REPERTOIRE

In our second year, 1994, we selected an opera which, despite the fame of its composer, is remarkably little-known – L’oca del Cairo (The Cairo Goose). Mozart composed this in 1783 but became dissatisfied with the libretto, and so discarded the project – he wrote much, but not all, of the first act, and only sketched in the orchestral parts. We discovered the work through a CD and were struck by the quality and fun of the music and plot; for the recording a ‘completion’ had been produced by the musicologist Erik Smith, who we contacted in London and who became an enthusiastic ally of the project. This was our (Gilly and Jeremy) first attempt at writing an opera translation (from the Italian) and Jeremy’s first experience of directing a production.

Although in 1995 and 1996 we chose ‘standard’ repertory (Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Gluck’s Orpheus and Euridice), from 1997 we moved almost entirely into rare and little-known operas - always from the ‘classical’ period of the second half of the eighteenthcentury. We felt there was little point in duplicating popular works such as Carmen or La Traviata which can be heard everywhere. We decided to go beyond the accepted ‘canon’ of standard choices, encouraged to take risks and to educate our audiences in music they would not otherwise encounter. Rare repertoire quickly became our ‘USP’: although sometimes challenging in terms of access to the written scores, it is remarkably liberating to perform music which is almost unheard. It gave the company – renamed in 1998 from ‘Bampton Summer Opera’ to ‘Bampton Classical Opera’ – a distinctiveness which was soon recognised by the press, and which has led to many triumphs.

'Britain’s unchallenged champion of 18th-century opera.’ (Opera Now)

'There’s always a special sense of relaxed occasion at Bampton; each performance of just one carefully picked and often rare work, feels like the culmination of months of intense preparation and yet the whole company glows with the joy of sharing this latest operatic find with the world, creating an atmosphere at once calm, confident and utterly inclusive.' (Bachtrack)

'Bampton Classical Opera produces nothing but rare repertory – a huge credit to a company with a flair for production but run on a shoestring.' (Royal Opera House programme booklet)

Bampton’s 2019 production of Stephen Storace’s comedy Bride & Gloom (Gli sposi malcontenti) was selected as a finalist (amongst major European companies) for the Rediscovered Work category of the International Opera Awards in 2020