Longborough Festival Opera
Encyclopedia
Longborough Festival Opera is an opera festival held in an opera house in Longborough, a village in north Gloucestershire.
Longborough Festival Opera presents a season of high quality opera in the English Cotswolds each June and July It started life in 1991 as Banks Fee Opera. After a series of chamber music concerts in the drawing room of our house, Banks Fee, we decided to invite Travelling Opera, a small touring opera company to give two performances with a small orchestra on a temporary stage in the courtyard of the stable block in aid of Sue Ryder and Barnado’s. The original audience was mainly local supporters of the charities and about £3000 was raised after costs and including donations which was divided between the two charities.
The opera evenings, with picnic interval, were very popular and we were begged to continue! Until 1998, our relationship was exclusively with Travelling Opera, whose productions of well-known operas in English were much enjoyed by our steadily increasing audience which grew from a total of 400 in 1991 to 1600 in 1997. Over that period, Banks Fee Opera presented Cosi fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, La Bohème, Don Giovanni, La Traviata, The Magic Flute and Carmen. Longborough Festival Opera was founded after a move to New Banks Fee, where we converted a barn into a theatre, using seats from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which were being discarded during the process of its recent refurbishment.
LONGBOROUGH AND WAGNER
If each of the British ‘country house’ opera companies have their speciality, Longborough’s has to be its commitment to Wagner. LFO is the first privately owned opera house to be mounting a production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. After LFO’s acclaimed production of the reduced version prepared by Graham Vick and Jonathan Dove for the City of Birmingham Touring Opera company, Longborough is now producing a fully orchestrated version making use of Longborough’s excellent pit, modelled on that at Bayreuth, which accommodates 72 players. The 2007 season featured the first instalment of our new full-length Ring Cycle. Das Rheingold was sung in German and had an orchestra of 60 players conducted by Anthony Negus. Alan Privett directed and the set was designed by Kjell Torriset. Das Rheingold returned in 2008 for a further three performances, and Die Walküre was staged in 2010
2011 will see a new production of Siegfried and 2012 Gotterdammerung. in Wagner's bicentenary year, 2013, the whole cycle will be stage - it is believed for the first time in a privately owned opera house.
The chairman of the festival is Martin Graham, the music director Anthony Negus and the artistic director Alan Privett.
Longborough Festival Opera presents a season of high quality opera in the English Cotswolds each June and July It started life in 1991 as Banks Fee Opera. After a series of chamber music concerts in the drawing room of our house, Banks Fee, we decided to invite Travelling Opera, a small touring opera company to give two performances with a small orchestra on a temporary stage in the courtyard of the stable block in aid of Sue Ryder and Barnado’s. The original audience was mainly local supporters of the charities and about £3000 was raised after costs and including donations which was divided between the two charities.
The opera evenings, with picnic interval, were very popular and we were begged to continue! Until 1998, our relationship was exclusively with Travelling Opera, whose productions of well-known operas in English were much enjoyed by our steadily increasing audience which grew from a total of 400 in 1991 to 1600 in 1997. Over that period, Banks Fee Opera presented Cosi fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, La Bohème, Don Giovanni, La Traviata, The Magic Flute and Carmen. Longborough Festival Opera was founded after a move to New Banks Fee, where we converted a barn into a theatre, using seats from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which were being discarded during the process of its recent refurbishment.
LONGBOROUGH AND WAGNER
If each of the British ‘country house’ opera companies have their speciality, Longborough’s has to be its commitment to Wagner. LFO is the first privately owned opera house to be mounting a production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. After LFO’s acclaimed production of the reduced version prepared by Graham Vick and Jonathan Dove for the City of Birmingham Touring Opera company, Longborough is now producing a fully orchestrated version making use of Longborough’s excellent pit, modelled on that at Bayreuth, which accommodates 72 players. The 2007 season featured the first instalment of our new full-length Ring Cycle. Das Rheingold was sung in German and had an orchestra of 60 players conducted by Anthony Negus. Alan Privett directed and the set was designed by Kjell Torriset. Das Rheingold returned in 2008 for a further three performances, and Die Walküre was staged in 2010
2011 will see a new production of Siegfried and 2012 Gotterdammerung. in Wagner's bicentenary year, 2013, the whole cycle will be stage - it is believed for the first time in a privately owned opera house.
The chairman of the festival is Martin Graham, the music director Anthony Negus and the artistic director Alan Privett.