OTHER VENUES

Growing ambition led us to seek new venues – and gradually new venues and festivals have sought us. Westonbirt School became a regular venue from 2000, and St John’s Smith Square, London from 2002 (see separate displays).

Two major theatre venues were important for us in the period 2002 to 2012. The Bath Shakespeare Festival invited us to perform twice (Storace, The Comedy of Errors and Salieri Falstaff) in the magnificent Theatre Royal, and the prestigious Buxton Festival invited us four times with major productions in the sumptuous Buxton Opera House, perhaps our most exciting experiences. We added to our London profile with three concerts in the renowned Wigmore Hall, and one in the Purcell Room at the Southbank, as well as some smaller London venues. In 2009 we were invited to stage a double-bill by Gluck and Mozart for the Cheltenham International Festival in the Pump Room. We’ve appeared several times in Oxford’s historic Holywell Music Room, and also in Lincoln College and SJE Arts. We’ve staged operas for the English Haydn Festival in Bridgnorth, the Thaxted Festival, the Wantage Concert Club, for Bury Court Opera in Hampshire and the Northern Aldborough Festival in Yorkshire (where we are returning in June 2023). Nearer to home we’ve performed concerts in Cote Chapel.

Especially enjoyable have been two country house venues –a wonderful Lutyens house in Hampshire where we took four productions for a private party, and especially Wotton House in Buckinghamshire where we took seven productions for the impressive concert series run by the retired diplomat owner David Gladstone.

In Bampton, past and present owners at Cobb House have generously welcomed us many times for post-performance parties (as also at Woods House and Little Place) and for events for our Friends; the garden was the venue for our (inevitably reduced) ‘lockdown’ performance in August 2000 – just one singer with harpsichord, and 30 socially-distanced audience.

In September 2022, having been kindly invited to use Weald Manor many times for orchestral rehearsals, we were delighted to give a garden performance (Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno); we also took this production to the Music at Breinton series in Woking, and we inaugurated a lovely new barn venue at Wadhurst, Sussex (where we will return later in 2023).