allen as the Pontevedrian ambassador, Baron Zeta.
I can’t wait to see the other new production: Bizet’s Carmen, directed by Diane Paulus, celebrated for her work on Broadway, although she has already made her UK opera debut back in 2008 with Lost Highway for ENO. Unusually for Glyndebourne, they are putting on two runs of the opera, one to open the festival in May, with mezzo Rihab Chaieb in the title role, and a completely different cast in August, led by Aigul Akhmetshina, who has been in demand as Carmen throughout the current season, with an exhausting eight productions including new stagings at the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden. The production also heads to the BBC Proms.
Revivals include the chance to see Stuart Skelton makes his belated Glyndebourne debut in Tristan und Isolde, a revisit to the less-than-universally-acclaimed Barbe & Doucet Magic Flute, and I wouldn’t miss Louise Alder stepping into Danielle de Niese’s dancing shoes as Cleopatra in Sir David McVicar’s ridiculously entertaining romp through Handel’s Giulio Cesare.
Garsington Festival
Privately funded, like Glyndebourne and all the other country house festivals, Garsington offers an incredibly high standard of opera. Performances take place in the Opera Pavilion, fully protected against the elements and offering idyllic views across the Wormsley estate. For the first time, the festival delves into the world of French Baroque with a staging by Louisa Muller of Rameau’s Platée. Bruno Ravella has enjoyed great success directing Strauss (Rosenkavalier and Ariadne) in recent years; there’s no new production from him this season, but he directs the revival of John Cox’s much-loved The Marriage of Figaro.
There’s a new (pandemic rescheduled) production of Verdi’s early comedy Un giorno di regno, which will almost wipe my Verdi bingo card (please, someone, stage Oberto!). I will also be interested to see Netia Jones’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream – not the show she staged at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2017, but a new production which premiered at Santa Fe Opera last summer. And – drumroll! – you can also see Britten’s Dream in London this summer, as Garsington makes its BBC Proms debut.
Grange Park Opera & The Grange Festival
Grange Park Opera, in the Surrey Hills, punches above its weight when it comes to casting. A new double bill of Aleko and Gianni Schicchi is mounted for Welsh knight Sir Bryn Terfel, a festival favourite and a magnetic stage presence. Although it’s just been staged by Opera North, Rachmaninov’s Aleko doesn’t get much of an outing and the title role should suit Terfel’s rugged bass-baritone. GPO’s other must-see should be Kátya Kabanová, featuring soprano Natalya Romaniw. The 2024 festival also boasts a new Daughter of the Regiment (sung in English) and another Anthony Bolton opera, Island of Dreams.
The Grange Festival, at Northington, Hampshire, has enjoyed its greatest critical successes thus far in Baroque opera, which is little surprise when the Artistic Director is Michael Chance, who enjoyed a long career as a countertenor. Indeed, in a competitive festival market, The Grange should arguably focus on Baroque much more, marking it out as something a bit different from the norm. This year’s offering is Monteverdi’s masterpiece L’incoronazione di Poppea, with Sam Furness and Kitty Whately as Nero and Poppea, Anna Bonitatibus as Ottavia, directed by Walter Sutcliffe.
The other two operatic Grange offerings are a new Tosca, directed by Christopher Luscombe with Francesca Tiburzi as the Roman diva, and The Rake’s Progress, attractively cast with young singers Adam Temple-Smith, Michael Mofidian and Alexandra Oomens.
Longborough Festival Opera
If you want Wagner, head to the Cotswolds! (Well, head to Bayreuth too, of course.) Longborough Festival Opera completes its third Ring cycle, directed by Amy Lane, with an eagerly anticipated new production of Die Walküre. The festival has a devoted following who have marvelled at its achievements, putting on world class Wagner at a fraction of the Bayreuth budget. Cannily cast, conducted by the renowned Anthony Negus, it should be a summer festival highlight. Needless to say, tickets have completely sold out. (Pray for returns?) It’s not all Wagner though: the festival closes with a new production of La bohème, as far from Fafner’s cave as operatically possible.
Opera Holland Park
In the UK, it’s not all country houses and picnics. Opera Holland Park has been entertaining audiences under its London canopy for decades, often staging rare Italian verismo and building up a fiercely loyal fan base in the process. This year sees new productions of Pagliacci – a coup to secure top tenor David Butt-Philip – which is paired with a Wolf-Ferrari revival, plus The Barber of Seville and OHP’s first foray into Handel, Acis and Galatea. The centenary of Puccini’s death is marked with a concert semi-staging of his early opera Edgar, plus the return of Stephen Barlow’s Tosca, which I’ve never seen but I know several people who rate it as one of the finest Tosca stagings they’ve witnessed!
Other UK opera festivals
In the Peak District spa town, the Buxton International Festival often stages lesser known operas. This season features Verdi’s Ernani, La Tragédie de Carmen (Peter Brook’s taut reduction of Bizet) and Handel’s l trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. Leicestershire’s Nevill Holt Opera has reinvented itself as the Nevill Holt Festival and features two staged productions this summer: The Magic Flute and the world premiere of Isabella Gellis’ The Devil’s Den by Shadwell Opera.
Bradford-on-Avon’s If Opera has also seen a revamp in recent years, under new Executive Director Michael Volpe (formerly of OHP) and offers stagings of Lucia di Lammermoor and Die Fledermaus. Oxfordshire’s Bampton Classical Opera offers another rarity this summer, Giuseppe Gazzaniga's L’isola d’Alcina, and the nearby Waterperry Opera offers stagings of The Turn of the Screw and The Barber of Seville. And Dorset Opera, flourishing under Roderick Kennedy’s ebullient management, chalks up its 50th anniversary with a new production of Madama Butterfly and the world premiere of Paul Carr’s Hardy-inspired Under the Greenwood Tree.
Edinburgh Festival, BBC Proms & Aldeburgh Festival
You can also find opera featured in three of the UK’s most important classical music festivals. Edinburgh International Festival welcomes productions by Paris’ Opéra Comique (Andreas Homoki’s meta-staging of Carmen) and Berlin’s Komische Oper (Kirill Serebrennikov’s new Figaro) as well as Roxana Haines’ new production of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex for Scottish Opera. There are also concert performances of Così fan tutte and Capriccio.
As well as visits by Glyndebourne and Garsington, the BBC Proms has a semi-staged Purcell Fairy Queen from Les Arts Florissants. Another – unrelated – Fairy Queen concert performance (Vox Luminis) takes place at the Aldeburgh Festival, where the big operatic project is Robin Norton-Hale’s new staging of Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert, “a haunting tale of isolation and enigma”... which could well be a description of me lugging my picnic hamper around the damp British countryside this summer.
