Grange Park Opera and the English National Opera have announced a new partnership. The partnership kicks off this summer with a June 14, 2025 production of “Mazeppa” with the Orchestra of the English National Opera and former Music Director Martyn Brabbins. Sir David Poutney directs. The Tchaikovsky opera has only appeared a handful of times in the U.K. with its {…}
The Grange Park Opera has announced that it will present Wagner’s “The Ring Cycle between 2026 and 2029. The company said that it will showcase a production by Charles Edwards that will begin in 2026 with “Das Rheingold” followed by “Die Walküre” in 2027. “Siegfried” will be showcased in 2028 and in 2029 “Götterdämmerung” will conclude the cycle. In a {…}
Grange Park Opera has unveiled its programming for 2024. First up is a double bill of “Aleko” and “Gianni Schicchi,” both headlined by Sir Bryn Terfel. He is joined in the Rachmaninoff opera with Ailish Tynan, Luis Gomes, Robert Winslade Anderson, and Sara Fulgoni. In “Schicchi” other cast members include Pasquale Orchard, Luis Gomes, and Sara Fulgoni, among others. Gianluca {…}
(Photo: Marc Brenner) “Tristan und Isolde” isn’t an opera generally known for its laughs. Indeed, sniggers from the audience generally indicates that something has gone drastically wrong in the direction department with this particular work. But in the this new production from Grange Park Opera, just outside of London, a sprinkling of giggles and smiles are testament to the zippy {…}
Grange Park Opera has announced its summer 2023 slate. The company will feature three operas between June 8 – July 12, 2023. First up is Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” The opera will be directed by Charlie Edwards with Gwyn Hughes Jones and Rachel Nicholls as the star-crossed lovers. Joining them will be Christine Rice as Brangäne and David Stout as {…}
(Credit: Richard Lewisohn) The Grange Park Opera has announced that it will present a film version of Puccini’s comic masterpiece “Gianni Schicchi.” “Though the real Donati family and Schicchi lived in the early 1300s, and Puccini set his opera at that time, we are depicting a greedy family and a rogue of today. However, our Schicchi is a loveable rogue, {…}
Grange Park Opera is set to stream its production of “The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko” on Nov. 26, 2021. The opera was composed by Anthony Bolton and features a libretto by Kit Hesketh-Harvey. The opera starred Adrian Dwyer, Rebecca Bottone, Stephan Loges, James Laing, Olivia Ray, and Edmund Danon. Stephen Barlow conducted a production by Stephen Medcalf. OperaWire’s {…}
(Photo: Marc Brenner) The world of spies, subterfuge, and assassination has long been grist to the operatic mill. Scarpia runs the secret police in “Tosca”; Paolo poisons Boccanegra in Verdi’s Venetian drama of political intrigue; Leonora infiltrates a prison disguised as a man in “Fidelio”. So a contemporary tale like that of dissident and former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned {…}
Grange Park Opera, the brainchild of go-getting impresario Wasfi Kani, has taken an energetic approach to the COVID-19 pandemic over the last year, seeing opportunity in challenge. They commissioned and performed a brand new work last summer on the hoof, “A Feast in a time of Plague;” they have offered filmed versions of Britten’s “Owen Wingrave” and Ravel’s “L’heure Espagnole.” {…}
Grange Park Opera has followed their inventive “Owen Wingrave“, a work intended for television, with a filmed realization of Maurice Ravel’s one-act farce “L’heure espagnole,” the story of a clockmaker’s wife who has to shuffle her liaisons like a deck of cards. Director Stephen Medcalf updated the action from eighteenth-century Toledo – given glancing mention through a Goya print on {…}
(Credit; Javier del Real) Opéra de Monte-Carlo has announced the cancelation of a previously scheduled recital featuring famed British bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions. The recital, which was set to take place on Feb. 24 2021, would have featured works by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Benjamin Britten, Marcel Grandjany, Claude Debussy, and Roger Quilter. Per {…}