THIRTY YEARS OF BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA since a gay Robe an ill Shape may disguise,

Paris, in Arne’s Judgment of Paristext by Congreve

Staged opera needs to bring music and language into a communicative relationship with setting, costumes and acting. Whilst the earliest Bampton operas barely used scenery and the garden setting of the Deanery sufficed, as we upped our game, we had to be more ambitious, although this has a massive impact on constrained budgets. With open-air opera there are no helpful theatre wings in which to conceal furniture and actors, and scene changes are challenging to effect. From 2000, with additional venues, the issue of design became more complex: the Deanery, Westonbirt and St John’s are widely diverse. In a traditional opera theatre, conductor and orchestra are in a ‘pit’ in front of the stage, but we’ve never dared introduce bulldozers into the Deanery garden! Here we place the orchestra in a tent ‘stage left’ (that’s to the right as audience see it). At our other regular venues we now place the players behind the stage, but that creates challenging scenic issues. At the Deanery there’s also the problem of masking the central gap in the hedge – vital for entries and exits, but an irritation when the audience can see right through to the backstage area behind.

Our first set of any complexity was for Comedy of Errors. Mindful of the location of the Shakespearian story in Ephesus, I wanted a loosely Arabic look, and was thrilled when the Laura Ashley shop in Regent Street, London, donated their discarded window settings of elegant pierced Moorish-style arches, made from MDF, painted a glittery deep red and with inset panels of coloured Perspex. Adding some matching red striped curtains in the arches from Pauline Smith’s extensive fabric collection, mounting the arches around some platforms, all set on a stage painted like a chess board, created a charming all-purpose environment which worked well despite the different scenes required in the plot.

The necessity of a much larger set at Buxton has been mentioned above. Nigel’s Barber caravan was built for us by Rose Bruford College (a theatrical college) in Sidcup, and I remember the excitement of it being unloaded at Bampton from the delivery lorry. At this time we began to benefit from the arrival in the village of Mike Wareham and his willing involvement -