English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
Conductor Oliver Zeffman has commissioned the very first opera for a socially distanced world, which is now available to watch exclusively on Apple Music. Eight Songs From Isolation has been written by eight leading composers, specifically for streaming - rather than live performance - and is the first opera written for a time when the performers were unable to meet in person.
Leading freelance musicians unite in Parliament Square to call for targeted support for colleagues in the arts and entertainment sector.
Duo Lewis Murphy (composer) and Laura Attridge (writer) have launched a charitable song project entitled Notes From Isolation. The resulting songs, featuring some of the UK's top singing talent, are being released online between August and October 2020 and can be enjoyed free of charge.
The Royal Opera House is thrilled to announce an exciting, wide-ranging new line-up for its autumn programme. For the first time, extraordinary performances will be accessible online for a global audience through livestreams and for socially distanced live audiences at our home in Covent Garden. In a global first, we present a new opera in hyper-reality, alongside repertory favourites from both artistic companies.
Some of the most famous and outstanding stars from the opera world are to take part in a very special evening from Wexford Festival Opera, including Aigul Akhmetshina, Joseph Calleja, Daniela Barcellona, Juan Diego Flórez, Igor Golovatenko, Ermonela Jaho, Sergey Romanovsky, and many more.
Following its successful launch in 2019, OperaStreaming streams nine operas on YouTube from the historic opera houses of Emilia-Romagna during the 2020-21 season, with fully-staged productions of Verdi's La traviata in October from Modena and Verdi'sOtello from Bologna in...
‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival (10th-17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse and imaginative programme of 40 performances and events.
Bampton Classical Opera returns to the Baroque splendour of London’s St John’s Smith Square on November 6 with a concert performance of Gluck’s one-act opera The Crown, the first in the UK since 1987. The performance will also be filmed and available to watch on demand on the Bampton website from 9 November.
While many of us spent lockdown at home taking it a little easier, composer Andrew Synnott wrote an opera.
Owen Wingrave is part of the new Interim Season of 19 brand new events, all free to view online between September and December 2020.
The Arts Council has awarded innovative UK charity Music and Theatre For All (MTFA) a major new grant to develop three ambitious new projects in the wake of Covid 19.
English National Opera (ENO) will reopen the London Coliseum to socially distanced audiences on 6 and 7 November for special performances of Mozart’s Requiem. These will provide audiences with an opportunity to reflect upon and to commemorate the difficulties the nation has faced during the pandemic.
The Royal Opera House is proud to continue its curated #OurHouseToYourHouse programme into the autumn, bringing audiences the best of the ROH through a new series of Friday Premieres and cultural highlights.
After six months of closure, the Royal Opera House is thrilled to be opening its doors to the public as part of Open House London weekend, giving visitors a taste of one of the world’s most famous theatres for free.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields is thrilled to announce re:connect - an eight concert series with live socially distanced audiences at its namesake church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The autumn concerts will take place at 5pm & 7:30pm on two Saturdays per month with guest artists including baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Carolyn Sampson and composer-conductor-pianist Ryan Wigglesworth performing a wide range of repertoire.
Music and poetry unite and collide across centuries, from the Medieval to the Enlightenment to the present day. This year, the Oxford Lieder Festival will present a thrilling and innovative programme comprising more than forty events streamed over eight days.
The English Concert with artistic director Harry Bicket is delighted to announce a series of concerts from 1-15 October 2020. The concerts take place in historic London venues with star soloists and will be performed and streamed live to a paying audience at 7pm GMT on each performance date. The programmes include first-class vocal and instrumental works from the two pillars of the English Baroque, covering different aspects of the repertoire.
Glyndebourne has announced plans for a ‘staycation’ series of socially-distanced indoor performances, starting on 10 October 2020.
The Royal Opera House is delighted to announce two packed evenings of opera and ballet, live from our stage in Covent Garden and available to view wherever you are in the world online.
Applications will open on March 1, 2019 for Bampton Classical Opera’s fourth biennial Young Singers’ Competition. The competition was launched in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday. It is now well established and identifies, rewards and nurtures some of the country’s most talented young professional singers aged 21-32 and their accompanists.
The previous winners were mezzo-soprano Anna Starushkevych (2013), sopranoGalina Averina (2015) and mezzo-soprano Emma Stannard (2017). In 2017 an Accompanists’ Prize was introduced, and the first winner was Keval Shah. Bampton Classical Opera has a reputation for its commitment to young talent and a number of singers who have appeared on the Bampton stage have gone on to work with national companies such as The Royal Opera, English National Opera and Opera North.
The first round of the Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition 2019 (closed sessions) will take place on 5 and 6 October in London. The public final will take place in the Holywell Music Room, Oxford, on Sunday 17 November at 6pm. This is always an entertaining and thrilling event, and a chance to hear some remarkable performances. Judges for the competition include two internationally renowned British singers: tenor Bonaventura Bottone and mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby. Bampton is delighted to announce they are joined this year by the esteemed accompanist and conductor Phillip Thomas, who was a vocal coach and répétiteur at English National Opera, and the official accompanist to the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World for many years.
There will be a fund-raising reception for this year’s Young Singers’ Competition on 26 March at the Caledonian Club, Halkin Street, London SW1 . Bampton Classical Opera is honoured that Benjamin Hulett, one of the first young singers to perform with the Company, who now has an international career at the highest level, will launch this year’s competition, talk about his career and give a short recital. He will also be commemorating his 20th year as a professional performer. Benjamin first performed for the Company in 2000 in Stephen Storace’s Comedy of Errors, which is very apt as this year Bampton is staging Storace’s other Viennese opera Bride and Gloom. Benjamin commented: “ Bampton Classical Opera is a brilliant company who work with a lot of rising stars, often spotting them before anyone else, and their performances are excellent .”
Tickets, including champagne, canapés and a ticket to the November final are £60 and will provide all-important support to the competition. For tickets to the fund-raising reception on 26 March contact Anthony Hall, Administrator, Bampton Classical Opera ( anthony@bamptonopera.org)
Competitors for the Young Singers’ Competition 2019 can apply by downloading an application form and information document from the company’s website - www.bamptonopera.org or on request by emailing ysc@bamptonopera.org. Applications open on 1 March, 2019 and close on 31 July.
First (Closed) Round:
Venue: tbc, London
Date: Saturday 5 and/or Sunday 6 October
Final (Public) Round
:
Venue: Holywell Music Room, Oxford
Date/Time: Sunday 17 November, 6pm
First prize £1,500 - Second prize £600
There will also be a £500 Accompanists’ Prize.
Previous Winners and Runners-up
:
2013
Winner: Anna Starushkevych (mezzo-soprano)
Runner-up: Rosalind Coad (soprano)
2015
Winner: Galina Averina (soprano)
Runner-up: Céline Forrest (soprano)
2017
Winner: Emma Stannard (mezzo-soprano)
Runner-up: Wagner Moreira (tenor)
Accompanists’ Prize: Keval Shah