Interviews

Opera Holland Park’s 2024 Season

21st November 2023

Characters from carnival, commedia dell’arte and classical myth tell stories of transformation,enchantment and revenge in Opera Holland Park’s 2024 Season. A diva confronts a corrupt chief ofpolice in the grit and glamour of 1960s Rome. A barber plays puppet-master in Seville, outwitting hisclients in an attempt to prevent an unwanted wedding. A Flemish knight must […]

Mid Wales Opera has lost its £107k annual funding from the Arts Council of Wales.

28th September 2023

In a hammer blow to opera in Wales and to Welsh singers, Mid Wales Opera has lost its £107k annual funding from the Arts Council of Wales. It is understood the decision could also mean the loss of the £99.5k the innovative small venue stiurign company receive through the Creatve arts scheme. This is awarded […]

Welsh National Opera says Arts Council allocation 10% below standstill funding

28th September 2023

While Welsh National Opera has again received the largest single Arts Council of Wales funding allocation, the company says it amounts to a 10 per cent cut against its application for standstill funding. The company had applied for £4.5m but as part of Arts Council Wales’s Investment Review, it has received a conditional offer of £4.1m […]

Mark Doss talks about his career and singing Giorgio Germont in La Traviata with Welsh National Opera

14th September 2023

Mark Doss sings Giorgio Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata which opens at Wales Millennium Centre on September 21 and tours to Llandudno, Bristol, Plymouth, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Southampton Mike Smith: Can you tell me how you first came to work with WNO and what was that experience like compared to, say, work in the US? […]

Artistic Director & CEO Guy Withers talks about Waterperry Opera Festival 2023

15th July 2023

Waterperry Opera Festival, based at the stunning Waterperry House & Gardens in Oxfordshire, is soon approaching its sixth festival as a company. When we founded the company, with a short 3-day festival in 2018, we would never have imagined the scale to which we have grown. In 5 festivals we have produced 26 new productions […]

A magical L’elisir from Longborough Festival Opera

21st June 2023

Watching Longborough Festival Opera’s L’elisir d’amore within 48 hours of attending Tristan und Isolde at Grange Opera made this genuinely funny production even more delightful. Delightful as Donizetti took the love potion straight from Wagner’s tragic masterpiece and turned into the heart of a comic romp that is quite the antidote to the demanding, and wonderful, […]

Longborough Festival Opera cast for its 2023 production of Götterdämmerung

16th March 2023

Götterdämmerung (29 May – 6 June 2023). A new production for the 2023 festival, Götterdämmerung marks the epic conclusion to Longborough’s new Ring cycle, following acclaimed productions of Das Rheingold in 2019 , Die Walküre in 2021 and Siegfried in 2022. All productions in the cycle are created especially for Longborough by Amy Lane, Artistic Director […]

Natalya Romaniw to make Royal Opera debut

7th December 2022

Natalya Romaniw makes her Royal Opera debut in the title role of Tosca this coming week. It may be a daunting prospect for any singer but the Swansea-born soprano feels the time is right and says she is more excited than nervous. “I used to watch performances at Covent Garden when I was a student […]

Anthony Hermus returns to conduct Opera North for Ariadne auf Naxos

15th October 2022

Antony Hermus launched his 2022-23 season with his inaugural concert as Chief Conductor Designate ofthe Belgian National Orchestra on 9 September 2022 and returns to Opera North as Principal GuestConductor for new production of Ariadne auf Naxos (18 February – 24 March 2023) Conductor’s schedule this season includes world premieres of works by Unsuk Chin […]

Ukrainian opera star Yuriy Yurchuk leads a special one-off fundraising concert in support of Ukraine.