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.
The Royal Opera is delighted to be returning to Japan in September 2019 as part of an exciting year of UK-Japan exchanges, titled UK in Japan 2019-20, following the Company’s hugely successful tour in autumn 2015.
In September 2019, The Royal Opera will present performances of David McVicar’s sumptuous staging of Charles-François Gounod’s masterpiece Faust, and of Keith Warner’s psychologically probing and moving production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Shakespeare-inspired opera Otello. All performances are conducted by The Royal Opera’s Music Director Antonio Pappano.
Faust opens the tour on Thursday 12 September 2019 and features a cast including Italian tenor Vittorio Grigòlo in the title role, Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo as his diabolic companion Méphistophélès and American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Faust’s lover Marguerite. The production was last performed by The Royal Opera in April 2019.
The opera tells the story of the philosopher Faust’s ill-considered pact with the devil Méphistophélès, who offers him youth and the love of the beautiful Marguerite, in exchange for the philosopher’s soul. All too soon, Faust realizes that his quest for pleasure may have disastrous consequences.
This production sets the action in Paris in the early 1870s, draws parallels between the experiences of Gounod and Faust, and revels in the opera’s gothic elements. Themes of love, betrayal and the battle between good and evil are brought to life through the spectacular set designs of Charles Edwards, elegant costume designs by Brigitte Reiffenstuel and atmospheric lighting design by Paule Constable. David McVicar’s staging is revived by Bruno Ravella. The vigorous original choreography by Michael Keegan-Dolan is revived for this run by Emmanuel Obeya.
Verdi’s penultimate opera Otello opens on Saturday 14 September 2019 and features a cast including American tenor Gregory Kunde in the title role, Armenian soprano Hrachuhi Bassenz as Desdemona and Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley as Iago. The production was last seen at the Royal Opera House in June 2017.
Designer Boris Kudlička’s semi-abstract sets and Kaspar Glarner’s period costumes highlight the contrasting innocence of Desdemona and malevolence of Iago, while Bruno Poet’s lighting designs reflect Otello’s increasingly troubled emotions. Warner sensitively examines the relationships between Moors, Turks and Westerners in Shakespeare’s time, and shows how Otello feels an outsider in his society, which contributes to his loss of confidence and gradual mental collapse. For this run of performances, Keith Warner’s staging is revived by Royal Opera Staff Director Julia Burbach.
Faust opens the tour at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan in Ueno Park on 12 September 2019, with subsequent performances on 15 and 18 September 2019. The production also visits Kanagawa Kenmin Hall in Yokohama on 22 September 2019. Otello opens at Kanagawa Kenmin Hall on 14 September 2019, with an additional performance on 16 September 2019, and visits Tokyo Bunka Kaikan on 21 and 23 September 2019.