Classical music
Suites, quartets and quintets from Beethoven to Shostakovich, the Tallis Scholars, and pianist Christian Zacharias leading orchestral and chamber performances (27th June–1st July). The Cheltenham Music Festival, and its wellresourced Festival Proms, begin with a Bach weekend at Syde Manor and reach a climax with the Berlioz Requiem in Gloucester Cathedral (30th June–15th July).
Festival opera launches in late May. In London Opera Holland Park (29th May–28th July) has a four-work season that includes Mascagni’s rarely seen Lady Godiva opera Isabeau. Glyndebourne has six productions, including four revivals, two of them works by Handel; here Samuel Barber’s
Vanessa might be the thing to see (19th May–26th Aug, booking 4th March). Rather more impressive is
Garsington Opera’s season at Wormsley in Bucks. There are new productions of Mozart’s Die
Zauberflöte, Verdi’s Falstaff and Strauss’s Capriccio, plus a new opera by David Sawer based on the late Roberto Bolaño’s novel The Skating
Rink: crimes of passion in a Costa Brava setting (31st May–22nd July, booking 20th March).
The latest in Longborough Festival Opera’s lavishly praised Wagner cycle is Der fliegende Holländer. There are also new productions of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos (also conducted by Wagner magus Anthony Negus) and Verdi’s La traviata (6th June–2nd August, booking 5th March).
After a successful first season in its newly built theatre in the agreeable garden setting of West Horsley Place near Guildford, Grange Park Opera offers new productions of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera and the similarly visceral and tune-filled Oklahoma! (7th June–7th July). Meanwhile, Grange Festival in Hampshire promises operas by Handel and Rossini, alongside Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio directed by veteran master John Copley (7th June–8th July).
West Green House Opera and gardens near Hartley Wintney in Hampshire stage Bernstein’s Candide and Offenbach’s riproaring Chinese jest Ba-ta-clan (20th–29th July), whilst, down in Hardy country, the Dorset Opera Festival presents Massenet’s Le Cid and Puccini’s La boheme at Bryanston School in Blandford Forum (24th–28th July, booking 6th March). Lovers of Rossini’s La Cenerentola might be intrigued to see its influential prototype, Nicolas Isouard’s Cendrillon, which Bampton Classical Opera is reviving in the Deanery Garden in Bampton near Oxford (20th–21st July) and later at Westonbirt School (27th August).
The extraordinarily wide-ranging musical side of the Buxton