Longborough Festival Opera
A magestic Walküre as up close and personal as it could possibly get
Wagner at Longborough really needs to be experienced as it is almost impossible to describe. But I will try. It crossed my mind, sitting so close to the singers and orchestra in the small space with a correspondingly small stage, it felt a little like being in a village hall, not even as big as…
Longborough Festival Opera: the first 30 years
This generously illustrated book will appeal to those who have followed Martin and Lizzie Graham’s obsessive dream turned into reality in creating an opera house in the Cotswolds. But it will also appeal to anyone who enjoys a tale of dogged perseverance in the face of what at times seems the chains of bureaucracy and…
Jennifer Smith to stand down as Executive Director of Longborough Festival Opera
Jennifer Smith is standing down as Executive Director of Longborough Festival. She will be taking on the role of Domestic Bursar at Balliol College. Smith took up the post of Executive Director in 2014. Under her leadership, Longborough Festival Opera has undergone a period of significant expansion. Alongside operational changes, the charity’s turnover has grown…
Pedaloing the green dream, The Fairy Queen, Longborough Festival Opera
Longborough Opera’s commitment to new and emerging talent takes the form of a fun and lively reimagining of Purcell’s Fairy Queen and a wider theme of renewal, regeneration, rejuvenation and rebirth. This fits in well with the youthful nature (no pun intended) of the players and other creatives for this multileveled fusion of musical and…
Updated frivolity for L’Orfeo, Longborough Festival Opera
*** The staging of Longborough Festival Opera’s contrasts the playing of Monteverdi’s 1607 score by the Venetian Baroque period musicians of La Serenissima with a show that takes its theme from Glastonbury-style festivals and modern hospitals. So, in Olivia Fuchs production our Orfeo swaps his lyre for an electric guitar (fortunately it makes no sound)…
A magical L’elisir from Longborough Festival Opera
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
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…
An exquisite Die Tote Stadt, Longborough Festival Opera
Loughborough Festival has scored a glorious success with this exquisite and moving production from Carmen Jakobi of the until recently long-neglected Die Tote Stadt. With central performances of extraordinary power and beauty, this telling of Korngold’s 1920 opera relies on compelling acting and singing from Peter Auty as Paul, who is locked in a world…
Siegfried, Longborough Festival Opera
Longborough’s artistic director Polly Graham was understandably delighted to welcome back audiences, both to the Cotswolds opera festival and the resumption of a staged Ring Cycle, Siegfried. Not so enviable was the task of informing the Wagnerian devotees, hungry to embark on the next stage of the mammoth undertaking that Pauls Putnins would be singing…
Longborough Festival Opera announces cast for Spell Book and La liberazione di Ruggiero
Longborough Festival Opera has announced the cast for Spell Book and La liberazione di Ruggiero, its 2022 emerging artist double bill. The Costwolds company’s Emerging Artist programme gives a vital opportunity to singers at the beginning of their careers. In 2022 audiences are treated to a double bill of love, freedom and magic. Members of…