Garsington Opera
Encyclopedia
Garsington Opera is an annual open air summer opera festival founded in 1989 by Leonard Ingrams
. For twenty one years it was held in the gardens of Leonard Ingrams' home at Garsington Manor
in Oxfordshire
. Since 2011 the festival is now held in Wormsley Park
, the home of the Getty family
near High Wycombe
in Buckinghamshire
, England. After Leonard Ingrams' death in 2005 Anthony Whitworth-Jones
became its General Director.
, Rossini’s La gazzetta
and L'equivoco stravagante
, and Vivaldi's L'incoronazione di Dario
. The festival also gave the first British professional productions of Haydn's La vera costanza
, Strauss' Die Liebe der Danae
, Janáček's Šárka
, and Tchaikovsky's Cherevichki
.
Performances take place in the specially designed seasonal Opera Pavilion from within which it is possible to view the surrounding landscape. This maintains the link with the outside, a tradition at Garsington Opera. Opera-goers are served champagne before the performances, which begin in the early evening. Like Glyndebourne Festival Opera
, Garsington Opera has long dinner intervals
and evening dress is suggested. All operas are performed in their original language with English surtitles
.
In 1982, financier Leonard Ingrams
(brother of Richard Ingrams
, the founder of Private Eye
) and his wife Rosalind bought Garsington Manor
and soon realised the opportunities it offered for outdoor performance. The family became well-known for organizing this annual season of opera in the manor gardens. ref>The Daily Telegraph
. Obituary: Leonard Ingrams. April 8, 2005. Retrieved 2 June 2008.
Garsington Manor saw its opera first performance in 1989 when Opera 80 performed Le nozze di Figaro in aid of the Oxford Playhouse. The success of the performance led to the founding of Garsington Opera soon afterwards by Leonard Ingrams. In 1990, the company's first season comprised Mozart's Cosi fan tutte
and the British premiere of Haydn's Orlando Paladino
. Leonard Ingrams asked the Guildhall Strings to play for his new company, and within a few years Garsington Opera had its own orchestra whose core remained the Guildhall Strings. Within four years, Garsington Opera started staging three different productions of different operas. This format remains the same today. At the same time it began presenting complete four-week seasons on its own.
Leonard Ingrams also used the barn at Garsington Manor for an annual series of chamber music concerts. He installed into the barn the panelling from the old auditorium at Glyndebourne which was then being thrown out when the new auditorium at Glyndebourne was built. The barn was also used as the restaurant during the opera season, and opera guests could dine in it during the interval. The operas were performed on the stone loggia which overlooks the seried flower garden, designed and planted by Lady Ottoline Morrell when she owned the Manor during and after the First World War and entertained her famous Bloomsbury guests there e.g. T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Betrand Russell, W.B.Yeats. As demand for the opera rapidly grew Leonard Ingrams then commissioned a purpose-built auditorium seating around five hundred people. The auditorium was noted for its natural acoustic and good sight-lines. The stage was partly covered by a PVC
fabric canopy completed in 1995 but was open to the gardens behind. Each year at the end of the season the entire edifice was dismantled and the fabric returned to Architen Landrell, the canopy's designers, for maintenance and storage.
Sound-proofing screens were later erected around the theatre in response to complaints from a group of Garsington residents living near the Manor. In 1996, they won £
1,000 compensation for "noise disturbance" caused by the operas. When the award was overturned on appeal, local resident Monica Waud led her neighbours in a civil disobedience
campaign during the 1997 performance of Haydn's Le Pescatrici. The protesters simultaneously began cutting their lawns with electric lawnmowers and diesel tractors, trimming their hedges, and turning on their hoses. Car alarms were set off and as a grand finale a private plane piloted by Miss Waud's companion flew overhead. In 2001 the protesters tried unsuccessfully to use the Human Rights Act
to block Garsington Opera performances, claiming that they denied them the right to the "peaceful enjoyment of their possessions". The South Oxfordshire
environmental health service undertook in-house monitoring of opera performances in each season from 2000 through 2005, but on each occasion concluded that there was no statutory noise nuisance.
Leonard Ingrams died from a heart attack on 27 July 2005 at the age of 63. In November of that year, Garsington Opera announced that it would continue following the appointment of Anthony Whitworth-Jones as General Director. Rosalind Ingrams (Leonard’s widow) became President, her daughter Catherine Ingrams joined the Board. Anthony Whitworth-Jones had been General Director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera
from 1989 to 1998 and of the Dallas Opera
from 2000 to 2002. Whitworth-Jones noted that "under Leonard Ingrams’ passionate leadership, (it) has established a reputation for musical excellence, the presentation of some fascinating operatic rarities and the promotion of young singers. I will try to uphold and develop this tradition" In the first season under Whitworth-Jones' leadership (2006), the company performed Rimsky-Korsakov
's Mayskaja Noch
, Donizetti's Don Pasquale
, and Der Stein der Weisen (The Philosopher's Stone), a collaborative work by Emanuel Schikaneder
, Mozart, and other members of Mozart's circle. In April 2008, the Ingrams family announced that the Manor would not be able to host performances after the 2010 season, although the family would continue its support for the company.
to hold the opera festival at Wormsley Park
. The company's new performing space is a 600 seat pavilion, which like that at Garsington Manor is designed to be put up and dismantled each season. The first season at Wormsley Park sees the performance of Vivaldi's La verità in cimento
in its British premiere, Mozart's The Magic Flute
and Rossini's Il turco in Italia
. The company is now financed by The Friends of Garsington Opera, corporate and private sponsorship, and the support of foundations.
(The Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, 1993 ) Susan Bullock
(Helena in Die ägyptische Helena
, 1997) and Yvonne Kenny
(Christine in Intermezzo
, 2001). Conductors include David Parry
, Ivor Bolton
, Jane Glover
, and the founder of Grange Park Opera
, Wasfi Kani. In addition to conducting Garsington Opera performances, Kani also served as the company's Assistant Director from 1993 to 1998.
Leonard Ingrams
Leonard Victor Ingrams was a merchant banker and opera festival founder/impresario.Leonard Ingrams was the youngest of four sons. His parents were Leonard St Clair Ingrams and Victoria . His mother was very musical and he started to learn the violin at the age of six...
. For twenty one years it was held in the gardens of Leonard Ingrams' home at Garsington Manor
Garsington Manor
Garsington Manor, in the village of Garsington, near Oxford, England, is a Tudor building, best known as the former home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, the Bloomsbury Group socialite...
in Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
. Since 2011 the festival is now held in Wormsley Park
Wormsley Park
Wormsley Park is a 2,500 acre estate and 18th century country house between Stokenchurch and Watlington in the Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire, England. It is the former home of the philanthropist Sir Paul Getty who moved to Wormsley in 1986. He undertook a restoration which lasted until 1991,...
, the home of the Getty family
Getty family
The Getty family of the United States made its money in oil in the 20th century. As a family involved in the oil business, members of the Getty family identify with George Franklin Getty and his son Jean Paul Getty as their patriarchs...
near High Wycombe
High Wycombe
High Wycombe , commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946,is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this figure is engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town...
in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, England. After Leonard Ingrams' death in 2005 Anthony Whitworth-Jones
Anthony Whitworth-Jones
Anthony Whitworth-Jones has been the General Director of the Garsington Opera since 2005. He also worked with the Glyndebourne opera during the 1980s....
became its General Director.
Opera at Garsington
A characteristic feature of Garsington Opera's programming has been the combination of well known operas with discoveries of little known works. These have included the British premieres of Richard Strauss' Die ägyptische HelenaDie ägyptische Helena
Die ägyptische Helena is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on June 6, 1928...
, Rossini’s La gazzetta
La Gazzetta
La gazzetta, ossia Il matrimonio per concorso is an opera buffa by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was by Giuseppe Palomba after Carlo Goldoni's play Il matrimonio per concorso of 1763....
and L'equivoco stravagante
L'equivoco stravagante
L'equivoco stravagante is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Gaetano Gasbarri. It was Rossini's first attempt at writing a full two-act opera.-Performance history:...
, and Vivaldi's L'incoronazione di Dario
L'incoronazione di Dario
L'incoronazione di Dario is a dramma per musica by Antonio Vivaldi with an Italian libretto by Adriano Morselli. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice on 23 January 1717.-Roles:-Recordings:...
. The festival also gave the first British professional productions of Haydn's La vera costanza
La vera costanza
La vera costanza , Hob. 28/8, is an operatic dramma giocoso by Joseph Haydn. The Italian libretto was a shortened version of the one by Francesco Puttini set by Pasquale Anfossi for the opera of the same name given in Rome in 1776...
, Strauss' Die Liebe der Danae
Die Liebe der Danae
Die Liebe der Danae is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a February 1937 German libretto by Joseph Gregor, based on an outline written in 1920, "Danae, or The Marriage of Convenience", by Hugo Hofmannsthal...
, Janáček's Šárka
Šárka (Janácek)
Šárka is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by Julius Zeyer, based on Bohemian legends of Šárka in Dalimil’s Chronicle...
, and Tchaikovsky's Cherevichki
Cherevichki
Cherevichki [alternative renderings are The Little Shoes, The Tsarina's Slippers, Les caprices d'Oxane, and Gli stivaletti] is a comic-fantastic opera in 4 acts, 8 scenes, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was composed in 1885 in Maidanovo, Russia...
.
Performances take place in the specially designed seasonal Opera Pavilion from within which it is possible to view the surrounding landscape. This maintains the link with the outside, a tradition at Garsington Opera. Opera-goers are served champagne before the performances, which begin in the early evening. Like Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
, Garsington Opera has long dinner intervals
Intermission
An intermission or interval is a recess between parts of a performance or production, such as for a theatrical play, opera, concert, or film screening....
and evening dress is suggested. All operas are performed in their original language with English surtitles
Surtitles
Surtitles, also known as supertitles, are translated or transcribed lyrics/dialogue projected above a stage or displayed on a screen, commonly used in opera or other musical performances. The word "surtitle" comes from the French language "sur", meaning "over" or "on", and the English language word...
.
Garsington Manor
Leonard Ingrams
Leonard Victor Ingrams was a merchant banker and opera festival founder/impresario.Leonard Ingrams was the youngest of four sons. His parents were Leonard St Clair Ingrams and Victoria . His mother was very musical and he started to learn the violin at the age of six...
(brother of Richard Ingrams
Richard Ingrams
Richard Ingrams is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, and now editor of The Oldie magazine.-Career:...
, the founder of Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
) and his wife Rosalind bought Garsington Manor
Garsington Manor
Garsington Manor, in the village of Garsington, near Oxford, England, is a Tudor building, best known as the former home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, the Bloomsbury Group socialite...
and soon realised the opportunities it offered for outdoor performance. The family became well-known for organizing this annual season of opera in the manor gardens. ref>The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
. Obituary: Leonard Ingrams. April 8, 2005. Retrieved 2 June 2008.
Garsington Manor saw its opera first performance in 1989 when Opera 80 performed Le nozze di Figaro in aid of the Oxford Playhouse. The success of the performance led to the founding of Garsington Opera soon afterwards by Leonard Ingrams. In 1990, the company's first season comprised Mozart's Cosi fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
and the British premiere of Haydn's Orlando Paladino
Orlando paladino
Orlando paladino , Hob. 28/11, is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn which was first performed at Eszterháza on 6 December 1782. The libretto by Nunziano Porta is based on another libretto, Le pazzie d'Orlando, by Carlo Francesco Badini , itself inspired by Ariosto's epic poem Orlando furioso...
. Leonard Ingrams asked the Guildhall Strings to play for his new company, and within a few years Garsington Opera had its own orchestra whose core remained the Guildhall Strings. Within four years, Garsington Opera started staging three different productions of different operas. This format remains the same today. At the same time it began presenting complete four-week seasons on its own.
Leonard Ingrams also used the barn at Garsington Manor for an annual series of chamber music concerts. He installed into the barn the panelling from the old auditorium at Glyndebourne which was then being thrown out when the new auditorium at Glyndebourne was built. The barn was also used as the restaurant during the opera season, and opera guests could dine in it during the interval. The operas were performed on the stone loggia which overlooks the seried flower garden, designed and planted by Lady Ottoline Morrell when she owned the Manor during and after the First World War and entertained her famous Bloomsbury guests there e.g. T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Betrand Russell, W.B.Yeats. As demand for the opera rapidly grew Leonard Ingrams then commissioned a purpose-built auditorium seating around five hundred people. The auditorium was noted for its natural acoustic and good sight-lines. The stage was partly covered by a PVC
PVC
Polyvinyl chloride is a plastic.PVC may also refer to:*Param Vir Chakra, India's highest military honor*Peripheral venous catheter, a small, flexible tube placed into a peripheral vein in order to administer medication or fluids...
fabric canopy completed in 1995 but was open to the gardens behind. Each year at the end of the season the entire edifice was dismantled and the fabric returned to Architen Landrell, the canopy's designers, for maintenance and storage.
Sound-proofing screens were later erected around the theatre in response to complaints from a group of Garsington residents living near the Manor. In 1996, they won £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
1,000 compensation for "noise disturbance" caused by the operas. When the award was overturned on appeal, local resident Monica Waud led her neighbours in a civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
campaign during the 1997 performance of Haydn's Le Pescatrici. The protesters simultaneously began cutting their lawns with electric lawnmowers and diesel tractors, trimming their hedges, and turning on their hoses. Car alarms were set off and as a grand finale a private plane piloted by Miss Waud's companion flew overhead. In 2001 the protesters tried unsuccessfully to use the Human Rights Act
Human Rights Act 1998
The Human Rights Act 1998 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 9 November 1998, and mostly came into force on 2 October 2000. Its aim is to "give further effect" in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights...
to block Garsington Opera performances, claiming that they denied them the right to the "peaceful enjoyment of their possessions". The South Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
environmental health service undertook in-house monitoring of opera performances in each season from 2000 through 2005, but on each occasion concluded that there was no statutory noise nuisance.
Leonard Ingrams died from a heart attack on 27 July 2005 at the age of 63. In November of that year, Garsington Opera announced that it would continue following the appointment of Anthony Whitworth-Jones as General Director. Rosalind Ingrams (Leonard’s widow) became President, her daughter Catherine Ingrams joined the Board. Anthony Whitworth-Jones had been General Director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
from 1989 to 1998 and of the Dallas Opera
Dallas Opera
The Dallas Opera is an opera company located in Dallas, Texas . The company was founded in 1957 as the Dallas Civic Opera by Laurence Kelly and Nicolà Rescigno, both of whom had been active with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the first as administrator, the second as artistic director.-The company's...
from 2000 to 2002. Whitworth-Jones noted that "under Leonard Ingrams’ passionate leadership, (it) has established a reputation for musical excellence, the presentation of some fascinating operatic rarities and the promotion of young singers. I will try to uphold and develop this tradition" In the first season under Whitworth-Jones' leadership (2006), the company performed Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
's Mayskaja Noch
May Night
May Night is an opera in three acts, four scenes, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov from a libretto by the composer and is based on Nikolai Gogol's story May Night, or the Drowned Maiden, from his collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka....
, Donizetti's Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
, and Der Stein der Weisen (The Philosopher's Stone), a collaborative work by Emanuel Schikaneder
Emanuel Schikaneder
Emanuel Schikaneder , born Johann Joseph Schickeneder, was a German impresario, dramatist, actor, singer and composer. He was the librettist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute and the builder of the Theater an der Wien...
, Mozart, and other members of Mozart's circle. In April 2008, the Ingrams family announced that the Manor would not be able to host performances after the 2010 season, although the family would continue its support for the company.
Wormsley Park
Garsington Opera announced in April 2010 that it had reached agreement with the Getty familyGetty family
The Getty family of the United States made its money in oil in the 20th century. As a family involved in the oil business, members of the Getty family identify with George Franklin Getty and his son Jean Paul Getty as their patriarchs...
to hold the opera festival at Wormsley Park
Wormsley Park
Wormsley Park is a 2,500 acre estate and 18th century country house between Stokenchurch and Watlington in the Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire, England. It is the former home of the philanthropist Sir Paul Getty who moved to Wormsley in 1986. He undertook a restoration which lasted until 1991,...
. The company's new performing space is a 600 seat pavilion, which like that at Garsington Manor is designed to be put up and dismantled each season. The first season at Wormsley Park sees the performance of Vivaldi's La verità in cimento
La verità in cimento
La verità in cimento is an opera by Antonio Vivaldi to a libretto by Giovanni Palazzi. The opera, which is Vivaldi's 13th, was premiered during the Carnival at Venice in 1720. The work is listed as RV739 in the Vivaldi catalogue....
in its British premiere, Mozart's The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
and Rossini's Il turco in Italia
Il turco in Italia
Il turco in Italia is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The Italian-language libretto was written by Felice Romani...
. The company is now financed by The Friends of Garsington Opera, corporate and private sponsorship, and the support of foundations.
Notable performers
Amongst the notable singers who have performed with the company are Susan ChilcottSusan Chilcott
Susan Chilcott was an English soprano, considered one of the best of her generation. She died of breast cancer at the age of 40...
(The Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, 1993 ) Susan Bullock
Susan Bullock
Susan Bullock is an English soprano.She was educated at Cheadle Hulme School, and further at Royal Holloway College, University of London, the Royal Academy of Music and the National Opera Studio....
(Helena in Die ägyptische Helena
Die ägyptische Helena
Die ägyptische Helena is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on June 6, 1928...
, 1997) and Yvonne Kenny
Yvonne Kenny
Yvonne Kenny AM is an Australian soprano, particularly associated with Handel and Mozart roles.Born in Sydney, she first studied at the University of Sydney in science, hoping to become a biochemist, but decided to pursue a career in music instead...
(Christine in Intermezzo
Intermezzo (opera)
Intermezzo is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to his own German libretto, described as a Bürgerliche Komödie mit sinfonischen Zwischenspielen . It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on November 4, 1924, with sets that reproduced Strauss' home in Garmisch...
, 2001). Conductors include David Parry
David Parry (conductor)
David Parry is an English conductor who is particularly known for his work within the field of opera. Described as "a man of the theatre with whom directors love to work; he is good with singers; he knows the British opera world like the back of his hand...
, Ivor Bolton
Ivor Bolton
Ivor Bolton is an English conductor and harpsichordist. He studied at Clare College and at the Royal College of Music...
, Jane Glover
Jane Glover
Jane Glover CBE is a British-born conductor and music scholar.-Early life:Glover attended Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls. Her father, Robert Finlay Glover MA TD,was headmaster of Monmouth School and it was through this connection that she was able to meet Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears...
, and the founder of Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera is a professional opera company whose base is The Grange in Hampshire, England. The company was founded in 1998 by Wasfi Kani OBE and Michael Moody...
, Wasfi Kani. In addition to conducting Garsington Opera performances, Kani also served as the company's Assistant Director from 1993 to 1998.
Past productions
- Beethoven
- FidelioFidelioFidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
(2009)
- Fidelio
- BrittenBenjamin BrittenEdward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
- The Turn of the ScrewThe Turn of the Screw (opera)The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella...
(1992) - Albert HerringAlbert HerringAlbert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten.Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera The Rape of Lucretia...
(1996) - A Midsummer Night's DreamA Midsummer Night's Dream (opera)A Midsummer Night's Dream is an opera with music by Benjamin Britten and set to a libretto adapted by the composer and Peter Pears from William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream...
(2010)
- The Turn of the Screw
- DonizettiGaetano DonizettiDomenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
- Don PasqualeDon PasqualeDon Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
(2006)
- Don Pasquale
- HaydnJoseph HaydnFranz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
- Orlando paladinoOrlando paladinoOrlando paladino , Hob. 28/11, is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn which was first performed at Eszterháza on 6 December 1782. The libretto by Nunziano Porta is based on another libretto, Le pazzie d'Orlando, by Carlo Francesco Badini , itself inspired by Ariosto's epic poem Orlando furioso...
(1990, British premiere) - Il mondo della lunaIl mondo della lunaIl mondo della luna , Hob. 28/7, is an opera buffa by Joseph Haydn with a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, first performed at Eszterháza, Hungary on 3 August 1777. Goldoni's libretto had previously been set by four other composers, first by the composer Baldassare Galuppi and performed in Venice in the...
(1991, 2000) - La vera costanzaLa vera costanzaLa vera costanza , Hob. 28/8, is an operatic dramma giocoso by Joseph Haydn. The Italian libretto was a shortened version of the one by Francesco Puttini set by Pasquale Anfossi for the opera of the same name given in Rome in 1776...
(1992, first British professional production) - L'infedeltà delusaL'infedeltà delusaL'infedeltà delusa , Hob. 28/5, is an operatic burletta per musica by Joseph Haydn. The Italian libretto was by Marco Coltellini, perhaps reworked by Carl Friberth who also took part in the first performance.-Performance history:...
(1993) - L'incontro improvvisoL'incontro improvvisoL’incontro improvviso is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn first performed at Eszterháza on 29 August 1775 to mark the four-day visit of Archduke Ferdinand, Habsburg governor of Milan and his consort Maria Beatrice d'Este...
(1994) - La fedeltà premiataLa fedeltà premiataLa fedeltà premiata is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn first performed at Eszterháza on 25 February 1781 to celebrate the reopening of the court theatre after a fire...
(1995) - Le pescatriciLe pescatriciLe pescatrici Hob. 28/4, is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn set to a libretto by Carlo Goldoni...
(1997)
- Orlando paladino
- JanáčekLeoš JanácekLeoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
- ŠárkaŠárka (Janácek)Šárka is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by Julius Zeyer, based on Bohemian legends of Šárka in Dalimil’s Chronicle...
(2002, first British professional production) - OsudDestiny (Janácek)Destiny is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer and Fedora Bartošová. Janáček began the work in 1903 and completed it in 1907. The inspiration for the opera came from a visit by Janáček in the summer of 1903, after the death of his daughter Olga, to the spa...
(2002)
- Šárka
- MartinůBohuslav MartinuBohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...
- MirandolinaMirandolinaMirandolina is a comic opera in three acts by Bohuslav Martinů, with a libretto by the composer after Carlo Goldoni's comedy The Mistress of the Inn ....
(2009, British premiere)
- Mirandolina
- Mozart
- Le nozze di Figaro (1989, 1993, 2000, 2005, 2010)
- Così fan tutteCosì fan tutteCosì fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
(1990, 1997, 2004, 2008) - Die Entführung aus dem SerailDie Entführung aus dem SerailDie Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...
(1991, 1999) - Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
(1992, 2002) - Der SchauspieldirektorDer SchauspieldirektorDer Schauspieldirektor , K. 486, is a comic Singspiel written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Gottlieb Stephanie, an Austrian Schauspieldirektor....
(1995) - IdomeneoIdomeneoIdomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712...
(1996) - Lucio SillaLucio SillaLucio Silla, K. 135, is an Italian opera in three acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was written by Giovanni de Gamerra.It was first performed on 26 December 1772 at the Regio Ducal Teatro in Milan....
(1998) - Die Zauberflöte (2001)
- La finta giardinieraLa finta giardinieraLa finta giardiniera , K. 196, is an Italian opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart wrote it in Munich in January 1775 when he was 18 years old and it received its first performance on January 13 at the Salvatortheater in Munich...
(2003) - Der Stein der Weisen (2006)
- Il re pastoreIl re pastoreIl re pastore is an opera, K. 208, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Metastasio, edited by Gianbattista Varesco. It is an opera seria...
(2007)
- Rimsky-Korsakov
- Mayskaya NochMay NightMay Night is an opera in three acts, four scenes, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov from a libretto by the composer and is based on Nikolai Gogol's story May Night, or the Drowned Maiden, from his collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka....
(2006)
- Mayskaya Noch
- Rossini
- Il barbiere di Siviglia (1994, 2003)
- La CenerentolaLa CenerentolaLa Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
(1995, 2009) - Il turco in ItaliaIl turco in ItaliaIl turco in Italia is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The Italian-language libretto was written by Felice Romani...
(1996) - La pietra del paragoneLa pietra del paragoneLa pietra del paragone is an opera, or melodramma giocoso, in two acts by Gioachino Rossini, to an original Italian libretto by Luigi Romanelli.-Performance history:...
(1998) - L'italiana in AlgeriL'italiana in AlgeriL'italiana in Algeri is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Angelo Anelli, based on his earlier text set by Luigi Mosca...
(1999) - La gazzettaLa GazzettaLa gazzetta, ossia Il matrimonio per concorso is an opera buffa by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was by Giuseppe Palomba after Carlo Goldoni's play Il matrimonio per concorso of 1763....
(2001, British premiere) - La gazza ladraLa gazza ladraLa gazza ladra is a melodramma or opera semiseria in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was by Giovanni Gherardini after La pie voleuse by JMT Badouin d'Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez....
(2002) - L'equivoco stravaganteL'equivoco stravaganteL'equivoco stravagante is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Gaetano Gasbarri. It was Rossini's first attempt at writing a full two-act opera.-Performance history:...
(2004, British premiere) - Le comte OryLe comte OryLe comte Ory is an opéra written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera Il viaggio a Reims written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X...
(2005) - La donna del lagoLa donna del lagoLa donna del lago is an opera by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, based on The Lady of the Lake, a poem by Sir Walter Scott.This opera was the first to be based on Scott's romantic works...
(2007) - ArmidaArmida (Rossini)Armida is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Schmidt, based on scenes from Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso.-Performance history:...
(2010)
- SchumannRobert SchumannRobert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
- GenovevaGenovevaGenoveva is an opera in four acts by Robert Schumann in the genre of German Romanticism with a libretto by Robert Reinick and the composer. The only opera Schumann ever wrote, it received its first performance on 25 June 1850 at the Stadttheater in Leipzig, with the composer conducting...
(2000, first British professional production)
- Genoveva
- Richard StraussRichard StraussRichard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
- Ariadne auf NaxosAriadne auf NaxosAriadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...
(1993, 2007) - CapriccioCapriccio (opera)Capriccio is the final opera by German composer Richard Strauss, subtitled "A Conversation Piece for Music". The opera received its premiere performance at the Nationaltheater München on October 28, 1942. Clemens Krauss and Strauss himself wrote the German libretto...
(1994) - DaphneDaphne (opera)Daphne is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss, his 13th opera, subtitled "A Bucolic Tragedy in One Act". The German libretto was by Joseph Gregor. The opera is based loosely on a myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and also includes elements taken from The Bacchae by Euripides...
(1995) - Die ägyptische HelenaDie ägyptische HelenaDie ägyptische Helena is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on June 6, 1928...
(1997, British premiere) - Die Liebe der DanaeDie Liebe der DanaeDie Liebe der Danae is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a February 1937 German libretto by Joseph Gregor, based on an outline written in 1920, "Danae, or The Marriage of Convenience", by Hugo Hofmannsthal...
(1999, first British production) - IntermezzoIntermezzo (opera)Intermezzo is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to his own German libretto, described as a Bürgerliche Komödie mit sinfonischen Zwischenspielen . It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on November 4, 1924, with sets that reproduced Strauss' home in Garmisch...
(2001) - Die schweigsame FrauDie schweigsame FrauDie schweigsame Frau is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with libretto by Stefan Zweig after Ben Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman.-Performance history:...
(2003) - ArabellaArabellaArabella is a lyric comedy or opera in 3 acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration. It was first performed on 1 July 1933, at the Dresden Sächsisches Staatstheater....
(2005)
- Ariadne auf Naxos
- Stravinsky
- The Rake's ProgressThe Rake's ProgressThe Rake's Progress is an opera in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings A Rake's Progress of William Hogarth, which Stravinsky had seen on May 2, 1947, in a Chicago...
(2008)
- The Rake's Progress
- Tchaikovsky
- CherevichkiCherevichkiCherevichki [alternative renderings are The Little Shoes, The Tsarina's Slippers, Les caprices d'Oxane, and Gli stivaletti] is a comic-fantastic opera in 4 acts, 8 scenes, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was composed in 1885 in Maidanovo, Russia...
(2004, first professional British production)
- Cherevichki
- VerdiGiuseppe VerdiGiuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
- FalstaffFalstaff (opera)Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
(1998)
- Falstaff
- VivaldiAntonio VivaldiAntonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...
- L'incoronazione di DarioL'incoronazione di DarioL'incoronazione di Dario is a dramma per musica by Antonio Vivaldi with an Italian libretto by Adriano Morselli. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice on 23 January 1717.-Roles:-Recordings:...
(2008, UK Premiere)
- L'incoronazione di Dario