THIRTY YEARS OF BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA

conductor, the young Australian Alexander Briger (nephew of Sir Charles Mackerras), and diary clashes necessitated some cast changes from the previous year. Even so, one new tenor failed to learn the music in time: we had to sack him and find a replacement just three days’ before, no easy task for an opera that no-one in the country had sung. The performance was deemed a great success and the Festival director wrote: “thank you all so much – and for being wonderfully calm in the face of adversity!” We were warmly invited to return with another Shakespeare production when we could.

A significant London performance was our next goal. For our 10th season in 2002 we selected the stunning Baroque former church of St John’s Smith Square, a famous high-profile venue. Built in 1710 by the maverick Baroque architect Thomas Archer, it was bombed out in World War II but later restored as a concert hall. Its magnificent

Corinthian columns and splendid chandeliers have framed our London performances ever since. We first appeared there with Mozart: what we titled ‘Waiting for Figaro’ was an enhancement of our 1994 Mozart double bill, now with the addition of a further unfinished opera, Lo sposo deluso. We learned that St John’s has a gloriously warm acoustic but is not always kind to English diction. We placed the orchestra on the stepped platforms of the stage behind the action, an arrangement with which we’ve stayed ever since, despite the problems it causes for singers with restricted visibility of the conductor. Gilly persuaded Edward Gardner, a young up-and-coming conductor, to take on our performances – we little guessed that he would go on to become music director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera, then of English National Opera and now principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as significant European posts.