Summer Opera
Glyndebourne When: 18 May – 25 August
Tel: +44 (0)1273 815000
Web: www.glyndebourne.com
There’s magic in the East Sussex air, what with a sorceress stalking Handel’s Rinaldo, Dvo ák’s moon-gazing Rusalka and Massenet’s slant on Cinderella in Fiona Shaw’s updated production of Cendrillon, not to mention a brand new staging of Mozart’s The Magic Flute conducted by Antonello Manacorda. And Glyndebourne is playing it for laughs, too, as director Annabel Arden’s zippy Rossini Barber of Seville makes the 2019 cut. But, in Berlioz year, there’s a devilish deal to be struck first…
DON’T MISS:
Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust 18 May – 10 July
After last year’s Strauss Rosenkavalier, Richard Jones returns to direct Berlioz’s epic ‘dramatic legend’ based on Goethe’s Faust. It’s conducted by Robin Ticciati (who also presides over Rusalka), and brings together Allan Clayton and Christopher Purves as the scholar and his shadowy tempter.
Garsington Opera When: 29 May – 26 July
Tel: +44 (0)1865 361636
Web: www.garsingtonopera.org
Garsington chalks up its 30th birthday with something old and something new. Three concert performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 inaugurate a partnership with The English Concert, while an Offenbach rarity, Fantasio, receives its belated UK stage premiere midway through a festival that opens with Smetana’s Bartered Bride conducted by Jan van Steen. Supernatural goingson spook Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. And to end, what else but a cricket match on the hallowed Wormsley ground? Howzat!
DON’T MISS:
Britten’s The Turn of the Screw 1-19 July What could be more apposite than a country house setting for Britten’s country house ghost story? Louisa Muller makes her UK directorial debut alongside Ed Lyon as the sinister Peter Quint and Katherine Broderick, a governess fatally out of her depth. Richard Farnes conducts.
Longborough Festival Opera
When: 5 June–3 August
Tel: +44 (0)1451 830292
Web: www.lfo.org.uk
Set in leafy Longborough, the world’s most improbable temple to Wagner has the year 2023 circled in the calendar as the year it forges another
Ring cycle. Limbering up, the journey starts this summer with the first part of the tetralogy – Das Rheingold – but German opera isn’t the only show in town. Cavalli’s Calisto gets an orchestral makeover with accordion and clarinet joining harpsichord and recorders; and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena is staged by mezzo-turned-director Jenny Miller.
DON’T MISS:
Wagner’s Das Rheingold 5-11 June
Six years ago, Longborough renewed its love affair with Wagner’s Ring in a cycle conducted by the connoisseur’s Wagnerian: Anthony Negus. Now it’s time to start the journey anew. And with Negus once more at the helm, Das Rheingold is directed by Amy Lane.
OUR FESTIVAL CHOICE
Grange Park Opera When: 8 June – 13 July
Tel: +44 (0)1962 737373
Web: www.grangeparkopera.co.uk
Who could resist a festival with its very own purpose-built theatre in a sylvan glade complete with architectural talking point: the resplendent ‘lavatorium rotundum’? (Yes, it does what it says on the tin). Mezzo Joyce Didonato stops by for a ‘Starry Night’ recital on 11 July, crowning an operatic threesome of Strauss’s Don Carlo, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Singers include Susan Bullock, Soraya Mafi (Humperdinck) and, as Porgy and Bess, Musa Ngqungwana and Laquita Mitchell. Enjoying something of a busman’s holiday, the Orchestra of English National Opera is in the pit for the Strauss and Humperdinck, while the Gershwin is in the expert hands of the English Concert Orchestra.
DON’T MISS:
Verdi’s Don Carlo 6 June – 19 July
Verdi’s dark tale of love and loss (in its 1884 Milan incarnation) was part of Grange Park Opera’s final season in Hampshire before the festival’s relocation in 2017, and Jo Davies’s powerful production is revived with Gianluca Marcianò returning to conduct, and Leonardo Capalbo as the Don.