THIRTY YEARS OF BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA

distressed brickwork in the first act, damp prison stone in the second. Act 2 also incorporated a working ‘guillotine’ which Mike built in his garden, alarmingly visible over the wall to passers-by on Bampton’s Bridge Street. Mike loved the challenge of making something work: his contribution of a framed sailing ship painting as the centrepiece in Nigel’s wonderful (and ghastly) Trafalgar Square hotel for Cimarosa’s The Italian Girl in London was a classic. In yet another operatic storm scene, the ship on this innocuous-looking picture began to rock and crash amongst its painted waves with delightful comic Captain Pugwash-like effect.

Bampton Scenic Workshops

flourished with charming sets for Haydn’s Le pescatrici in 2009, with colourful Italian water-front fishstalls and a full-sized boat that glided across backstage, and for The Marriage of Figaro in 2010. By now construction was taking place in a massive barn lent by Andrew

Hichens at his farm in nearby Radcot. The Figaro set was very beautiful, especially in the garden by moonlight, and was constructed around a series of large pierced Islamic panels, donated to us by the Tate Gallery.

Mike stepped down from active strenuous scenic service in 2012, but fortunately Anthony was poised to take over and, with the able help of Trevor Darke, produced robust and immaculately measured sets from 2013 to 2018. For the surrealist Magritte setting for Mozart’s convoluted La finta semplice in 2013 Anthony also became a master of helium-inflated balloons, so that we could ‘fly’ Magrittean bowler hats above the set. Anthony’s scenic triumph came with Salieri’s Trofonio’s Cave in 2015 when the audience greeted the scenery ‘reveal’ at the transition between the acts with enthusiastic applause, as a handsome Edwardian bookcase smoothly rotated to reveal a perfect copy of Dr Who’s Tardis.