THIRTY YEARS OF BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA

We decided that our millennium opera at Bampton itself would be something special, a setting of The Comedy of Errors, composed in Italian (Gli equivoci) by the AngloItalian composer Stephen Storace (1762-96): this choice later led us to a love affair with Stephen and his famous soprano sister Nancy, who created the role of Susanna in the premiere of Mozart’s Figaro in 1786. The libretto, skilfully adapted into Italian from Shakespeare’s play, was by Mozart’s famous collaborator, Lorenzo da Ponte: we used a singing translation back into English by Arthur Jacobs. Nevertheless we feared that such an esoteric choice might be unwise when trying to establish a new venue in Gloucestershire, and so for Westonbirt we chose Mozart’s Così fan tutte, also written by Da Ponte. Somehow we found ourselves with a Westonbirt date in July just a few days before Storace at Bampton. Both operas were rehearsed simultaneously in London and conductor Simon Over worked on both. I directed the Storace and one of the Così singers, Robert Batemen, took on the Mozart. The latter was deemed a success, and we added Westonbirt to our regular venues. For several years we perhaps overstretched ourselves by putting on different operas at Westonbirt and Bampton but at least we spread the dates to opposite ends of the summer. When rehearsing at Westonbirt we billeted the singers in the sixth form centre, with Gilly and our trustee Damian Riddle managing the catering in the domestic science kitchens. We always got plenty of exercise traipsing across the huge estate.

A significant step in 2000 was becoming a limited company and a registered charity “to advance education for the public benefit by the promotion of the arts, in particular but not exclusively the art of opera”. Although this brought with it many time-consuming legal obligations, it meant that we were now ‘properly’ constituted with a Board of Directors and, most beneficially, it enhanced the opportunities for raising grants from charitable trusts and foundations – from then on, every year, I have settled down to long weeks of writing elaborate grant applications to supplement the vital donations made by our growing number of generous and loyal ‘Friends’. The millennium year also saw an increase in concert activity: we put on a Lent concert in Bampton church, and in the autumn we were invited to give a recital to mark the restoration and re-opening of the peaceful 18th-century Baptist Chapel at Cote, just a couple of miles away and in the care of the Historic Chapels Trust. In December we gave an Advent concert in the famous Norman church at Iffley on the edge of Oxford, and Gilly conducted our second Messiah for St Beornwald’s Day at Bampton. Our schedule was beginning to become busy and to dominate our personal lives, fortunately happily (well, usually).