Welcome to The Grange. I hope your journey here has been easy. Now that you are here, we want your every moment with us to be an unforgettable delight.
When we get together to make the Festival at The Grange, we become a community of artists, technicians, musicians, designers, dancers, singers, cooks, waiters, organisers and volunteers. We all feel we belong to something creative and important, and hugely rewarding personally.
We need this to happen more than for just a few months in summer. Using the skills and talents of our Festival community, we want to stimulate children, teenagers, and beyond, in schools and colleges and public buildings and spaces, as well as at our home here at The Grange. Making music and drama is seriously applied intelligence and talent. The increasing lack of music in school education is more, much more than just cultural deprivation. It’s denying mental and spiritual development, and, especially, the training of fingers and mouths. To play music and create theatre requires intense focus and concentration and the complicity of colleagues. These are all vital lessons for society as a whole.
Covid-19 has revealed startling educational, social and cultural fissures. We are the type of organisation that can start to fill them. We have the imagination, the skills and the people to do so. This is not easy. We are doing good things, as you can read in this programme. We can do so much more, and affect so many more people. And we know that if we can touch the lives of children, crucially in the first few years of their education, their ability to thrive and prosper in the community can be enhanced. These are big words. We encourage you to think the same. And to help us make it happen.
Imagine the Coronation without the music: from the tubas on horseback to the children’s soaring voices, the ritual chant, the elemental rhythms and exhilarating harmonies. How did it all happen? As a proud singer, I would like to pay tribute to Charles III, perhaps the most culturally minded and musically supportive monarch this country has had. His life-long patronage stands out, especially now when some of our institutions are failing us.
I hope our music-making and our theatrical magic touch you deeply. Thank you for coming.
Michael Chance CBE Artistic Director
Michael Chance, The Grange Festival Artistic Director © Leela Bennett
“We become a community of artists, technicians, musicians, designers, dancers, singers, cooks, waiters, organisers and volunteers”
I would like to warmly welcome you to the 2023 Festival –it’s hard to believe that seven years have flown past since our inaugural season! In that short time, Michael Chance and his team have established an enviable reputation for putting on programmes that are imaginative, musically diverse and creatively of the highest standard. I hope that you will see from the programme that this year is no exception, with Purcell, Gluck, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Ellington all on offer. From a general perspective, I think it is no exaggeration to say that the arts are presently facing some of the greatest challenges in living memory. The pandemic has left its indelible mark, and a combination of straightened budgets and inflation have further weakened the cultural superstructure of the nation. However, despite this difficult backdrop, I am confident that the Festival will continue to thrive and we can be optimistic about the future. We have two critical ingredients for this: a superb creative team and a uniquely beautiful venue. But, just as important, we have a bedrock of dedicated supporters who share our wider ambition to contribute to a musical world that goes beyond a programme of live performances. Michael Chance in his introduction has written about our extensive education plans for the Festival and our goal of establishing a broader, long-lasting contribution to the musical development of the next generation. Of course, our endeavours fundamentally depend on you, our audience. Thank you, and please spread the word. After a few years of uncertainty, we need to make sure that people re-acquire The Grange habit!
Turning to cuisine, this year we are joined by The Little Kitchen Company, who have produced an exciting range of menus that we hope will offer something for all tastes, wherever you are dining. One of the things our visitors often comment on to me is the warmth of the Festival and the personal touches they often experience. This is due to our brilliant team in the office, our front of house team at the Box Office – Rachel Pearson and Caroline Sheahan, and our fantastic group of volunteers, who so ably guide our guests and ensure that a visit to the Festival runs runs smoothly and leaves happy memories. Our thanks are very much due to our permanent staff, to our volunteers, to the dining and bar teams and to the production teams managed so ably by Michael Moody. And of course our singers, musicians and creative teams, without whom there would be no opera or jazz.
On a personal note, I would like to express my appreciation of support received from my fellow Trustees, who have given generously of their time, and always offered wise counsel. My thanks go to Sophie Caruth and Richard Morse who have stepped down this year, and a welcome to Oliver Baines, Richard Mantle, Douglas Rae, Bindesh Shah and Philip Williams, who have joined us. Finally, I’m pleased to say that Mark and Sophie, Lord and Lady Ashburton, have agreed to become joint Patrons of our Festival. Their unwavering and enthusiastic commitment to the Festival has been one of the foundations of our success, and I am sure will continue to be so in the future.
Tim Parker Chairman
The partnership between The Grange Festival and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is one based on a shared artistic ambition and friendship and is an annual highlight in the Orchestra’s calendar. This year’s season is especially exciting for the Orchestra, as we’ll be joined by our Chief Conductor, Kirill Karabits, in Mozart’s Così fan tutte – and we’re thrilled to be reunited with Paul Daniel for Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. If you were lucky enough to be at last season’s performances with the Marcus Roberts Trio and Wycliffe Gordon, you’ll know how much we’re looking forward to the opportunity to celebrate the music of Duke Ellington this year.
As audiences have returned to full concert halls in the BSO’s 2022/23 concert season, we’ve continued to build on the important lessons of recent years. One of the most significant being our continued commitment to livestreamed broadcasts, which has enabled those experiencing ill health or rural isolation to remain part of the live experience. Over the past year, we’ve continued to share performances with greater than concert hall capacity audiences, reaching people across six continents from our base at Lighthouse, Poole. The season has seen us share the stage with some of the world’s greatest artists, including Dame Sarah Connolly, Mark Wigglesworth and James Ehnes amongst them. And our Artist-in-Residence, the horn player Felix Klieser – who has been described by The Times as “one of the most inspiring figures on the concert scene today” – has continued to wow audiences and communities across the South West. The BSO has a long and close relationship with living composers, and commissioning new music remains important to us. This year, we’ve celebrated our rich cultural diversity with new music by composers Anna Korsun and Kate Whitley.
With residencies in Bournemouth, Bristol, Exeter, Poole, Portsmouth and Yeovil we are the largest cultural provider in the South West, serving one of the biggest and most diverse regions in the UK. If you follow the BSO you’ll know that a huge part of our music-making takes place away from the concert stage – in schools, hospitals, care homes and community hubs. As we’ve increased the number of face-to-face events over the past year it’s been heart-warming to witness music’s impact on lives. From dementia-friendly Cake Concerts in community hubs and performances in care homes, to touring rural village halls and centres through our popular series of BSO On Your Doorstep chamber performances. Perhaps most memorable of all has been the return of our in-person schools’ concerts, which have introduced thousands of mesmerised primary-aged children – from schools throughout Exeter, Poole and Portsmouth – to orchestral music.
In a year in which the power of opera and live music has been at the forefront of many discussions, we hope that you, like us, will relish the opportunity to enjoy this season at The Grange Festival. We can’t wait to join you for the balmy summer evenings ahead, enjoying memorable performances within this very special musical community.
Chief Conductor: Kirill Karabits
Principal Guest Conductor: Mark Wigglesworth
Associate Guest Conductor: David Hill mbe
Artist-in-Residence: Felix Klieser
Assistant Conductor: Tom Fetherstonhaugh
Conductor Emeritus: Marin Alsop
Conductor Laureate: Andrew Litton
bsolive.com
Whether performing a simple medieval hymn or expressing the complex musical and emotional language of a contemporary choral composition, The Sixteen does so with qualities common to all great ensembles.
Tonal warmth, rhythmic precision and immaculate intonation are clearly essential to the mix. But it is the courage and intensity with which The Sixteen makes music that speak above all to so many people.
The Sixteen has widened its reach at home in recent years as ‘The Voices of Classic FM’, Artistic Associates of Kings Place, and with a 2016–2017 Artist Residency at Wigmore Hall. Since 2000 its annual Choral Pilgrimage has brought the ensemble to Britain’s great cathedrals and abbeys to perform sacred music in the spaces for which it was conceived. Appearances in the BBC television series Sacred Music, presented by Simon Russell Beale, have also helped grow The Sixteen’s audience. The most recent edition, an hour-long programme entitled Monteverdi in Mantua: The Genius of the Vespers, was first broadcast in 2015.
‘No praise would be too high for the range of The Sixteen, from seraphic notes on the brink of audibility to a richness of which a Russian choral ensemble would be proud,’ concluded one reviewer following the world premiere performance of Sir James MacMillan’s Stabat mater, commissioned for The Sixteen by the Genesis Foundation. The work, first performed at London’s Barbican in October 2016, was later streamed live from the Sistine Chapel and recently received its US premiere at the Lincoln Centre, New York. Their long-standing relationship with James MacMillan has continued to flourish with the group recently performing the world premiere of his Fifth Symphony at the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival.
International tours are an essential part of life for The Sixteen. The ensemble makes regular visits to major concert halls and festivals throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, giving its first tour of China in October 2017.
The Sixteen’s period-instrument orchestra, central to the ensemble’s ambitious continuing series of Handel oratorios, has drawn critical acclaim for its work in semistaged performances of Purcell’s Royal Welcome Songs in London, a production of Purcell’s King Arthur in Lisbon and new productions of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse at Lisbon Opera House, The Coronation of Poppea at English National Opera, and Handel’s Belshazzar here at The Grange Festival.
Following the success of the inaugural Choral Pilgrimage, The Sixteen launched its own record label in 2001. CORO has since cultivated an award-winning catalogue of 180 titles, albums of choral works by Francis Poulenc, Purcell’s welcome songs for James II, and the world premiere recording of MacMillan’s Stabat mater recent among them. In 2018 the group won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society award for best ensemble.
The Sixteen’s commitment to the future of choral music is clearly reflected in its extensive outreach programme, using the power of music to engage and inspire new and existing audiences as well as transforming music education. Genesis Sixteen, supported by the Genesis Foundation, offers the UK’s first fully funded choral training programme for singers aged 18 to 23.
For more information on The Sixteen, Harry Christophers and CORO, please visit www.thesixteen.com.
Music and medicine were linked in the ancient Greek imagination from earliest times. The connection was expressed through mythical genealogy. Music is named after the Muses, the lyre-playing half-sisters or greataunts of Apollo Mousagetes, ‘Muse-Leader’; they sang joyously at gods’ banquets and mournfully at heroes’ funerals. Apollo is the archetypal citharode, or singer to the massive, seven-stringed virtuoso ‘yoke lute’ played by epic bards, like Homer and Orpheus, requiring the ‘softfingered skills’ that Pindar said doctors also needed. But Apollo can both inflict and cure disease. The paean or hymn to Apollo was often an appeal for medical aid.
Men who suddenly died were thought to have been struck by an arrow of Apollo; women were smitten by his twin sister Artemis, a dancer and archer. In the Iliad, Apollo strides down from Olympus to the Greek camp at Troy, ‘the arrows rattling on his shoulders as he moved, and he came like the night’. With a ‘terrible twang of his silver bow’ he releases the plague-bringing shafts; four hundred lines later, appeased when the Greeks sacrifice and sing hymns to him, he just as easily relieves them of the malady.
Ritual anthropologists thinking about the archercitharode Apollo point out the similarity between bows and harps – both use strings stretched between parts of wood or bone, and bowstrings ‘sing’ in action. But Apollo did not invent the lyre. That was his naughty half-brother Hermes. When only a baby, Hermes strayed outside his mother’s Arcadian cave and made the first lyre out of a tortoise shell and bull-hide strings. Apollo heard the music, and eventually exchanged a herd of cattle for the precious instrument.
The Odyssey offers another clue to the association between music and medicine. When Odysseus was hurt by a wild boar on Mount Parnassus, his two uncles bandaged the wound ‘and stopped the black blood with an epode’. Epodes were chanted spells, and some medically oriented ones survive: the Greek words of a beautiful epode begging Apollo to make the wearer
immune to plague are inscribed on a Roman-era amulet found in the Thames, now in the Museum of London.
Other Olympians are associated with diverse instruments. Rustic Pan invented panpipes, cutting reeds to different lengths and binding them together. The aulos, a double reeded wind instrument resembling two small oboes played simultaneously, had been invented by Athena. But she disliked the way playing it distorted her face, so discarded it; it was recovered by the satyr Marsyas. Satyrs serve Dionysus, whose position as music-god was second only to Apollo, as Plato writes in Laws: ‘There was implanted in us men the sense of rhythm and harmony, and that the joint authors thereof were Apollo and the Muses and the god Dionysus’.
One source claims that Dionysus’ mentor was Chiron the centaur, who taught him both music and healing arts. While Apollo oversaw all epic and lyric poetry, Dionysus presided over drinking-songs, song-and-dance hymns (dithyrambs) in his own honour and the theatrical genres of tragedy, satyr play and comedy. These fused spectacle, song, dance, speech and instrumental music (the double aulos, many different percussion instruments and sometimes lyres) in astonishing multimedial performances, Gesamstkunstwerke
Every self-respecting Greek city had a theatre, built on the still familiar lines of a central choral dancing floor, usually circular, with raked seats on three sides and a stage for the individual actors. They were usually erected in sanctuaries of the theatre god, Dionysus. Yet, curiously, they feature regularly in the cult sites of the healing god Asclepius, a son of Apollo and father of Hygieia, Health. All Asclepius’ sanctuaries were built in the most salubrious locations, where trees, fresh water springs, medicinal herbs and restful views promoted the wellbeing of visitors, whether their malady was bodily or psychic. Available treatments included overnight sleeping in the temple and its grounds and dream interpretation (a precursor of modern psychotherapy). Ritual bathing and daily prayer and meditation promoted optimism and positivity.
But a mystery surrounds the precise function of the stone theatres in sanctuaries of the therapeutic doctor-god, including those at Epidauros in the eastern Peloponnese, Corinth and Butrint in modern Albania; curative performances seem to have taken place at others. Now, two of Dionysus’ cult titles were ‘Iatros’ (Physician) and ‘Hygiates’ (Health-Giver). Wine was widely used medicinally: Plato says Dionysus bestowed it on mankind ‘as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age’; it helps the elderly feel rejuvenated and behave more kindly to others! But, sadly, we do not know exactly what form the Asclepian performative cures took: they may have been geared more towards mental than bodily health. The Pythagorean sect ‘purified the body with medicine, the soul with music’.
The philosopher Aristotle can help us here. He insisted that relaxation and recreation were crucial to the psychic health of communities, and that learning to sing or play an instrument from childhood, and listening to calming music, are essential to human development. He speaks of the role of music, as experienced in certain religious rites, in the treatment of emotional distress. There were special ‘sacred melodies’, both ecstatic and calming, which, by a form of emotional homeopathy, relieved psychological ailments.
tragic ‘catharsis’, or beneficially eliciting extreme emotional reactions in an audience, defined by Aristotle in his Poetics, assumes that it was analogous to the psychological catharsis offered by music performed in religious ceremonies.
Researching the links between music and the cultivation of physical and mental health in antiquity offers delightful surprises. My favourite relates to the trumpet, an instrument rarely found in ancient accounts of music-making, but used to summon assemblies and marshal regiments and military flotillas. Vase-paintings depict partying satyrs playing the trumpet, however, and Aristotle (again) suggests that Greek trumpeters learned to ‘relax the tension of the breath’ as they played in processional revels for the delight of the community, ‘to make the sound as gentle as possible’. Deliciously, a medical writer named Alexander also reports that the trumpet was used in diagnosis of problems with hearing. It was played directly into the tympanum of the ear to see what happened. Let us hope it was only used in cases were complete deafness had already been determined!
Edith HallEdith is a classicist, cultural historian, a Professor in Classics at Durham University and Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford. www.edithhall.co.uk
Aristotle was the son of a distinguished medical physician, who claimed descent from the Iliad’s doctor, Machaon. Machaon had been given his medicine chest by Chiron. Chiron taught legendary Greek heroes many skills, including music-making and medicine: the rhetorician Aelian specifies that Chiron’s lessons included the properties of roots and herbs, the concocting of drugs, and spells to reduce inflammations or staunch haemorrhages. A man desperate to cure the woman he loves in Nonnus’ epic Dionysiaca wishes he could find Chiron, or Apollo’s medicines – an analgesic flower, ‘a song to sing with the godlike voice of Dionysus’, plants or waters that combated mortality.
Greek drama reveals a close relationship with medicine. A comedy and a mime survive in which sick or blind individuals visit shrines of Asclepius. There are medical metaphors in the poetry of Greek tragedy. A plague afflicts Thebes in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, and a doctor appears on stage in the same playwright’s Women of Trachis to treat the dying Heracles. Sophocles was said to have introduced the cult of Asclepius into his own household. One interpretation of the process of
“Learning to sing or play an instrument from childhood, and listening to calming music, are essential to human development”
A recent report The Arts in Schools commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation confirmed that ‘Arts subjects and experiences make a positive difference to learning and personal outcomes for young people, providing them with skills for life and skills for work’. This comes as no surprise to us.
Yet the report cites that access to the arts is not equitable, with a two-tier system where independent schools often have larger budgets and more resources to devote to arts programmes, including music, drama, and visual arts. Meanwhile, many state schools struggle to provide adequate funding for arts programs, leading to limited resources and fewer opportunities for 92% of secondary aged students.
Arts education provides crucial life and work skills for children and young people. It fosters social cohesion, inclusion, personal development, and nurtures critical skills such as creativity, collaboration, and problemsolving. Arts education is not just ‘nice to have’ alongside STEM subjects, it is critical for our society as a whole.
Importantly, the report calls professional arts organisations like ours to action; to support schools and young people by giving them life enhancing creative experiences.
Over the last five years, our year-round Learning programme has combined a broad range of creative arts – music, drama, dance, design, creative writing and visual arts – to nurture creativity. Our projects and residencies led by our outstanding artistic teams are giving young people non-selective opportunities to explore and develop their imagination beyond the restrictions of timetable and evaluation.
We are proud of our achievements so far: bringing innovative creative arts engagement to nearly 3500 young people, encouraging them to push boundaries and surprise themselves. We have bold ambitions for the next five years, to give young people the tools they require to thrive in the 21st century.
Susan Hamilton Director of Learning, The Grange Festival
“Arts education is not just ‘nice to have’ alongside STEM subjects, it is critical for our society as a whole”
“The World Economic Forum lists creativity as the top skill that Gen Z will need for their future life”
Last August, 75 young people (aged 10–15) from 27 different schools arrived here at The Grange to embark on an important mission. Continuing our valuable collaboration with WWF, the aim was to consider the environmental issues facing our world today and imagine a future world where Mother Nature had been ignored.
Working with an exceptional creative team, they responded through creative writing, music composition, choreography and design to create their own original piece. With participants coming from different backgrounds and local schools, collaboration was essential, challenging themselves and each other to make quick collective decisions. The result was nothing short of spectacular – a fully staged contemporary opera titled Our World. Their piece was a collaboration of all 75 young people with eight work experience students, who had written, composed, rehearsed, and performed on our stage. An incredible achievement especially considering that the group had only just met.
The project was shortlisted for the Music and Drama Education 2023 Awards in excellence in Music Theatre.
“Polled at the start of their creative journey, very few of the young people expressed any pre-existing interest or involvement in climate action or environmental causes. The message conveyed by Our World which these young people created in such a short time was not only powerful and poignant, it carried a nuanced interpretation of the problems created by unsustainable lifestyles, and the transformation of attitude and behaviour that could reverse this trend”
Matt Larsen-Daw, Head of Education, WWF“Creativity is as important now in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status”
Sir Ken Robinson
“We have an ambitious vision for the future of creativity and culture. By 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish”
Arts Council, Let’s Create
In partnership with Hampshire Music Services and Hampshire Cultural Education Partnerships, we delivered a significant project to celebrate Gosport’s heritage and culture; a pilot project in an important priority area to develop new opportunities in the arts over the next two years.
From jazz to rap, creative writing to 3D art and textiles, this project has involved over 200 young people from primary to college age who have celebrated Gosport, the place and people through interactive creative workshops. The workshop process is designed to give young people a voice, to express their own thoughts and ideas.
Led by writer Hazel Gould, primary children listened to Gosport’s Discovery Centre Aural Histories archive and then wrote and recorded their own stories.
Musician Pete Letanka took the music of local jazz legend Nat Gonella to inspire secondary children to create their own pieces.
Ricky Tart helped primary children to write and record their own sea shanties.
Secondary children with designer Rhiannon Newman-Brown explored Brent Geese who overwinter in Gosport and responded by creating pieces to represent their own migration routes.
Artist Vanessa Rolf worked with college students to create textile maps of Gosport: Past, Present and Future.
The 3i Open House scheme gives a new audience – young people, schools, teachers, families – the opportunity to see our season’s full-scale productions. This summer around 250 school children will learn about Orfeo ed Euridice, the story, musical themes, details and designs before watching the final rehearsal.
Over 500 young people are invited to a special jazz matinee performance featuring the sextet from Ellington: Stride to Strings together with performers from Hampshire County Youth Jazz Centre. Before the event, jazz musician Pete Letanka will work with 60 primary children to create their own percussion pieces, which they will perform alongside the sextet.
Our half term Discover Opera workshop with Rob Gildon gives young children and their families a taste of our opera world; story-telling, music and design; before watching the final rehearsal of Così fan tutte.
For many, these workshops will be the first time they have visited a professional theatre. We hope that the experience of hearing an opera singer, the sounds of a full orchestra and the sights of a staged production will open their eyes, broaden their horizons and encourage them to want more!
Year 5 student
Year 6 student
“When I saw the opera it felt like I could be anyone or anything that I wanted to be in the future”
“They gave me a lot more confidence and ways to express myself in dancing and in singing”
Learning at The Grange is thrilled to be part of a groundbreaking creative partnership which brings together young people from diverse cultural backgrounds in the UK, Italy, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine to create a contemporary youth opera Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening. The world premiere will be our production here on 7 July. Full details start on page 82.
The impact will extend far beyond our performance, the commission partners are creating an ‘Opera Pack’ consisting of learning vocal tapes, staging and design ideas to inspire youth organisations to perform the opera in a variety of settings around the world.
This project is a testament to the power of crosscultural dialogue and the transformative potential of creative collaboration.
“The projects that The Grange Festival have welcomed us to be part of – both at The Grange Theatre and at our school –have expanded the horizons of our students and allowed them the creative freedom to explore, collaborate and perform, experiences that will last a lifetime”
Learning at The Grange is generously supported by
Hannah Dibden, Headteacher, Everest Community Academy
PROUDLY SUPPORTING LEARNING AT THE GRANGE
The Festival Founders are the cornerstones of The Grange Festival, helping us turn our vision into reality.
As a Festival Founder, you would have the opportunity to help shape our future and contribute to our vibrant cultural scene in Hampshire. You also get exclusive access to behind-the-scenes events, rehearsals, and performances, as well as the chance to meet and interact with the talented artists and performers involved in the Festival.
Founders are invited to develop a bespoke and ongoing relationship with The Grange Festival and all its varied artistic activities.
It’s a wonderful way to support the arts and be a part of a dynamic and creative community.
Founder gifts start at £25,000 but with tax efficient giving can cost the donor just £14,236.
Our Festival Friends are lovers of opera, music, and dance who want to see world-class performing arts flourish at The Grange. The annual subscriptions from our Friends underpin each festival and are fundamental to sustaining the quality of everything we put onto our stage. The income we receive from the sale of tickets covers only half the cost of everything we do. The generosity of our Friends helps fill the gap.
We hold events for our Friends and Founders throughout the year: insights into our productions; recitals;
lectures; film screenings. In addition, Friends are invited to meet the cast at The Grange at post-performance parties, and attend rehearsals both in London studios and on stage. Friends and Founders get to learn about the creative process, about how performers prepare, and about how our shows are conceived and developed. We greatly value both their support and their involvement.
Our Friends are our Lifeblood. Sign up and help us thrive.
For more information about becoming a Festival Founder or Friend please contact Rachel Pearson: rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk
The Grange Festival is a celebration of the performing arts that brings together artists and audiences from all walks of life. As an organisation, we recognise the significant role that business support plays in achieving our objective to create a lasting impact on the community.
By partnering with us, your company can help shape the future of performing arts in the UK, support lifelong learning and skill development, and take advantage of unique networking and brand exposure opportunities. Your support is also is vital to making the Festival possible and ensuring its continued success year after year.
We believe that learning should be a lifelong journey that starts in primary school, continues through secondary education, and extends into early career and beyond. Our mission is to underpin the value of arts and creativity in this journey, helping individuals to develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st century.
Our education programme, Learning at The Grange, engages young people in the arts through workshops, masterclasses, and performance opportunities in music, opera, and theatre. It aims to develop essential skills, such as communication, teamwork, and selfexpression, and encourages participants to build confidence while exploring their own creativity.
The Young Artists fund provides support to earlycareer singers, directors, and conductors. This programme helps to develop the next generation of artists and ensures that the UK continues to be a leading cultural hub.
Sponsoring one of our productions provides your company with an opportunity to support the development of skills and talent within the performing arts industry. Our productions are of the highest quality, providing performers, creatives, and technical staff with a platform to demonstrate their skills and progress their careers.
Corporate partners benefit from alignment through our marketing and promotional activities, including programme advertisements, social media campaigns, and press releases. Sponsoring The Grange Festival presents a unique opportunity to reach a highly engaged and influential audience of over 10,000 visitors annually.
Our community partners can benefit from offers for free and discounted tickets to local schools, community groups, and charities, as well as opportunities for local performers to showcase their talents on our stage.
Corporate sponsors can also enjoy exclusive access to VIP hospitality, including pre-performance receptions, private dining experiences, and behindthe-scenes tours. These experiences provide a unique opportunity to engage with clients, colleagues, and stakeholders in a relaxed and enjoyable setting while showcasing your brand and commitment to the arts.
We welcome and value your support as we continue to cultivate a vibrant and diverse cultural landscape in the UK. To find out more about how you can play an active role in our aims, please contact Rachel
Pearson rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk
The peacock is the ancient symbol of immortality. By pledging a legacy and joining our Festival Peacocks you will play your part in making something wonderful happen each and every year for so many people of all ages.
If you have enjoyed your visits to The Grange Festival, and applaud our extensive year round education and outreach work, your legacy will help ensure that this continues for future generations. In the last few years legacies have enabled us to make substantial improvements to the theatre. Our remodelled balcony, stage revolve and improved access have all been made possible by gifts large and small.
Whatever the size of your gift, you will make a difference to our long-term ability to produce innovative and engaging productions that delight and challenge audiences, as well as continue our extensive work in schools, community groups and with early career professionals both on and off-stage.
There are many ways to leave a tax efficient legacy for The Grange Festival. The most straightforward is a cash donation. There are other tax-efficient options such as a gift of shares or leaving a share of your estate. All gifts can have a significant impact in reducing Inheritance Tax liability. Alternatively, a donor may wish to establish a charitable trust in their will that provides ongoing support for the Festival’s work, ensuring that their legacy continues to make a difference for many years to come.
If you do decide to join our glorious Pride of Peacocks please let us know so that we can show our gratitude and celebrate with you at our annual gathering of Peacocks. Your gift will make a difference. Please contact Rachel Pearson rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk
Naming a seat in our auditorium is a beautiful and meaningful way to show your support for the arts and leave a lasting legacy. Whether you want to honour a loved one’s memory or simply demonstrate your appreciation for the performances and cultural experiences on offer, naming a seat is a unique and personal way to make a contribution.
By naming a seat in someone’s memory, you can create a lasting tribute to their love of the arts while also helping to sustain the Festival for future generations. As you sit in the seat named in their honour or your own, and enjoy the worldclass performances on offer, you can take pride and comfort in knowing that your generosity has helped to preserve their memory and support the continuation of the Festival.
Bringing world class Dance and Ballet to this romantic corner of Hampshire is a unique and important development. We are seeking Corps de Ballet Pioneers to help us: a group of generous individuals who will join something remarkable and be part of its development. Commitment to something new and imaginative like this, which promises to become a high-profile part of the national performing arts scene, is philanthropy with far-reaching consequences in an appropriately inspiring setting.
The Festival has established Friends groups in both the United States and Hong Kong. The Covid years made travel to these destinations impossible, but we are now planning to cement and expand these relationships with further visits in 2023 and 2024. In 2022 Piers Playfair started a new collaboration by bringing a full programme of jazz from the States. After a sellout show he returns this year for two evenings of jazz and plans are already well underway for another trans-Atlantic jazz season in 2024. These cross-cultural events help us work on special projects with local schools and youth groups who enjoy workshops and shows beyond their imagination. In the return direction Michael Chance plans to return to both countries to offer masterclasses and mentoring.
At a time when the performing arts, especially music, are increasingly being side-lined in the national curriculum, we are committed to helping our local schools to keep the arts alive. We are engaging with young people and their teachers to spark creativity, build confidence and develop the emotional intelligence they require for their future lives. For the wider community, we will be opening our doors, welcoming people to our magnificent theatre and the beautiful setting of The Grange with a greater range of out-of-season events.
We will also be taking our knowledge and expertise into youth groups and touching the more fragile members of our community, for whom we hope to provide life-enhancing support with interactive and inspiring workshops. More information about our current initiatives can be found on page 10.
Artistic Director Michael Chance has combined his international singing career with a passion for educating the next generation of artists. As a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music he is well placed to nurture talent.
Our Young Artists Fund is an initiative that provides support and opportunities for young and emerging artists to develop their skills and talent in opera and classical music By supporting this fund, you can help to nurture the next generation and ensure that they have access to the resources they need to thrive in their careers.
Your contribution to the Young Artists Fund will help to fund training programs, mentorships, and performance opportunities for talented young singers, musicians, conductors and directors. By investing in these young artists, you are helping to create a vibrant and sustainable future for classical music and opera.
If you are interested in supporting us and helping us to bring singers, artists and musical riches to our Festival please contact Rachel Pearson rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk.
SAMWELL FOUNDER
Sarah and Tony Bolton
Delfont Mackintosh Theatres
Tim and Thérèse Parker
The Linbury Trust
Richard and Cynthia Thompson and anonymous donors
WILKINS FOUNDER
Mark and Sophie Ashburton
Daniel and Alison Benton
Richard and Rosamund Bernays
David and Simone Caukill
Bernard and Caroline Cazenove
Malcolm Herring
Andrew and Caroline Joy
Malcolm and Sarah Le May
Joe and Minnie MacHale
Richard and Chrissie Morse
Michael and Cathy Pearman
Sir Simon and Lady Robertson
Sir Sigmund Warburg's Voluntary Settlement and anonymous donors
COCKERELL FOUNDER
John and Claudia Arney
Sally Ashburton
Chris and Tony Ashford
Jamie and Carolyn Balfour
Robin and Anne Baring
Nigel Beale and Anthony Lowrey
Glynne and Sarah Benge
Sophie Boden
Simon and Sally Borrows
Robert and Fiona Boyle
Consuelo and Anthony Brooke
Sir Euan Calthorpe Bt
Rex and Sarah Chester
Edward and Antonia
Cumming-Bruce
Ina De and James Spicer
Sir Vernon and Lady Ellis
Catherine and Jón Ferrier
Mr and Mrs James Fisher
J Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust
Marveen and Graham Flack
Tom and Sarah Floyd
Scott and Caroline Greenhalgh
Susie, Katie, Anna, Christina and Hwfa Gwyn
Sir Charles and Lady Haddon-Cave
Rumiko Hasegawa
James and Rhona Hatchley
Sheelin and John Hemsley
Charles and Catherine Hindson
Herman and Claire Hintzen
Roger and Kate Holmes
Adrian Hope
David and Patricia Houghton
Howard and Anne Hyman
Owen and Jane Jonathan
David and Penny Kempton
Claudia Langdon and Janie Cadbury
Mr Alan Lovell
Thomas and Alexandra Loyd
The Peter and Elisabetta
Mallinson Trust
Simon and Nathalie
Marshall-Lockyer
Nigel and Anna McNair Scott
Joanna and Luke Meynell
Patrick Mitford-Slade
Martin and Caroline Moore
The Ogilvie Thompson Family
Clive and Deborah Parritt
William and Francheska Pattisson
Mark and Rachel Pearson
Lord and Lady Phillimore
Jonathan and Gillian Pickering
Ernst and Elisabeth Piech
Michael and Sue Pragnell
Richard and Iona Priestley
Sophie Service
John and Erica Simpson
Graeme and Sue Sloan
Dr Helmut and Anna Sohmen
Judy and Graham Staples
The Stevenson Trust
Tim and Charlotte Syder
Peter and Nancy Thompson
Mr Peter Stewart Tilley
Lou and John Verrill
Andrew and Tracy Wickham and anonymous donors
SMIRKE FOUNDERS
Peter and Rosemary Andreae
David and Elizabeth Benson
Anthony and Consuelo Brooke
Rex and Sarah Chester
Ina De and James Spicer
Domenica Dunne
Robina and Alastair Farley
For Elise
Peter and Judith Foy
Malcolm Herring
Peter and Sue Holland
The Hollingberry Family
Graham and Amanda Hutton
David and Penny Kempton
Tammy Lavarello
Charles and Sue Marriott
James and Caroline Masterton
Martin and Caroline Moore
Mr and Mrs Jonathan Moseley
Colin Murray
Roger and Virginia Phillimore
Jonathan and Gillian Pickering
Bianca and Stuart Roden
David and Alexandra Scholey
Sophie Service
Paul and Rita Skinner
The Band Trust
Peter Tilley Esq
Alan and Alison Titchmarsh
Lucy and Michael Vaughan
Mr and Mrs Hady Wakefield and anonymous donors
COX FOUNDERS
Bill and Boo Andrewes
Tony and Chris Ashford
Isla Baring OAM
Tom and Gay Bartlam
Beaulieu Beaufort Foundation
Simon and Rebecca Bladon
Simon and Julia Boadle
Anthoy and Sarah Boswood
Michel and Belinda Boyd
Britwell Trust
Julian and Jenny Cazalet
Julia Chute
Colwinston Chartiable Trust
Henrietta Corbett
Corin and Richard Cotton
Carl Cullingford
Edward and Antonia
Cumming-Bruce
The de Brye Charitable Trust
Michael and Anthea Del Mar
Mrs Marveen Flack
Gamlen Charitable Trust
The Golden Bottle Trust
Roger and Victoria Harrison
Richard and Frances Hoare
Lucy Holmes
Andrea and Kay Hunter Johnston
Howard and Anne Hyman
John and Sara Jervoise
Max and Caroline Jonas
Ralph and Patricia Kanter
Morgon and Georgie Krone
Virginia and Alan Lovell
William and Felicity Mather
Dr and Mrs Jonathan Moore
Annette Oakes
The Ogilvie Thompson Family
Kevin Pakenham
David and Sarah Parker
Deborah and Clive Parritt
The Countess of Portsmouth
Richard and Iona Priestley
George and Veronique Seligman
Rebecca Shelley
Brian Spiby
Fiona and Geoff Squire OBE
Clare and Richard Staughton
The Bernard Sunley
Charitable Foundation
Robert and Tiggy Sutton
Alison and Simon Taylor
Peter and Nancy Thompson
The Worshipful Company of Dyers
The Wykeham Gallery and anonymous donors
THE SWEET SPOT
Peter and Rosemary Andreae
Michael and Anthea Del Mar
Joanna, Countess of Selborne and anonymous donors
THE LIMELIGHT
Nick and Sarah Allan
Geoffrey Barnett
Mrs Charles H Brown
Julian and Jenny Cazalet
Gamlen Charitable Trust
Seawall Trust
Sir Christopher and the Reverend Lady Clarke
Howard and Donna Dyer
Mr and Mrs Patrick Hofmann
Dr Hugh Laing
Lady Plastow
George and Veronique Seligman
Chris and Lisa Spooner
Robin and Sarah Thorne
Professor Michael and Dame Jenifer Trimble
Marion Wake and anonymous donors
THE PROMPT CORNER
Georgina Agnew
Charles and Clare Alexander
Mark and Clare Armour
The Hon Mrs Susan Baring, OBE
Peter and Valerie Bedford
Anthony and Emma Bird
Dr Keith Dawkins and Mrs Jean Boney KC
Nick and Sue Brougham
Mark Burrows AO
Tom Busher and Elizabeth Benson
Michael and Linda Campbell
George and Anne Carter
Jane Clarke
Pru de Lavison
Felicity Fairbairn
Tim and Rosie Forbes
Jonathan Gaisman
Lindsey Gardener
Clare and Fergus Gilmour
Richard and Judy Haes
Malcolm and Mary Hogg
Sue Humphrey
Andrew and Kay Hunter Johnston
Diane Katsiaficas
Mr Alan Lovell
Lyon Family Charitable Trust
Richard and June Mantle
John and Pat Marden
William and Felicity Mather
The McLaren Trust
Peter and Brigid McManus
Dr and Mrs Jonathan Moore
Michelle Nevers and Nathan Moss
David and Angela Moss
Guy and Sarah Norrie
Peter and Poppity Nutting
Nick and Julie Parker
Charles Parker
Sir Desmond and Lady
Norma Pitcher
The Countess of Portsmouth
Hugh Priestley
Jean Boney and Chrissie Quayle
K A Radcliffe
Neil and Julie Record
The Hon Philip Remnant CBE
Stephen Riley and Victoria Burch
James and Lygo Roberts
Andy Rogers and Stuart O’Donnell
Kristina Rogge
Alicia Salter
Ginny and Richard Salter
Alex and So Scott-Barrett
Nigel Silby
David and Unni Spiller
Marcus and Sarah Stanton
Di Threlfall
Peter and Sarah Vey
Edward and Katherine Wake
Johanna Waterous CBE and Roger Parry CBE
William and Madeline Wilks
Clare Williams
Mary Rose and Charles Wood and anonymous donors
THE ROSTRUM
David and Jane Anderson
Richard Baker
Mrs Rupert Beaumont
Adrian Berrill-Cox
Bob and Elisabeth Boas
Graham and Julia Bourne
Dr Douglas and Mrs
Susan Bridgewater
Adam and Sarah Broke
Hugh and Sue Brown
Mark Burch
Richard Butler Adams
Mrs Maurice Buxton
Peter and Auriol Byrne
Dr Stephen Carr-Bains
Ian Clarkson and Richard Morris, and David Morris
Dr and Mrs Peter Collins
Dr Neville Conway
Anthony Cooke
David and Nikki Cowley
Johnny and Liz Cowper-Coles
Lin and Ken Craig
Baron and Baroness de Styrcea
Patrick and Nikki Despard
Dr Graham and Janna Dudding
Christopher and Jenny Duffett
Julia P Ellis
Alun Evans
Simon and Hilke Fisher
Iris Dell’Acqua and Alex Fisher
Michael Fitzgerald
Emma Galloway
William Gething
Martin and Jacky Gillie
David and Bridget Glasgow
Jenny Gove
Jane and Charlie Graham
Andrew Green
Alistair and Jenny Groom
Max and Catherine Hadfield
Allyson Hall
Melanie Hall
Gilbert and Vahideh Hall
Edward and Rosie Harford
Wendell and Andrea Harris
Guinevere and Julian Harvey
Rob and Anne Heather
Michael and Geneviève Higgin
Christopher and Jo
Holdsworth Hunt
Linda and Peter Hollins
David and Mal Hope-Mason
Diane Hume
Peter and Morag James
John and Sara Jervoise
Nigel and Cathy Johnson-Hill
Michael and Julia Kerby
Stephen and Miriam Kramer
Mr and Mrs Bill Lawes
James and Jan Lawrie
Roger and Natalie Lee
Derek and Susie Lintott
Ian and Jane Macnabb
Fairhurst Estates
Brian and Bernadette Metters
Antony and Alison Milford
Mr and Mrs Hallam Mills
Kate and Malcolm Moir
David and Alison Moore-Gwyn
Diana and Nigel Morris
Ian and Jane Morrison
Roy and Carole Oldham
Dr Cecily O’Neill
Lavinia and Nick Owen
Peter and Sue Paice
Robin and Christine Petherick
Mr and Mrs Julio Pinna-Griffith
John and Elizabeth Platt
John and Judy Polak
Catherine Rainey
John Raymond
Dr Martin Read and Dr Marian Gilbart Read
Miles and Vivian Roberts
Peter Rosenthal
Julian and Catherine Roskill
Dr Angela Gallop CBE and Mr David Russell
Julia Schober
Charles and Caroline Scott
Tom Seabrook
Rupert and Charlotte
Sebag-Montefiore
Julian Slater
Dr Anthony and Mrs
Daphne Smoker
David and Di Sommerville
Richard and Clare Staughton
Rosemary and Michael Steen
Dr and Mrs Ralph Stephenson
Mrs Patricia Taylor
Elaine and James Tickell
George and Lucinda Tindley
Sir Tom and Lady Troubridge
Clive and Tessa Tulloch
Mr and Mrs James Vernon
Sandra and Paul Walker
David and Meriel Walton
James and Sarah Williams and anonymous donors
THE WINGS
Mrs Julia Abbott
Philippa Abell
Daphne and John Alderson
Rosemary Alexander
Chris and Denise Amery
Phillip Arnold and Ann Andrews
Charles and Victoria Arthur
Dr Richard Ashton
Julie and Keith Attfield
Tom and Gay Bartlam
Paul and Janet Batchelor
David Baxendale
Anne Beckwith-Smith
Julian and Polly Bennett
Mike and Sarah Bignell
Charles and Ann Bonney
Mrs Sheila Gay Bradley
Charles and Patricia Brims
Alison and Michael Brindle KC
Penny and Robin Broadhurst
Tony and Mo Brooking
George Brown and Alison Calver
Belinda and Jason Chaffer
Suzie Chesham
Julian and Josephine Chisholm
Henry and Louise Clay
Simon Clift
Mrs Laurence Colchester
Michael and Virginia Collett
Gill Collymore
Henrietta Cooke
Richard and Sindy Coppin
Diana Cornish
Jenefer Coulton
Julia and Stephen Crompton
Caro and Gavin Darlington
Peter and Pamela Davidson
Mr Peter Davidson
Mike and Suzette Davis
Sir John and Lady de Trafford
Elizabeth Dean
Christina and Andrew Dykes
Robert and Mary Elkington
Martin and Rachel Ellis
John Farr
Elaine Fear and Sol Mead
Nicholas and Jane Ferguson
The Fischer Fund
Andrew and Lucinda Fleming
Giles and ’Wenna Fletcher
J A Floyd Charitable Trust
Mr and Mrs John Foster
Lindsay and Robin Fox
Andrea Frears
Anton Gabszewicz and Mark Gutteridge
Michael and Diane Gibbons
Brett and Caroline Gill
Philippa and Charlie Goodall
Dr Stephen Goss
Mr Robin and The Hon
Mrs Greenwood
Felicity Guinness and Simon Ricketts
Susanna Hardman
Maggie Heath
David and Odette Henderson
John and Catherine Hickman
Will and Janine Hillary
Alan Hoaksey
Mr and Mrs I F Hodgson
Daniel and Diana Hodson
H R Holland
Heather Howard
Luke and Polly Hughes
Robert Hugill and David Hughes
Nicholas and Jeremy
David and Wendy Hunter
Barnabas and Campie
Hurst-Bannister
Tim and Christine Ingram
Allan and Rachel James
John and Jan Jarvis
Professor and Mrs J Jennings
Rupert Johnson and Alexandra
Macdonald-Smith
Scot and Sally Johnston
Ralph and Patricia Kanter
Penelope Kellie
Martin and Clare Knight
Dr and Mrs S Knights
Beth and Peter Lamb
John and Joanna Lang
Simon and Sarah Lavers
Harry and Amelia Le May
Caroline and David Lentaigne
Anthony and Fiona Littlejohn
James and Susie Long
Brigadier and Mrs
Desmond Longfield
Sue MacKenzie-Charrington
Pamela and Peter Macklin
JJ and Victoria Macnamara
Bill and Sue Main
Dwight and Jenny Makins
Stephen Mallet and Susan Hamilton
Andrew Marchant
Frances Marsden
Chris and Clem Martin
Paddy and Polly
Paul McKeown
Anthony and Sarah McWhirter
Nigel Melville
Sarah and David Melville
Mrs Primrose Metcalf
Paul and Emily Michael
Christopher Morcom KC and Mrs Diane Morcom
Mr and Mrs John Muncey
Christopher Napier
Charles and Martie Nicholson
Lady (Bridget) Nixon
Steve Norris
Lord and Lady Northbrook
Charles and Rosemary Orange
Denise Osborn
Colin and Rosalind Osmer
Michael and Sally Payton
Robin and Sylvia Peile
Richard and Michelle Pelly
Caroline Perry
Jeremy and Bryony Pett
Anna and Frank Pope
Nigel and Vicky Prescot
Anthony and Trish Proctor
Tony and Etta Pullinger
Christopher and Phillida Purvis
Jane and Douglas Rae
Jane and Graham Reddish
Tineke Dales
Christopher and Sheila Richards
Dr Lynne Ridler-Wall
Giles Ridley
The Rev’ds Tana and Royston Riviere
Trevor and Deborah Roberts
James and Catharine Robertson
Annie Robertson
Alan Sainer
Simon and Abigail Sargent
Charles and Donna Scott
Katherine Sellon
Tom and Phillis Sharpe
Mary and Thoss Shearer
David and Rebecca Sheppard
Christopher and Lucie Sims
Jock and Annie Slater
Mim Smith
The Shenker Smiths
Lady Snyder
Andrew and Jill Soundy
Dr Howard and Rosalind Sowerby
Brian and Henrietta Stevens
Jeremy and Phyllida Stoke
Canon Ron and Dr Celia Swan
Tom and Jo Taylor
Jeremy H Taylor and Raye Ward
Mr and Mrs Roger ter Haar
Hugh and Sandy Thomas
Prof and Mrs G M Tonge
Rupert Villers
Anthony and Sue Walker
Mrs Jane Wallace
Anthony and Jane Ward
Guy and Fizzy Warren
Helen Webb
Mrs Elizabeth Wells
Peter and Alexandra White
Tony and Fiona White
Jane and Ian White
Louise Williams
Jane Williams
Hamish and Elisabeth Williams
Peter and Lissa Wilson
Jilly Wise
William and Celia Witts
Richard and Noely Worthington and anonymous donors
THE FOOTLIGHTS
James A Turtle
Pelham and Janet Allen
Dr Martin T Anthony
M D Austen
Louise Baird
Mrs Claire Baker
Marie and Michael Bakowski
Caroline Barber
Nicholas and Diana Baring
Mr and Mrs David Barrow
Mr and Mrs Simon Barrow
Mr and Mrs D Bartle
Fiona Bateson
Tim Battcock
Kevin Bell
Christina Belloc Lowndes
Mark Birrell
Mrs Jenni Black
Juliet Blackburn
Dr Susan Bracken
Matthew Bradley
Julie Bradshaw
David and Diana Briggs
Mr and Mrs J M Britton
Roger and Josie Brown
Louise Abrams and George Browning
Martin and Sarah Burton
Paul Butler
Carl and Sheila Calvert
Russ and Linda Carr
Brian Carroll
Belinda Chattey
Neil Chrimes
Anne Christopher
Henry and Louise Clay
The Clemson Family
Sarah Coate
Tim Cockerill
Richard and Verity Coleman
Prof Richard Collin
Rosie and Derek Collinson
Elisabeth Colquhoun
Michael and Elizabeth Combe
Hugh Cooper
Erica and Neil Cosburn
David and Jane Crawshaw
Philippa Crosse and Simon Hopkins
Jill Cundy and Alan Padbury
Mr and Mrs Jerome Davidson
Ashley de Safrin and Nick Swan
Carl and Mary Dore
Jonathan and Lynn Dowson
Hugh and Christina Dumas
Cathy Dumelow
Jean-Philippe Duranthon
Sir Malcolm and Lady Edge
Mark and Margaret Edwards
Mr and Mrs John Ellard
Rob and Anne England
Dr Gillian Fargher
Cathy Featherstone
O Fetherston-Dilke
Michael Foley
Andrew Foot and Michael Hart
Sandy Foster
Sir Robert and Lady Francis
David and Elizabeth French
Marion Friend MBE
N J Gammon
James and Valerie Garrow
Virginia Gayner
Carol Geddes
Bruce and Karin Ginsberg
Michael Godbee
Kate and Barry Goodchild
Colin and Letts Goodwin
Sam and Jane Gordon Clark
Gill Graham Maw
Robert B Gray
Mr and Mrs M Griffin
Mr and Mrs Tichy
Robert and Elizabeth Haldane
Peter and Annabel Hall
Dilys Hall
John and Margaret Hall
Peter and Romy Halliwell
A J Halsey
Rosemary Hamilton
J M Hardigg
Helen and Philip Heims
Peter Hildebrand
Roger Holden
Ron Holmes
Penelope Horner
Peter and Kate Horrocks
Mrs Jane L Hough
Colin and Irene House
Denzil and Kate How
Neil and Elizabeth Johnson
James Joll
Alison and Jamie Justham
Dr and The Hon Mrs
Scott Steedman
John and Jennifer Kelly
Oliver and Sally Kinsey
Belinda and George Knapman
Barry Laden MBE and David W Kidd
Oliver and Victoria Larminie
Jane Lavers
Sue Leach
Simone and Roger LeBoff
Carola and Adam Lee
Lynn Lee
Nicky Levy
David Livermore
James and Samantha Livingston
Michael Llewellyn
Louise Locock
V Lowings and B Cozens
Tim and Rosanne Lowry
The Lyon Family
Stephen and Karen MacDonald
Victoria Mackintosh
Catherine Maddock
Richard and Renata Mair
Vesna Mandic-Bozic
Dr Ben G Marshall
Ailsa Marshall
Louise Matlock
Julia Maxlow-Tomlinson
Mr and Mrs James McGill
Stephen Meldrum
anonymous
Sylvia Mills
Elaine and Peter Mills
Stephen and Fiona Murray
Christabel Myers
Andrew Gordon and Nicholas Nelson
Dr Christopher Nobes
Michael and Adeline Nolan
Nicki Oakes-Monger
Steven and Hilary Oldham
Sue and Ken Osman
Sarah Owens
Major General and Mrs Simon Pack
Christina and Rod Parker
Stephen and Isobel Parkinson
Colin and Judy Patrick
Lucy Pease
Richard and Maria Peers
Peers of Alresford
Mr and Mrs Penfold
Ed and Sarah Peppiatt
Anthony and Sally Pfiffner
Mr Robert Phillips
Christopher Pilkington
Fiona Pitcher
Charles and Catherine Powell
Graham Prain
Mr and Mrs Pugh
Charles and Tineke Pugh
John Pugh-Smith
Stephen Purse
Miss Mary Rackham
Dr John Rea
Mr and Mrs Nick Read
Mike Reichl
Florence and Robert Rice
Mr P and Mrs K Richards
Dick Richmond
Nerys Roberts
Roger and Geraldine Robinson
James and Sue Robinson
Mr and Mrs Jeremy Rothman
Robert Ryan
Andrew Sanders
Nicky Sansom
Mr Peter Saunders and Mrs Jeannine Lindt Saunders
Madi and David Laurence
Ian and Rosemary Saxton
Annette Sikora
Caroline and Mark Silver
Annie Skipwith
Gill and Barry Smith
Ian and Pippa Southward
John Stanning
Sarah and Richard Staveley
Dianne Steele
Diane Stephen
David Stern
Kate Mather
Marilyn Stock
Fiona and Toby Stubbs
Della and Sheridan Swallow
Ian and Belinda Taylor
Stephen Taylor
David Templeman
Jeffrey and Jane Theaker
Sue Thomas
Mr and Mrs P M Thomas
David and Joanna Thomas
Jonathan Thompson
Michael and Cara Thomson
Mrs A J Thorman
Mrs S Tickner
Nicholas and Jane Tuck
Dr and Mrs Kevin Tuffnell
Barbara-Ann Tweedie
Margaret van Veelen
Roland Vernon
Charles and Elizabeth Vyvyan
Mr and Mrs Wakefield
Mark and Rachel Waller
Mr and Mrs Walsh
Elwyn Wareham
John Doe
Georgina Wells and Ruben Bhagobati
The Whittington Family
Anne Williams
Mrs G C Williams
Jonathan Winter
Angela Winwood
Jane Wood
Bob and Felicity Wood
Sue and Stuart Woodward
Peter and Judith Worth
Mr and Mrs C Wright
Andy and Caroline Wright
Tim Wright
The Wyatt Family
Christopher Wynterbee-Robey
Geoffrey and Frances Yeowart and anonymous donors
THE HIGH FLYERS
Aurea Baring
Fred Baring
Annabel Baring
Alice Blincoe and Luke Newsome
Lilly Bussman
Miss Indigo Butcher
Leonora Campbell
Olivia Cave
Leeann Chen
Olivia Christie
Nathaniel Colman
Hugo Cooke
Florence Cross
The Reverend Thomas Crowley
Emiliana Damiani
Constance Freer-Smith
O Gilmour
Jacob Goodwin
Isobel Greenhalgh
Ms Ann Catherine Farrer Hartigan
Miss Flora Johnston
Craig Kirkham-Wilson
Fiona Kirkham-Wilson
Kenneth Law WS
Harry and Amelia Le May
Claudia Da Graca Lopes
Conor K Lynch
Elizabeth Mallet
Evie Marshall
Hugo Marshall
Amelia Marshall
Miss C Martin
William Masterton
Sophie Masterton
Kimberley Munroe
Tom and Catherine Neal
Dominic Newman
Daisy Norwood and Alexander Garford-Turner
Mr E F A Pinnegar
Dr Katie Plummer
Louisa Quarry
William Rayner
Mr and Mrs P Richards
Lucy H Rogers
Hannah Rogerson
Isabella Rogge
Sebastian Salek, Jordan Bergmans, Alex Horkan, Charlotte Bennett, Alex Louch, Rachel Tait
Dylan Saralis
Joseph Saxby
E Searles
Ellie Sheahan
Drew Steanson
Miss Araminta Stubbs
Hannah Tice
Mr Zi Ken Toh
Theo Vernon
Rebecca Wald
Mr N G W White
Eleanor Wilkinson
Daniel and Thomas
Wilkinson-Horsfield
Cllr Henry Woods
Miss Woods
Johnny B E Wyatt and anonymous donors
FESTIVAL PEACOCKS
Phillip Arnold and Ann Andrews
Mrs Sheila Gay Bradley
David and Patricia Houghton
Nigel and Cathy Johnson-Hill
David McLellan
Heleen Mendl-Schrama
Michael and Cathy Pearman and anonymous Peacocks
CORPS DE BALLET PIONEERS
The Allenby Sisters
Nigel Beale and Anthony Lowrey
Peter and Valerie Bedford
Justin and Celeste Bickle
Sarah Bunting
David and Simone Caukill
Carl Cullingford
Robina and Alastair Farley
Peter and Judith Foy
Sir Charles and Lady Haddon-Cave
Roger and Kate Holmes
Mr and Mrs Morgan Krone
Martin and Caroline Moore
Charles Parker
Stephen and Isobel Parkinson
Mrs Adam Quarry
Sir Simon and Lady Robertson
Kristina Rogge
Gail and David Sinclair
Graeme and Sue Sloan
Lou and John Verrill and anonymous donors
LEARNING DONATIONS
3i
The Chartered Accountants
Livery Company
The Dyers’ Company
The Hampshire Fair
Phillips Law
Ian and Jane Morrison
Vanquis Banking Group
The Woodward Charitable Trust
Tim Wright and anonymous donors
FESTIVAL EVENTS
Adam Architecture
AGM Transitions
Mark and Sophie Ashburton
Bob and Elisabeth Boas
Rosamond Brown
The Grange Hampshire Sparkling Wine
Hampshire Gardens Trust
Andrew Hawkins
Quadrant Chambers
The Reform Club
The Savile Club
The Travellers Club
Winchester Book Festival
Winchester College
THE YOUNG ARTISTS FUND
3i
Dolly Knowles Charitable Trust
Mr and Mrs Andrew Hawkins
Heather Howard
Seawall Trust
The Bernard Sunley
Charitable Foundation
George and Veronique Seligman
Peter and Sarah Vey
PRODUCTION SUPPORTERS
Mark and Sophie Ashburton
Nic Bentley
Simon and Sally Borrows
Rosamond Brown
Tim and Rosie Forbes
Andrew and Caroline Joy
Lord and Lady Laidlaw
Mr & Mrs Jean-Paul Luksic
Hylton Murray-Philipson
Michael and Cathy Pearman
Jonathan and Gillian Pickering
Michael and Sue Pragnell
George Robinson
SINGER SPONSORS
Sally Ashburton
Nigel Beale and Anthony Lowrey
David and Simone Caukill
Georgina Krone
Mr & Mrs Jean-Paul Luksic
Patrick Mitford-Slade
The Tait Trust and anonymous donors
PERFORMANCE SUPPORTERS
Barclays
Clifford Chance
Numis
Opus Corporate Finance
OTHER GENEROUNS
DONATIONS
David and Elizabeth Benson
Julian and Jane Benson
Peter Bull
Jo and Geoffrey Burnaby
Maria Cobbe
Ina De and James Spicer
The Lord Faringdon
Charitable Trust
Gussy, the Theatre Cat
Margi Jennings
Millichope Foundation
Elaine and Peter Mills
Tim and Thérèse Parker
Roger and Virginia Phillimore
Hugh Priestley
John Reizenstein
Andy Rogers and Stuart O’Donnell
Seawall Trust
James and Judy Scott
George and Veronique Seligman
Mr Steensma and Mrs Steensma Bruynesteyn
Johnny and Sarah Stoll and anonymous donors
Like The Grange Festival, we always hit the right notes.
Wishing you a wonderful festival.
Kirker’s opera holidays combine excellent tickets for carefully-selected performances at the most important venues in Europe, with a meticulously created programme of sightseeing and expert talks. For those who prefer to travel independently, ask about our tailor-made short breaks including tickets to the opera performances of your choice.
The annual Verdi Festival takes place in one of Italy’s most beautiful historic cities, Parma. It is here in the countryside around Parma that Verdi was born, grew up and lived for much of his life. We explore the important art collection at the Palazzo della Pilotta, sample authentic Parmigiano at a local producer, and visit Cremona, where Stradivarius was born and still home to luthiers producing finely crafted instruments in their ateliers. Performances this year include I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Messa da requiem and Il trovatore at the Teatro Regio in Parma, and also Falstaff at the Teatro Verdi in the composer’s home town, Busseto.
Price from £3,590 (single supp. £480) which includes six nights’ accommodation with breakfast, two dinners, three lunches and four operas
La Fenice is one of the world’s most historic opera houses. Along with the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and La Scala, La Fenice has always been one of the top three opera houses in Italy. A ticket for either La traviata or I due Foscari by Verdi is included, as are visits to important churches, art galleries, several walking tours and accommodation in one of Kirker’s favourite hotels, the 4* deluxe Monaco & Grand Canal.
Price from £2,598 (single supp. £672) which includes four nights’ accommodation with breakfast, two dinners and one opera ticket (stalls seat)
A FOUR NIGHT HOLIDAY | 31 OCTOBER 2023
La Scala is, for most opera lovers, the world’s most revered and important opera house. The theatre opened in 1778 with a performance of an opera by Salieri and since then many of the greatest Italian operas have received their first performance on its hallowed stage. On this holiday we will attend a performance of L’amore di tre rei by Montemezzi or Britten’s Peter Grimes, with the option to attend both.
Price from £1,898 (single supp. £360) which includes four nights’ accommodation with breakfast, two dinners and one opera ticket (stalls seat)
Our autumn holidays include two popular operas – Mariame Clément’s much-anticipated new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Annabel Arden’s hugely successful production of Donizetti’s bittersweet bucolic comedy L’elisir d’amore. The first holiday is based at The Grand in Eastbourne, and includes two afternoon operas, as well as a behind-the-scenes tour of the remarkable collection at the Towner Gallery. Based at Alex Polizzi’s new hotel, The Star in Alfriston, the second holiday begins with an evening at Glyndebourne, followed by a second performance on the final afternoon.
10 November: Price from £1,297 (single supp. £264) | 22 November: Price from £1,486 (single supp. £360). Both include two operas and three dinners.
Whatever your investment objectives, and whatever your circumstances, when you’re looking for expert, individual investment management right here in Winchester, talk to Rathbones.
For further information, please contact the Winchester office on 01962 857 000 or email winchester@rathbones.com
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June | 8 10 16 18 24
Conductor Kirill Karabits
Director Martin Lloyd-Evans
Designer Dick Bird
Lighting Designer Johanna Town
Fiordiligi Samantha Clarke
Dorabella Kitty Whately
Guglielmo Nicholas Lester
Ferrando Alessandro Fisher
Despina Carolina Lippo
Don Alfonso Christian Senn
BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Leader Amyn Merchant
THE GRANGE FESTIVAL CHORUS
Chorus Master Tom Primrose
Assistant Conductor/ Valeria Racco
Language Coach
Assistant Director Louise Bakker
Repetiteur/continuo Peter Davies
Production Manager Tom Nickson
Costume Supervisor Josie Thomas
This production is supported by Lord and Lady Laidlaw | Mr & Mrs Jean-Paul Luksic | 8 June Numis
The costumes are supported by Nic Bentley
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte | Sung in Italian with English surtitles by Richard DearsleyDon Alfonso and his young friends Ferrando and Guglielmo are arguing over the fidelity of women. Alfonso insists that all women are fickle, while Ferrando and Guglielmo refuse to believe that their fiancées, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, could ever be unfaithful. Don Alfonso wagers that by the end of that very day their fiancées will have betrayed them. He instructs Ferrando and Guglielmo to pretend that they have received orders to go off to war.
Fiordiligi and Dorabella are singing the praises of Guglielmo and Ferrando when Don Alfonso arrives to tell them that their betrothed must immediately depart for the battlefield. The young men arrive and the two couples bid each other a tearful farewell. Despina, the maid, is preparing their breakfast when Fiordiligi and Dorabella enter lamenting the departure. She counsels them to amuse themselves while their lovers are away, advice that horrifies them. After they leave, Don Alfonso, who has overheard their conversation, recruits Despina to aid him in his plot, asking her to admit two suitors (the disguised Guglielmo and Ferrando) into the house. Fiordiligi and Dorabella are alarmed to find two strange men in their home, and become ever more alarmed when the two men begin courting them. Don Alfonso pretends the men are old friends of his and begs them to accept. But Fiordiligi staunchly swears fidelity to her absent Guglielmo.
The women are lamenting the departure of their fiancés when the two ‘strangers’ barge in and swallow what seems to be poison. When they collapse, Despina and Don Alfonso go in search of a doctor, leaving Fiordiligi and Dorabella to tend to the apparently dying strangers. A doctor (Despina in disguise) arrives to revive the two afflicted suitors. As they recover, they vow their love to Fiordiligi and Dorabella with even greater passion, while Don Alfonso and Despina try to hide their amusement.
INTERVAL (100 minutes)
Fiordiligi and Dorabella are persuaded by Despina that there would be no harm in a bit of innocent flirtation. Dorabella chooses the disguised Guglielmo while Fiordiligi chooses Ferrando.
The suitors serenade them. Fiordiligi goes off for a stroll with Ferrando while Guglielmo courts Dorabella. To his amazement, Dorabella surrenders rather easily. As they go off together, Ferrando returns with Fiordiligi, who continues to resist him and leaves. When the two young men exchange news of their progress, Ferrando is stricken to learn that his faithless Dorabella has yielded to Guglielmo.
While Don Alfonso and Guglielmo covertly look on, Ferrando makes another attempt to break Fiordiligi’s tenacity. To Guglielmo’s distress, she too finally yields. Don Alfonso has now won his wager. He tries to console the two young men with his motto: ‘così fan tutte’ (‘all women are like that’).
The weddings to their two suitors are proceeding when a military chorus in the distance signals the ‘return’ of Ferrando and Guglielmo from battle. The suitors and the notary (again Despina in disguise) hide. A moment later Ferrando and Guglielmo appear in uniform, feigning surprise at the cool reception they receive. When they discover the marriage contract and the notary, they swear vengeance on their faithless fiancées and their suitors. Finally, they reveal their ruse and the two pairs of lovers are reconciled. Or are they?
So the Così part is straightforward. It simply means ‘thus’ or ‘like this’. Similarly with fan – the third person plural of fare – ‘they do’. The next four letters are all fine too. They are the root letters of the Italian word for ‘all’, tutto. So far so good, the title of the opera means, in English, ‘Thus do they all’. But that last e, that’s where the problems start. That is the feminine plural ending, and there is no way of avoiding the fact that the correct translation is ‘Thus do all women’. We could be a little less literal and get playful with the title… why not translate it as ‘Bloody Women’, or ‘They’re All The Same’? So we’ve now lost at least half our audience (hopefully a lot more!), and not a note has been played.
The problematic title is a quote from one of the characters in the piece, Don Alfonso, who persuades two younger, inevitably male, acquaintances to test the fidelity of their fiancées through disguise, deception and dissimulation. And the accusations of misogyny in the piece have barely got their trousers on. The two women, subjects of this secret fidelity test, are variously presented as unstable, over-reactive, gullible and ultimately faithless. And the same could be said for many female characters in the repertoire as (all too frequently) represented –‘victims’ like Gilda or Pamina, ‘tarts with a heart’ Violetta or Musetta, or, the ultimate in male gaze fantasy, ‘pure girl with a dark side’ like Manon or Mélisande. To promote these representations of women is simply unacceptable.
We are in an industry which is currently engaged in a profound process of self-examination about the stories it tells and the assumptions that lurk within traditional interpretations. But do the problems lie in interpretation, or are they inherent in the pieces themselves? If the latter, then many pieces will be quietly put to one side. If the issues are interpretative, how on earth should one approach Così in 2023?
In initial conversations about the piece, the designer, Dick Bird, and I set out to address the standard dramaturgical questions one faces with any opera. Period of setting? Is it a fictional world or a slice of life? Who exactly are these people within that world? And for Così, how to approach the disguises – of both men and women? Should we present the story naturalistically or in some stylised way? What does it mean in 2023? And what is it actually about? The libretto of Da Ponte gives us very few clues. We don’t know how old the characters are (other than Don Alfonso probably being older than the others). How well do the boys know each other? Are their lovers teenagers? In their twenties? Of different ages? Twins? Do they live in Naples? How long has Despina worked for them? And who on earth is this Don Alfonso character who sets the whole thing in motion? What happens at the end? None of these questions are answered in the text, and interpretations of the piece are often asphyxiated by the cultural barnacles of past assumptions. What we have is a scenario, and some detailed relationship dynamics, deliciously nuanced by Mozart’s music. There is no ‘original’ version – it has to be interpreted, and interpreted strongly or it will hang about the stage like some flaccid neo-baroque karaoke. It’s set in Naples – Despina herself speaks in Neapolitan dialect. References to Vesuvius have been taken unhelpfully as a metaphor for female volatility. Is this really why Da Ponte chose Naples? After all, this is the same writer who gave Figaro’s Susanna the strength to fend off her master to determine her own future; who understood that the Countess’s inertia was caused not by her femininity but by the controlling gaslighting of her husband, and who gave Donna Elvira moral independence in Don Giovanni. So what did Naples mean to Mozart and Da Ponte?
The House of Neptune and Amphitrite at Herculaneum © Adobe StockIt was with the re-discovery of Herculaneum in 1738 after lying hidden for over 1200 years that Naples started to become a destination city. Further excavations of Pompeii in 1748 really put the whole area on the map. Artists were dazzled by these two Roman cities, by the intact temples and explicit frescoes. They braved the long, difficult and risky journey south, and as they drew inspiration from the archaeological treasures a whole movement blossomed –neo-classicism. But there was another side to Naples, aside from its classical splendours. It was known to be a wild and unruly place, hot, frenetic, whose port attracted trade, visitors and workers from all over Europe. In the artists’ footsteps wealthy young men and women would follow, drawn not only by the art, but also by the decadence of the ruling Spanish Bourbon court, its sexual excess and easygoing liberality. Naples became the first modern tourist city, known not just for what you could see there, but what you could do there. A holiday in Naples was a by-word for days of permissiveness, of sexual exploration, of freedom from normal constraints while travelling under cover of artistic investigation. What happened in Naples stayed in Naples.
The clamour of vibrant street-life offered the tourist everything they could imagine and more. And behind the doors of the bars and boarding houses, young men could cross rubicons to their hearts’ content. So too might some women of certain means and dispositions, but for most women of society, their experience was curated, controlled by the men who prized them as wives, who sought to ‘protect’ them from the realities of life, and they would be ‘lovingly’ detained in more genteel establishments.
Viewed through this lens, the apparent misogyny of Così looks very different. The way the women respond, their ‘behaviour’ is not some innate quality of women that the piece seeks to promote, but has been shaped and dictated by the control their lives have been subjected to. The society these women were brought in up isolated and insulated them from exposure to ‘real life’ to keep them ‘pure’ for their husbands, while those self-same husbands sought their carnal pleasures from other women, ‘lower’ women of ‘easy virtue’. And so women are either ‘weak’, ‘victims’, ‘hysterical’ or ‘immoral’, ‘dirty’ and ‘worthy only of contempt’. It is the inverted commas we need to look at. They tell us these words are interpretations, judgements on the women’s behaviour. Judgements from whose standpoint? Well, obviously, from the standpoint of the men who gain from blaming women for their own shortcomings. Context is all.
Given they’ve been cooped up in a gilded cage and fed hypocritical twaddle about romance and fidelity, it is remarkable that the women attempt to find their own solutions to the problems posed by the infidelity test. It is context which triangulates the responses of the women and the piece, far from promoting a particularly loathsome view of women, actually goes a long way to articulating the hypocrisy of the men.
This is absolutely not a plea for productions to be set only in period. Very far from it. But the role played by the societal pressures on disempowered characters –the context in which they live – is everything in interpreting and presenting characterisation for the modern stage.
In the end, in Così, where does this lead us? Certainly not into some symmetrical and pat romantic denouement. Guglilemo is angry, Fiordiligi transformed in some significant way, Ferrando hopeful and Dorabella very confused, at least temporarily. Don Alfonso? Who knows. The malevolence of his prejudice has destroyed some things, and opened up some things. For sure, Despina, the lower class woman who deploys quick-wittedness in an attempt to fight back against her lack of power, feels utterly screwed over. Yet again.
And in this light the fidelity game in Così can be seen as a metaphor for society as a whole. Men set the rules. Women navigate the rules, sometimes with unexpected consequences, and the men cry foul. When seen in context, maybe Così fan tutte is not advocating the view that ‘They’re all the same’, it is scrutinising it, and exposing the lurking, latent hypocrisy.
Martin Lloyd-Evans Director, Così fan tutte“It is context which triangulates the responses of the women and the piece, far from promoting a particularly loathsome view of women, actually goes a long way to articulating the hypocrisy of the men”
Così fan tutte – Mozart’s third collaboration with the imperial court poet Lorenzo da Ponte, after Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Don Giovanni (1787) – premiered at Vienna’s Burgtheater on 26 January 1790. It was an immediate success: the first performance was among the most heavily-attended productions of the 1789–1790 season, the Journal des Luxus und der Moden pronounced it ‘excellent,’ and the Annalen des Theaters described Mozart’s music as ‘forceful and elevated.’ The genesis of Così is not well-documented. The text – especially considering its subtitle, La sculola degli amanti – may have been intended in the first instance for Salieri, as a sequel to his 1778 La scuola de’ gelosi. But although Salieri set some numbers from Così, he apparently gave up the project sometime in 1789 and it fell to Mozart instead. (Constanze Mozart later recalled that Salieri’s failure to compose the text, and Mozart’s success with it, was the source of Salieri’s animosity and malice toward Wolfgang.)
Aside from that, however, the only mentions of the opera in Mozart’s letters or other significant contemporaneous documents are his invitation to Haydn to attend a rehearsal at home on 31 December 1789, and a reference to the first orchestra rehearsal at the theatre on 20 January 1790. The autograph score is not dated although the bass
aria Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo K584 – originally intended for Così but in the end not used in the opera – carries an approximate date: Mozart listed it in a catalogue he kept of his compositions as composed ‘in December [1789].’
The opera’s reception in Vienna, at least its music, was well-deserved. Exceptionally, the opera includes numerous ensembles, duets, trios, quartets and quintets, more than in Figaro or Don Giovanni. And by their combination of voice types alone they contribute to the drama by emphasising not only the equality of the two pairs of lovers (most opere buffe have primary and secondary pairs), but also increasingly subtle differences among them. In the trio Una bella serenata, Ferrando reveals himself as more romantic than Guglielmo, who seems stuck deep in his male ego (which he had already revealed in his Non siate ritrosi). By the same token, Fiordiligi’s Per pietà, ben mio, perdona exposes a depth of feeling, a seriousness, that contrasts with the flighty and impressionable Dorabella’s mock-heroic Smanie implacabili or her willingness to flirt with Guglielmo in the duet Prenderò quell brunettino. And this after both couples, at the start of the opera, present themselves as more or less similar in character and temperament – new love apparently brings out the inner person.
It is not only the principals and their arias and ensembles that forge the powerful impact of the opera. As with Figaro and Don Giovanni, Mozart’s orchestra is a character in itself, sometimes commenting on the stage action, often exploring depths of expression that aren’t conveyed by words alone. The trio Soave il vento is a marvel, the accompaniment depicting the undulations of the sea – hopes for gentle winds and calm waves – as Alfonso, Fiordiligi and Dorabella sadly bid farewell to Ferrando and Guglielmo, off to war. We know that their departure is a sham but, crucially, Fiordiligi and Dorabella do not. Mozart gives eloquent voice to their feelings, reminding us that although this is a comedy, what the women experience and feel is anything but comic. Similarly, the conceit of the wind band serenade common in Vienna (in 1781, for instance, Mozart reported that he was treated to a serenade of two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons on the occasion of his nameday), strikes an entirely different chord in Secondate aurette amiche: the sonority is arresting in the context of an opera (notably Mozart employed a wind band in the second act finale of Don Giovanni though to very different ends) and in its way not only recalls but also complements Soave il vento – here, strings are replaced by winds to invoke a breeze that will carry Ferrando’s and Guglielmo’s sighs to their beloveds.
If the music of Così is on par with Figaro and Don Giovanni, what sets it apart from those operas is that it has no direct literary source, no ‘pretext’ that makes the story operatically ‘traditional’ or establishes it as literarily acceptable, at least as far as later critics were concerned. (Figaro is based on Beaumarchais’s 1778 play and Don Giovanni on a long tradition of both popular and high culture novels, plays, operas and street theatre.) Some writers claim that Da Ponte invented the story himself, others that the subject was suggested to him by the emperor, Joseph II. This has made the text a moving target for any number of readings and – mostly – criticisms: the actor Friedrich Ludwig Schröder described it as ‘a miserable thing, which lowers all women’, a review from 1804 objected to its weak delineation of the characters and its ‘lack of truth’, Beethoven considered Cosí frivolous, and Wagner thought it unworthy of Mozart’s music.
“As with Figaro and Don Giovanni, Mozart’s orchestra is a character in itself, sometimes commenting on the stage action, often exploring depths of expression that aren’t conveyed by words alone”Così fan tutte title page of the original edition of libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, Austrian Composer,1756–1791 © Lebrecht Music and Arts / Alamy Stock Photo
But in fact the plot of Così – or at least some variation on it – had a well-established literary and operatic history in the eighteenth century. Carlo Goldoni’s 1771 Le pescatrici is about two fishermen who test the fidelity of their girlfriends by disguising themselves as noblemen, Antonio Sacchini’s 1766 opera La Contadina in corte plays on the idea of an attempted seduction through disguise, and Joseph Haydn’s 1778 La vera costanza includes a line that directly, if inversely, puts Mozart’s opera in mind: when the character Rosina complains about the unwanted attentions of her master, her friend Lisetta says ‘Fan così tutti gli uomini’ (‘thus do all men’).
What the historical reception of Così shows, then, is that the opera, or for that matter any opera, novel or theatrical work, will inevitably be read in a context, whether the context of the early nineteenth century or today (as Martin Lloyd-Evans shows in his programme note). So it is worth asking, what exactly are we reading?
Some writers read the music. Others read the text. But an opera is neither, really, not solely music and not solely a text. An opera is a production. When Beethoven described Così as frivolous, what exactly was he reacting to? What did he see on stage, what did he hear in the music and what did he read in the text?
Leopold Mozart made the point – and surely this applies to Wolfgang too – that what is most significant about an opera or any instrumental work is its performance
So in the case of Così, it isn’t – or shouldn’t be – just the music or the text that we read, but the production, and, in large part, how it is staged and directed.
Così leaves plenty of options for a director, not least in its comedy – or if one prefers, its parody. What is one to make of the opera’s pervasive humour, or the ridiculousness of some of the stage action including Ferrando and Guglielmo’s disguises as moustachioed Albanian soldiers. In eighteenth-century Vienna, the disguises would have been read as a joke: to be ‘Albanian’ was a sign of uncivilised ‘otherness’, an association with the Turks against whom Austria was at war (indeed, a common description of Albanians was ‘Bergturken’ or ‘mountain Turks’). No Viennese woman would have fallen for an Albanian. Or Despina’s disguise as a doctor in the Act I finale. Fiordiligi and Dorabella are interrupted by the Albanians, who tell them that death is their only option. They drink poison but Despina enters disguised as a doctor, wields a magnet, and cures Ferrando and Guglielmo with its Mesmeric powers – a widely disparaged and parodied claim at the time that magnetism could heal any number of physical ailments. All the while, the ‘poisoned’ men comment in asides, how entertaining their act is. This is not to say that Così is not serious, at least in some respects – certainly the music frequently tells us that it is. And this may be the point after all, that the opera is not black and white. It reminds us again that Così is an opera, a performance, and that what we read in the work is what we see and hear on stage.
Cliff Eisen © Professor, Department of Music, King’s College London Mozart: A Life in Letters (Penguin Classics) Painting of 19th century Albanians mercenaries in the Ottoman Army © Public DomainChristoph Willibald Gluck
Conductor Harry Christophers
Director Daniel Slater
Designer Robert Innes Hopkins
Choreographer/ Tim Claydon
Associate Director
Lighting Designer Johanna Town
Video Designer Nina Dunn for PixelLux
Orfeo ed Euridice Dido and Aeneas
Orfeo Heather Lowe Dido
Euridice Alexandra Oomens Belinda
Amore Caroline Blair 2nd Woman
James Newby Aeneas
Helen Charlston Sorceress/Spirit
Kirsty Hopkins
Katy Hill
1st Witch
2nd Witch
George Pooley Sailor
THE ORCHESTRA OF THE SIXTEEN
Leader Sarah Sexton
THE SIXTEEN
THE GRANGE FESTIVAL CHORUS
Chorus Master Tom Primrose
Assistant Conductor and Repetiteur Thomas Allery
Assistant Director Alicia Frost
Language Coach Alessandra Fasolo
Production Manager Tom Nickson
Costume Supervisor Caroline Hughes
This production is supported by Rosamond Brown | Andrew and Caroline Joy | Michael and Cathy Pearman
Jonathan and Gillian Pickering | Michael and Sue Pragnell
28 June Clifford Chance
On her wedding day, while dancing with her guests, Euridice suddenly dies. Her broken-hearted husband, Orfeo, asks the guests to leave him alone to deal with his grief. In a fit of incomprehension and sorrow, he vows to do the impossible and get her back from the world of the dead. No sooner does he articulate this thought than Amore (Love) appears to him – “Let me help you.” She explains the rules of his mission: Orfeo can descend to the underworld to retrieve Euridice but, on the return journey, he can neither look at her nor explain why. Otherwise, she will die again – and this time forever.
At the gruesome entrance to the underworld, fearsome guardians of the gate try to bar Orfeo’s progress. He pleads with them, initially to no avail, though they are finally won over by his expressions of pain and of love. Once through Hades, Orfeo finds himself in the warmth and heavenly light of the Elysian fields. But this is no Heaven to him: he wants Euridice back on Earth. She is brought to him and, without looking at her, Orfeo takes her hand…
In the labyrinth leading away from the underworld, Euridice is initially overjoyed to find herself alive and reunited with Orfeo. Yet this joy soon turns to disquiet: why won’t he look at her – does he no longer love her? Orfeo is agonised by her questions and his inability to answer them. Although at first he successfully fights the temptation, it finally proves too much: he turns round to look at Euridice, failing in his task – instantly killing her. His pain is, if anything, now worse because it’s all his fault. “What will I do without Euridice?” he laments, before concluding that the answer is to take his own life. Amore miraculously reappears to prevent his suicide and restore Euridice to life for the second time. Reunited with their wedding guests on Earth, they sing and dance in praise of the magical powers of Love.
At her home in Carthage, Queen Dido finds herself beset by agonies of the heart: she loves Prince Aeneas but fears that – summoned by destiny to be the leader of Troy – he will one day leave her. Dido’s confidante, Belinda, urges her to throw caution to the wind and embark on this relationship. Aeneas arrives and proposes marriage; though Dido remains terrified that he will break her heart, she finally accepts. They set off on a trip away together, the chorus of Carthaginians celebrating the union of these two powerful people.
But the Sorceress – along with her team of witches –has other plans; she hates Dido and wants to destroy her. The Sorceress devises a plot to drive the lovers apart: a massive storm will cut short their trip and she, disguised, will confront Aeneas to remind him of his duty to his country. Dido and Aeneas are enjoying their holiday when the storm erupts and they decide to beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of the city. In the confusion, Aeneas meets the disguised Sorceress. Duty calls, she tells him; his country urgently needs him and he must leave tonight. Painfully torn between love of Dido and of his native Troy, Aeneas decides to accede to the will of fate.
The word of his decision has reached the outside world and the Sailor sings a scurrilous song about the breakup with Dido and Aeneas’ imminent departure for Troy. The Sorceress is overjoyed: her plan has worked to perfection. Back home, Dido is humiliated and devastated by his betrayal. When Aeneas arrives to say goodbye, she berates him angrily for choosing duty over love, prompting him to declare that he’s changed his mind: he’ll stay. But it’s too late – he has broken her trust – and she orders him to leave. The events have tipped her over the edge; in the arms of her one loyal friend, Belinda, Dido takes her own life. The chorus mourns her.
What is the Underworld? What happens in Elysium? Why cannot Orpheus look at Eurydice? Is he a god or a man? Is there a difference? Is his journey with Eurydice, killed by a snake, his attempt in marriage to win her back? Is this what marriage is? And is his long journey a grieving process? Conversations around these and so many other questions have filled rehearsals of every new production of Gluck’s opera in which I have been lucky to have been involved, from student days right through to the year before I began with this festival.
This story has been at the heart of opera since its inception in Florence in the late 1500s. A quick count from the first, Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (created to be part of the lavish celebrations of the marriage of Maria de Medici to Henry IV of France in 1600) to the present day reveals 75 Orphean titles still extant: Monteverdi, Rameau, Lully, Haydn, Offenbach, Debussy, Milhaud, Henze, Birtwistle, Dove are some of the names which stand out.
Earlier operatic versions of the story ended happily with a second intervention by Cupid (Amore) to redeem the desperate Orpheus after his failure to withhold his “look back” from the increasingly insistent Eurydice. The first dramatic version of the Orpheus myth by Aeschylus has his body being torn limb from limb by Maenad women in a Bacchic orgy, urged by Dionysus because the worship of his rival Apollo was preferred by Orpheus (probably his father). (I hesitate to add here that in Birtwistle’s The Second Mrs
Kong at Glyndebourne, I drew both the long and the short straws in playing the part not only of Orpheus (as a statue) but also his still-singing decapitated head, which was kicked around the stage. I am happy to report that I survived.)
Orpheus is a poet, a musician, a man, and a god. Euridice is a wood nymph. He loves her dearly, and she him. Their wedding is a cause for great celebration and joy. Her sudden death prompts unbounded sadness, especially in the tragic laments sung by Orpheus, which touch the hearts of the gods of the underworld, Hades and Persephone, and put to sleep its guardian, Cerberus. Here are essential elements of the human condition and their human expression: love, death, joy, sadness. Orpheus puts into human form those basic human instincts which music satisfies. When we are happy and want to celebrate we dance. When we are sad, we sing a lament. These are the core elements of music. Orpheus and Euridice fall in love and marry. He loses her and cannot live without her. He moves heaven and earth and indeed hell to find her and bring her back. In the end the gods are moved and relent. So not only is the Orpheus myth a profoundly moving love story, but also a representation of the power of music and poetry and their place at the centre of the human condition. Opera returns to its raison d’être as its subject matter time and time again. The Orpheus story has been the touchstone for composers and songwriters throughout history. Orpheus is the original rock star.
Michael Chance as Orfeo and Cynthia Haymon as Euridice in Orfeo ed Euridice, Oper Leipzig, 2000 © Andreas Birkigt, courtesy of Michael Chance www.michaelchancecountertenor.co.uk
When Orfeo, in Gluck’s opera, loses Euridice for the second time, his impulse is to sing a song, a lament. “What will I do without Eurydice? Where will I go without my love?” (Che farò senza Euridice?). This is also his response to the death of Euridice in the myth. It is the desperate sadness and beauty of his lament which enables his rescue of Eurydice. Interestingly in Gluck’s setting, the pulse and the harmony for this tragic expression of loss are not the conventional slow speed and minor key. He writes it with two beats in the bar, not four (in other words not slow) and in C major, normally the ‘simplest’ key, the key of Let it be, Imagine, Stairway to Heaven. So you could say that at this moment in the opera Orfeo is detaching himself from his tragic situation and simply commenting on it poetically and musically, the songster that he is, and not particularly emotionally. His rational detachment in the Age of Enlightenment takes over.
I spent an enthralling few months in Leipzig working with the German director Andrea Breth, thinking in depth about this and other key elements of this “simple” neoclassical opera. Of all my Orphean outings it was probably the most intensely investigated, with its myriad mythological, philosophical, religious and cultural associations. We decided that “the look” is a full expression of love: the one (Orpheus) deeply recognising the soul of the other (Eurydice). In the myth, the “look back” is also the desire to view again the place you are departing, the forbidden underworld, and therefore not able to looked at again. But in the moment of the attempt to re-kindle their love, as portrayed in this opera, the “look” is intensely human. It goes to the heart of a loving relationship: “I see you, I notice you, I understand, you, I adore you, I love you”. When denied, as it was for Orpheus, he cannot show love, and Eurydice refuses to come with him.
Dance is an integral part of this opera. One of my Orpheus directors was the dancer and choreographer Mark Morris. His company collaborated with the Handel and Haydn chorus and orchestra from Boston (USA’s oldest concert giving organisation) and we toured America with it. His version had a glamorous Busby Berkeley look. We protagonists were rather left to our own devices, but interacted with the dancers. The chorus was dressed
in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers glamour and sang boogying on shiny diamond black and white steps. The dancers filled the stage and created mythic magic.
Theatre directors view the opera with caution, wary of the excessive dance; choreographers want the drama to end so the main event of the Act III Dance can come into its own. In an ENO production the main focus was a troupe of eight brilliant collaborative dancers who were completely naked… (from day one of rehearsals). They were the blessed spirits of Elysium. To my shame, but the rehearsal room’s relief, I remained clothed, as did Leslie Garrett, our Eurydice. After weeks of unclothed rehearsals, conductor Jane Glover, Leslie and I gently enquired of the director how she was planning to proceed from Elysium, with its unclothed state of grace, into the journey out of the underworld. The director suggested that Orpheus look upstage to Eurydice. It quickly became clear that she hadn’t quite taken on board that this cannot happen. Oh… that pesky plot. No such confusion hampered another simple staging in Lisbon, in which our musical destiny was happily in the hands of tonight’s conductor, Harry Christophers.
Gaetano Guadagni was Gluck’s original Orfeo, a mezzosoprano castrato more restrained than his exuberantly demonstrative colleagues. His “artful manner of diminishing his voice like the dying notes of an Aeolian harp” clearly suited Gluck’s requirement of his Orpheus to be “simple, exquisite and impassioned” and not the virtuosic firebrand which opera seria had hitherto demanded of its vocal stars. Gluck wrote that he wanted the opening “Euridice” cried out by Orpheus over the opening chorus to sound as if his leg was being torn off: he desired emotional realism. Orfeo ed Euridice is Gluck’s best loved testament. The restraint, the simplicity, the emotion, the clarity changed opera and continue to touch our hearts.
Orfeo ed Euridice / Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, conducted by Harry Christophers © Eduardo Saraiva“For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews, Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands”
The early production history of Dido and Aeneas is very thinly documented. Young gentlewomen attending Josias Priest’s Chelsea boarding school did perform it in 1688 or 1689, and may have been the first to do so publicly. Priest was a prominent theatre choreographer, whose school events enjoyed the same cachet as conservatoire opera showcases do today. Fully staged professional performances happened in 1700 and 1704, but for these Dido was chopped up into four free-standing “musical entertainments”, one slotted in between each of the acts of Measure for Measure – a heavily adapted version bearing the same relation to Shakespeare’s original as The Fairy Queen did to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Semiopera” is the useful if inelegant label used to denote English Restoration period plays of this hybrid type, half acted and half sung. Dido was forced into the semioperatic mould soon after Purcell’s death, as the only way to get another box office hit show out of him.
The earliest surviving manuscript sources of Purcell’s score for Dido date from the second half of the eighteenth century. It had turned into “ancient music” by then, not worth staging any more but still of interest to concertgoers with retrospective taste. As far as they go these sources are in broad agreement – but Purcell’s setting of the whole of the Dido prologue had vanished by then, along with music for the witches’ chorus that originally ended Act II.
On a plain reading the words of the prologue are nearly meaningless. A number of allegorical interpretations have been proposed. Compliments to Charles II, James II and William and Mary can be read into it more or less persuasively. If the prologue text could be pinned to a particular reign then the date window within which Purcell might have composed the music could be narrowed down from years to a few months. Scholarly agreement on the matter still seems some way off.
Good evidence does exist to show that Dido was adapted for schoolgirl performers, not created especially for them. The version of the libretto printed for sale or presentation to the Chelsea audience called the witches and furies “enchantresses” and “fairies” instead, roles in which young gentlewomen could more appropriately appear. Two improvised guitar dances, not composed by Purcell, were added so that girls who were better at dancing than singing still had plenty to do. But the basic unsuitability of the story line could not be disguised: about extra-marital sex (Dido betraying the memory of her dead husband when she sleeps with Aeneas), abandonment and reputational ruin. One London letter-writer sending news to relatives in the country implied fairly widespread disapproval: Priest had done himself “great harm”, denting his school’s recruitment prospects through careless choice of repertoire. (The writer blames an “opera” without letting its title slip, but probably did have Dido in mind.)
Janet Baker as Dido in Dido and Aeneas with Scottish Opera at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, 1978 © Scottish Opera www.scottishopera.org.uk
Starting in the late eighteenth century, concert performances of Dido continued through the nineteenth into the twentieth, easier to organise once printed scores with piano reductions became available. The first of these, produced by the Musical Antiquarian Society in 1841, repurposed Dido as early Victorian salon music. The Purcell Society edition of 1889, published along with a keenly priced vocal score, helped to popularise the opera and its composer by handing the music over to choral societies in oratorio format. These pioneering editions had a bass clef Sorceress, as did the manuscript sources on which they depended. Purcell probably did have a bass-baritone singer in mind when thinking up music to fit the libretto’s pantomimically villainous words. Today’s far more familiar mezzo soprano Sorceress reaches back to the Chelsea school production, early adaptation for a schoolgirl cast empowering present-day female Sorceresses to approach the role from thoroughly un-gentle angles should they wish.
These multiple versions of Dido and Aeneas coexist both as moments in the historical record and as possibilities from which present-day performers can take their inspiration. “Original” Dido remains elusive, and will stay that way until some not-yet-discovered documentary evidence emerges in an unexpected place.
Bruce Wood’s introduction to the current Purcell Society Dido edition (2022) treads a diplomatic line between rival academic theories but does take one of the latest very seriously. In brief, the theory runs like this:
Dido makes excellent if unexpected sense when reimagined as a gritty, at times rather risqué piece meant to entertain King Charles II and members of his famously broadminded court circle. They were in the mood to celebrate: Charles had, by 1681, inflicted what looked like total defeat on parliamentary opponents plotting to curb his power as monarch. (He did that by dissolving parliament, ruling by personal decree for the last four years of his life.) No more elaborate means of celebration than opera could imagined. Two large-scale, blatantly pro-royalist operas were commissioned in 1683, neither ready for public performance until after Charles’s death. One of these –
King Arthur – finally appeared with music by Purcell in 1691. The all-sung mini-opera Venus and Adonis was definitely performed at court, in 1683 or 4 (Purcell’s older court composer colleague John Blow wrote music for that). Dido and Aeneas, scored for almost the same forces as Venus and Adonis and exploring a closely-related mythological theme, fits more plausibly into this mid-1680s opera-as-propaganda context than it does into any other yet proposed for it.
Stuart spin doctors had created a fake but impressive family tree showing how Charles and others in the British royal line had descended from key figures in Virgil’s Aeneid, a Latin epic poem written to honour the Roman emperor Augustus; from Aeneas specifically (the poem’s hero) and from his mother the love-goddess Venus. The same spin doctors likened Charles to Augustus, chiefly on account of his arts patronage. An astrological portent believed to be the “Star of Venus” had been seen shining at noon on the day of Charles’s birth. Venus – a singing character – features prominently in the Prologue to Dido and Aeneas. (Not of course in modern performances, since Purcell’s prologue music has not survived.) Charles’s contemporaries, had they checked, would have discovered plenty of connections between Charles’s life-story and that of Aeneas: malignant forces plotting his downfall perhaps, his irresistible sexual allure, above all the miserable fate of a queen (by extension country?) if she partnered with him for a while but then drove him petulantly away.
Because Charles died unexpectedly in 1685, leaving a backlog of commissioned but unperformed royalist opera for others to clear, plans to stage Dido at court may well have been put on hold. From Purcell’s point of view a competent amateur production would have been better than none at all. Everyone producing opera has to work within constraints and manage setbacks. The whole history of Dido is one of adaptation to changing circumstances, changing taste, changing sensibilities. No single “intended” or “authentic” version ever existed; or if it did, existed only in Purcell’s mind.
Kathleen Ferrier as Orpheus © Collectie / Archief: Fotocollectie Anefo, The Nationaal Archief (The Dutch National Archives), Creative CommonsÆneas, the Son of Venus and Anchises, having, at the Destruction of Troy, sav’d his Gods, his Father, and son Ascanius, from the Fire, put to Sea with twenty Sail of Ships: and, having been long tost with Tempests, was at last cast upon the shore of Lybia, where queen Dido (flying from the cruelty of Pygmalion, her Brother, who had kill’d her Husband Sichæus) had lately built Carthage. She entertain’d Æneas and his Fleet with great civility, fell passionately in Love with him, and in the end denied him not the last Favours. But Mercury admonishing Æneas to go in search of Italy, (a Kingdom promis’d him by the Gods) he readily prepar’d to Obey …
John DrydenHeadnote introducing ‘Dido to Æneas’ in Ovid’s Epistles Translated by Several Hands (London, 1680).
Virgil told the same story at greater length in the Æneid, Book IV. When Æneas sails for Italy Dido kills herself, unable to live with the pain of betrayal. Purcell’s librettist Nahum Tate blended Shakespeare and Virgil very cleverly, turning the spiteful goddess Juno, implacable enemy of all things Trojan and Æneas in particular, into a Sorceress and Witches who seem to be much more comprehensively malicious – like their counterparts in Macbeth (which Purcell’s contemporaries also knew in an operatic version).
Conductor Paul Daniel
Director Paul Curran
Designer Gary McCann
Lighting Designer Johanna Town
Herman Eduard Martynyuk
Count Tomsky Andrei Kymach
Prince Yeletsky Ilya Kutyukhin
Chekalinsky Alexey Dolgov
Surin Edwin Kaye
Chaplitsky/ Christopher Gillett
Master of Ceremonies
Narumov Armand Rabot
Countess Josephine Barstow
Liza Anush Hovhannisyan
Polina/Milovzor Arlene Belli
Governess Lucy Schaufer
Masha/Prilepa Isabel Maria Araujo
BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Leader Amyn Merchant
THE GRANGE FESTIVAL CHORUS
Chorus Master Tom Primrose
THE TWYFORD YOUNG CHORUS
Chorus Master David Hall
Assistant Conductor and Language Coach Sergey Rybin
Assistant Director Rachel Wise
Repetiteur Nicholas Bosworth
Production Manager Tom Nickson
Costume Supervisor Gabriella Ingram
In a park, Surin and Chekalinsky discuss the strange behaviour of their fellow officer Herman. He seems obsessed with gambling, watching his friends play all night, though he never plays himself. Herman appears with Count Tomsky and admits to him that he is in love with a girl whose name he doesn’t know. When Prince Yeletsky enters, followed by his fiancée, Liza, and her grandmother, the old Countess, Herman is shocked to realise that Liza is his unknown girl. After Yeletsky and the women have left, Tomsky tells the others the story of the Countess. Decades ago in Paris, she won a fortune at the gambling table with the help of “the three cards,” a mysterious winning combination. She only ever shared this secret with two other people, and there is a prophecy that she will die at the hands of a third person who will force the secret from her. The men laugh at the story except for Herman, who is deeply affected by it and decides to learn the Countess’s secret.
Liza thinks about her ambivalent feelings for her fiancé and the impression Herman has made on her. To her shock, he suddenly appears on the balcony. He declares his love and begs her to have pity on him. Liza gives in to her feelings and confesses that she loves him too.
Yeletsky has noticed a change in Liza’s behaviour. During a ball, he assures her of his love. Herman, who is also among the guests, has received a note from Liza, asking him to meet her. Sourin and Chekalinsky tease him with remarks about the “three cards.” Liza slips Herman the key to a garden door that will lead him to her room and through the Countess’s bedroom. She says the old lady will not be there the next day, but Herman insists on coming that very night, thinking that fate is handing him the chance to learn the Countess’s secret.
INTERVAL (100 minutes)
In the Countess’s bedroom, Herman looks fascinated at a portrait of her as a young woman. He hides as the old lady returns from the ball and, reminiscing about her youth, falls asleep in an armchair. She awakens when Herman suddenly steps before her and demands to know the secret of the cards. The Countess refuses to talk to him, and when Herman, growing desperate, threatens her with a pistol, she dies of fright. Liza rushes in. Horrified at the sight of her dead grandmother, she realises that all Herman was interested in was the Countess’s secret.
Herman is descending into obsession. In his quarters, he reads a letter from Liza asking him to meet her at midnight. He recalls the Countess’s funeral and suddenly her ghost appears, telling him that he must save Liza and marry her. The ghost says that his lucky cards will be three, seven, and the Ace.
Liza waits for Herman by a canal, wondering if he still loves her. When he at last appears, she says they should leave the city together. Herman refuses, replying that he has learned the secret of the cards and is on his way to the gambling house. Liza realises that she has lost him and drowns herself in the canal.
The officers are playing cards, joined by Yeletsky, who has broken off his engagement to Liza. Herman enters, distracted, and immediately bets 40,000 rubles. He wins on his first two cards, a three and a seven. Upsetting the others with his maniacal expression, he declares that life is a game. For the final round, he bets on the Ace but loses when his card is revealed as the Queen of Spades. Horrified and imagining the Countess’s face staring at him from the card, Herman stabs himself, asking for Yeletsky and Liza’s forgiveness.
In the early 1990s, some sociologists thought they could measure the degree of fatalism in a given society by asking respondents to say whether they agreed with the statement: “I feel that life is like a lottery.” The results need not detain us here, but we can be certain that Herman, Tchaikovsky’s protagonist, would have ticked the “strongly agree” box. One of his arias nearly reproduces the sociologists’ statement: “What is our life? A game” – as we might expect in an opera whose plot is driven by card games and gambling.
The Hermann (with two “n”s) of Pushkin’s original novella was quite different, and at least at the outset, he would have ticked the “strongly disagree” box. He was a firm believer in reason, moderation and hard work, the perfect German archetype of Russian lore. He was not even a card player until the moment when he heard that there was a trick that would enable him to win every time, so that, strictly speaking, he would not even be gambling. The person who knows that secret is an 87-year old Countess, and Hermann bizarrely plans to offer himself as a lover, although in order to gain access to the household, he first has to win the favour of the Countess’s young ward, Liza. Pushkin tells us that in profile, Hermann resembles Napoleon, and we can take this as a symbol of overbearing will and hubris.
Tchaikovsky’s Herman (with one “n”) is very different: he and the other characters alike are ruled by Fate. Even in the opening scene, we see two sets of people approaching each other on a path in St Petersburg’s Summer Garden. When they come face to face, they shrink back fearfully, and sing their thoughts aloud in a quintet. In one group, the characters we will soon come to know as Liza and the Countess take fright at Herman (as yet unknown to them), while Liza’s fiancé worries on her behalf. Herman’s fellow soldier, Tomsky, comments on the scene and the fearful mood.
During the quintet, we hear the opera’s most important musical motif in the clarinets: it consists of three notes, and is repeated three times, with slight variation. The meaning is later revealed when Tomsky who tells Herman about the Countess and the secret of the three cards. We will hear this foreboding motif of the three cards many times in the opera, most often with the same clarinet timbre. Each of the subsequent fateful encounters is marked out by the motif: Herman in Liza’s bedroom, where his confession of love is interrupted by the Countess and he has to hide; then at the masked ball, where Herman interprets the teasing of his friends as a sign of Fate; in the Countess’s bedroom, where Herman so frightens the frail old woman that she dies, dashing Herman’s hopes of discovering the secret; in Herman’s barracks, where he is visited by the ghost of the Countess; and finally, at the casino, where Herman draws the losing card, the Queen of Spades, which he sees as the face of the Countess, winking at him. This musical theme is both a personal obsession in Herman’s fevered mind, and also a broader symbol of Fate ruling over all the characters. The Countess had been placed under a curse: the third man to seek from her the secret of the cards would be the man to bring about her death, just as Tomsky told us in his first aria.
By the 1890s, when Tchaikovsky wrote his opera, Russian literature had moved on from Pushkin, and imbued the Russian spirit with a strong element of fatalism. Lermontov, for example, even wrote a story entitled The Fatalist, designed as a reply to Pushkin, and a kind of subtle reversal of the older story. Unlike the wilful Hermann, Lermontov’s protagonist, Lieutenant Vulič, is convinced that all things are fated. Choosing a pistol that may or may not be loaded, he puts it to his head and pulls the trigger. Unscathed, he then aims at a hat hanging on the wall, pulls the trigger again and the gun fires. Although Vulič is actually a Serb, this is the origin of the term “Russian roulette”.
“He was not even a card player until the moment when he heard that there was a trick that would enable him to win every time, so that, strictly speaking, he would not even be gambling”
Russian fatalism is often presented as if it came automatically with the location at the Eastern edge of Europe, at the fuzzy boundary with Asia. It is not difficult, though, to find more concrete explanations. A Russian nobleman could enjoy any degree of wealth and prestige, but if he fell into disfavour at Court, he could lose everything, and find himself in exile, if not on the gallows. This uncertainty and insecurity made it so much easier for many to gamble away their precarious fortunes. Although peasants were tied to the land they tended, the men could be swept away from home and family, pressed into military service for the next 25 years. For both these layers of society, the future was in the hands of capricious forces that lay wholly outside their control.
The reforms of the 1860s radically changed the structure of the society, and cultural change followed. Realist art came to the fore, with a critical message that drew attention to remaining social problems. In this context, Tchaikovsky’s preoccupation with Fate seems a more personal affair – take, for example, orchestral works such as Fatum, Romeo and Juliet, Francesca da Rimini, or the last three symphonies. By contrast, The Queen of Spades, as a late work, fitted better into the culture of its day, which was fin-de-siècle Symbolism, a departure from critical realism towards mysticism and exoticism. Tchaikovsky was an early contributor to the new trend, and Russian Symbolists of the younger generation were attracted to the composer’s dark vision of St Petersburg’s imperial glory: the elegance of the Summer Garden shaken by a tempest, and the murky Winter Canal by the Tsar’s palace, which became the place of Liza’s suicide.
The Director of the Imperial Theatres suggested to Tchaikovsky that he might place the action in the 18th century, and the composer absorbed this thoroughly into his conception of the opera. His Countess carries the faint perfume of Versailles from the reign, mid-century, of Louis XV. The quaintness of the lyrics and the Mozartean pastiches place us late in the reign of Catherine the Great, near the close of the century. The portrayal of Herman, however, oscillates between the Byronic hero and the protagonist of a Dostoyevsky novel. The temporal confusion, madness and morbidity of the opera delighted the Russian Symbolists, who staged séances, lived lives of intense passion, sometimes ending in suicide. Tchaikovsky’s opera cast its shadow over Andrey Bely’s Symbolist novel Petersburg, inspired the Versailles paintings of Alexander Benois, and prefigured aspects of Diaghilev’s ballets and Stravinsky’s neoclassicism.
In the wake of the October Revolution of 1917, Tchaikovsky’s music signified something else to the émigrés who had fled Russia. To Leonid Sabaneyev, for example, Tchaikovsky’s “national feeling” found true expression in “this submissiveness and dejection… this absence of protest … this sense of doom.” Sabaneyev wrote this in 1929, just as his homeland was succumbing to Stalin’s autocratic rule, and fatalism was becoming a mode of survival.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian fatalism faded away for some years (there were opinion polls to show this) as Russians made use of the newfound freedoms to take their future in their own hands. Eventually, though, the atmosphere of freedom dissipated, and Russians felt that their lives were again the plaything of impersonal forces. In response to the least flicker of protest against the invasion of Ukraine, the state has imposed heavy punishments. But the more common reaction among ordinary people has been the weary shrug of the fatalist, “submissiveness”, “dejection”, and “a sense of doom”.
Professor Director
Marina Frolova-Walker
of Music History
of Studies, Clare College, Cambridge
Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades, which he probably wrote in the autumn of 1833, is a fundamentally ambiguous text. The Queen of Spades of the title evokes the aristocratic card-playing and gambling circles of St Petersburg with which Pushkin was personally familiar; but the epigraph to the story, which describes the Queen of Spades as signifying a hidden and malevolent fate, invokes a different world of cards, one in which they are used for fortune-telling. In other words, the story offers a depiction of the real society Pushkin inhabited, but also opens out into the world of the occult.
Young Herman, the humble military engineer who is the hero of Pushkin’s story, lacks the means to join his wealthy gambling acquaintances. He overhears Tomsky’s story about the elderly Countess, who in her youth allowed herself to be seduced by the Count St Germain, a practitioner of the dark arts, in order to obtain the secret of three cards which would guarantee a win at the fashionable game of faro. And so Herman devises a plan for approaching the Countess by courting Liza, her downtrodden female companion. Once he has gained entry to the Countess’s mansion, he doesn’t go to visit Liza as she expects, but instead goes to the Countess, first imploring her to reveal the secret, and then threatening her until she dies of fright. He then has a night-time vision of the Countess, who reveals the three cards (three, seven, Ace) that he should play, on condition he marries Liza. Herman rushes to the gaming tables and wins the first two rounds, but when he plays what he thinks will be the winning Ace, to his bewilderment and horror it is transformed into the Queen of Spades, bearing the mocking face of the Countess. Herman goes mad and is confined to a lunatic asylum; Liza marries the son of the Countess’s steward.
Audiences familiar with Tchaikovsky’s opera based on Pushkin’s story will immediately appreciate that his plot underwent very radical transformations before it reached the operatic stage. Both Herman and Liza are raised up in the opera to aristocratic social status, with Liza becoming the Countess’s grand-daughter, already betrothed to Yeletsky; and Herman has become Yeletsky’s passionate rival in love. Instead of the prosaic fates which ultimately await Herman and Liza in Pushkin (a lunatic asylum; bourgeois marriage), the opera libretto rises to the heights of Romantic melodrama, culminating in the suicides of both main protagonists.
Pushkin’s purposes in writing The Queen of Spades were very different from those which impelled Tchaikovsky and his brother Modest 60 years later to create such a grandiose operatic spectacle of high society and court life in St Petersburg. Pushkin’s text is constantly ironic about his characters and their behaviour, and in a scene which depicts the Countess’s funeral it even descends into farce. He was one of the first writers in Russia to use the Russian language for the writing of prose fiction: in The Queen of Spades the Countess asks with some surprise: “Do you mean to say that there are novels in Russian?”. One of his goals was thus to wean readers off their excessive enthusiasm for Gothic fiction in translation, works originally written in English, German or French – but never Russian. And so his Queen of Spades was created as a brilliant pastiche of the Gothic mode, simultaneously exposing the shallowness of the genre while in fact creating a brilliant exemplar of it. Pushkin knows that his readers are longing for a really creepy ghost scene, and for a highly Romantic (ideally tragic) climax to the love theme. Instead, he teases and frustrates them, never resolving the question about whether the supernatural truly exists (when Herman saw the ghost, was he simply drunk?); and he denies the reader emotional catharsis with his throw-away ending, perfunctorily abandoning both Herman and Liza to their mundane fates.
Monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) at the Arkhangelskoe estateTchaikovsky shifted the entire action back from the 1830s, the contemporary world in which Pushkin set the story, to the 1790s. Another striking difference between Pushkin’s original and the reconfiguring of the story by the Tchaikovsky brothers is that the opera introduces several entirely invented episodes. The first is the whole opening scene, set in St Petersburg’s Summer Garden, with children playing; the little boys sing of the virtues of the Empress, Catherine the Great, as they act out the role of marching soldiers defending Russia against its enemies. Later in Act I, Liza is seen with her friends, who are reproved by the governess for singing and dancing ‘in Russian style’, which was deemed by polite society to be beneath their dignity – we the audience, of course, are encouraged to sympathise with the girls’ enthusiasm for authentic Russian customs. Act II is set at an aristocratic masked ball which doesn’t figure at all in Pushkin, but does allow for the introduction of a crowd-pleasing pastoral interlude with ballet. This scene culminates in a majestic entrance by the Empress Catherine the Great and a hymn of praise to her glory is sung. Tchaikovsky’s aim was to please the court of his own day with his celebration of Catherine, Russia’s ruler from 1762 to 1796 (the première took place in 1890, shortly after he had been granted a generous stipend by Tsar Alexander III in a gracious act of imperial patronage).1 One of Catherine’s notable achievements was to expand the Russian Empire during her reign, overseeing the partitions of Poland, and also waging successful wars against the Ottoman Empire. This led to the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Empire and the founding of the port of Odessa, in modern-day Ukraine, opening up Russia’s access to year-round warm-water navigation through the Black Sea. Many of the alterations to Pushkin’s story inserted in the opera by Tchaikovsky and his brother thus transform it into a piece with emphatically patriotic, imperialist intonations.
While it is true that these nationalistic themes do not appear in Pushkin’s original story, they might not have been entirely unwelcome to him. Pushkin, celebrated as the earliest of Russia’s truly great writers, was an innovator of genius, transforming the Russian literary landscape with a flood of works which challenged prevailing norms of genre, form, language and style, and which are characterised by brilliant ingenuity, light wit, and playfulness. He also had a niggling sense of being an outsider, unusual in being able to claim African heritage, his great-grandfather having been brought to the Russian court as a slave in the early eighteenth century, and then ennobled. Pushkin had a reputation for political liberalism, and was indeed sentenced as a very young man to six years of internal exile, in part because of poems such as his Ode to Liberty (1817). A closer look at his political views, however, reveals him to be a constitutional monarchist, who repeatedly calls upon the ruler of the day to allow himself to be governed by the law, and to show mercy towards opponents – but Pushkin was appalled by revolutionary demands for the overthrow of the monarchy. He is also a patriotic champion of Empire, who seemingly takes it for granted in his writings that Ukraine should belong to the Russian Empire, celebrates Russia’s presence in the Caucasus, and challenges the West to keep out of disputes between the Slavonic peoples. Pushkin’s 1829 poem Poltava paints a scathing portrait of the Ukrainian Cossack hetman Mazepa as a traitor to Russian interests; this text too formed the basis for a Tchaikovsky opera in 1884. These are the positions which have rendered his legacy in present-day wartime Ukraine somewhat controversial. Along with other symbols of Russian culture, many monuments to Pushkin in Ukrainian cities he visited have been removed during the last year. However, the Mayor of Khar’kiv, Ukraine’s second city which has suffered throughout so terribly from Russian bombing, has explained why he arranged for Pushkin’s bust to be taken down, but put away in a safe place: ‘There is today, and there are present emotions, but there is also tomorrow. And there are also cultural values. […] It’s a tricky question. And we will probably revisit it once we have secured our victory’.2
Julie Curtis Professor of Russian Literature. Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford1 See Philip Bullock, Pyotr Tchaikovsky; (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 153–59
2 www.bbc.com/russian/features-64603310, 11 February 2023
“Pushkin, celebrated as the earliest of Russia’s truly great writers, was an innovator of genius, transforming the Russian literary landscape with a flood of works which challenged prevailing norms of genre, form, language and style”
June | 30 July | 1
Band Leader and Trumpet Dominick Farinacci
Alto Saxophone Patrick Bartley, Jr.
Vibraphone and Marimba Christian Tamburr
Piano Mathis Picard
Bass Yasushi Nakamura
Drums Jerome Jennings
Soprano Anush Hovhannisyan
Conducted by Gavin Sutherland
Leader Amyn Merchant
Creative Director and Producer Piers Playfair | 23Arts Initiative
Composer and Arranger Ethan Iverson
Producer Frankie Parham | Mascarade Opera
Stride Medley (Black Beauty)
Take the A Train Drop me off in Harlem
The Mooche
The Gal from Joe’s East St Louis Toodle Oo
Creole Love Call Come Sunday Tonk
Brasilliance
Braggin’ in Brass
Battle of Swing
Rockin’ in Rhythm
It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)
INTERVAL (100 minutes)
New World A-Comin’ (orchestra and Mathis Picard on piano)
Valediction: An Ellington Suite I. Oclupaca, II. Daily Double, III. King Solomon,
IV. Acht O’Clock Rock,
V. The Village of the Virgins,
VI. Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies,
VII. The Lord’s Prayer, VIII. Loco Madi (orchestra only)
C Jam Blues (orchestra and sextet)
This production is supported by Mark and Sophie Ashburton | Simon and Sally Borrows
Hylton Murray-Philipson | George Robinson | An anonymous donor
Arrangements and Valediction: An Ellington Suite commissioned for The Grange Festival by 23Arts
For T here’s Basie, m iller, saTchmo, and T he kinG oF all , s ir dukeStevie Wonder Duke Ellington at the Hurricane Club in New York, May 1943 Gordon Parks © Public domain
Music begins as a local experience with folk melodies and drums for dancing. In time it moves to being a more organised affair, with leaders, followers, and a seated audience. Eventually it takes place in a formal concert hall with attendant devotees, critics and sceptics.
If one person can be said to have presided over the evolution of jazz, it was Duke Ellington. He was born in 1899, before “jazz” was even a word. As a young man, he learned how to play “stride”, the virtuoso manner espoused by his mentor James P Johnson, at that time a popular piano style for dancing and drinking in Harlem apartments. In his thirties he was fronting one of the most famous big bands of all time, making hit records of tunes that almost everybody still knows today. At 44, he led his jazz orchestra at Carnegie Hall for his jazz symphony Black, Brown and Beige, which he introduced as “a tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America”.
Ellington collaborated with everybody, from traditional greats like Louis Armstrong to gospel icon Mahalia Jackson to the modernists Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. More casually, he hobnobbed with Leonard Bernstein and penned romances for Queen Elizabeth II. The big band era was over by 1956 – or was it? Ellington at Newport was a surprise bestseller and put the maestro on the cover of TIME magazine.
Any casual history of American music must include Ellington on the first page; some even deem the 20th century “The Ellington Century”. He liked to call others “beyond category” and of course he intended to live up to that sobriquet himself: one of the best film scores is Ellington’s for Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder and one of the best ballet scores is Ellington’s The River for Alvin Ailey. His final years included full-length Sacred Concerts The last one was presented at Westminster Abbey in 1973, shortly before he passed the following year.
For all his fame, Ellington can be curiously hidden in plain sight. A lot of mystery and controversy surrounds his legacy. Common-practice jazz today does not traffic much with Ellington’s aesthetics, probably because his meticulous approach is harder than it appears at first glance. Posterity also enjoys anointing a lauded genius sole credit, and in Ellington’s case there were certainly collaborators. Not just a galaxy of legendary horn players like Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, Tricky Sam Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Ben Webster, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney, and many others, but also a co-composer, Billy Strayhorn, the poetic soul who penned much crucial Ellington, including the band’s theme song, Take the A Train. At least three major books attempt to wrest the laurels from Duke and give them to Strayhorn.
Strayhorn’s greatness is undeniable, but Ellington certainly wrote an epic amount of music on his own. Strayhorn was not even there in the first decade and a half, and Ellington kept churning out pieces after Strayhorn’s decline and death in the mid-1960s.
Mostly setting aside Strayhorn (Take the A Train does make an honoured appearance, alongside the Strayhorn novelty number for Strayhorn and Ellington to play together, Tonk), Ellington: From Stride to Strings focuses on pre- and post-Strayhorn eras of Ellington, two wonderful and comparatively unfamiliar swaths from his vast output.
The arc of this concert was carefully planned by producer Piers Playfair, founder of the 23Arts Initiative, for The Grange Festival, to place Ellington in an opera house in a manner that is smart, engaging and serious, the very values that one might describe as Ellingtonian! The journey begins with the early work and beloved hits, followed by a formal reading of Ellington’s successful piano concerto, then moving into a world premiere that expands late Ellington into symphonic dimensions.
Duke Ellington on the cover of TIME magazine, August 20, 1956 © Time-Warner, Time Magazine Duke Ellington in concert, Victoria Hall, Geneva, 1964In the first half, themes from the early years will be celebrated and reimagined by a sextet of today’s finest musicians led by renowned trumpeter Dominick Farinacci. On many occasions, small-group jazz is a pickup affair, but Farinacci studied the original records and carefully arranged the themes to display the variety and vitality of Ellington’s output. In jazz, improvisation is of the essence, but for Ellington each soloist must actually function within carefully prescribed rules.
The swanky Drop me off in Harlem, the sinister The Mooche and the soulful Come Sunday are among the selections curated by Farinacci and Playfair. Expect plenty of fireworks throughout, and, of course, joyful rhythm, that essential element Ellington described in his famous song It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.
As his star rose, Ellington challenged his listeners with longer and more ambitious works composed for the concert hall. The second half begins with New World A-Comin’, which might be seen as Ellington’s response to Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue. Of all the many Ellington pieces transcribed for symphonic forces, New World A-Comin’ might be the most durable. Ellington played it himself with his band; the first orchestral adaption premiered in 1957 with soloist Don Shirley (recently back in the discourse thanks to the award-winning movie Green Book). Here, the piano chair is held by young virtuoso Mathis Picard. The ensemble plays smart accompaniment while Picard is charged with rendering the main argument in 2023 terms.
Ellington himself orchestrated the pieces heard on his famous records, but all of what gets performed under the rubric “symphonic Ellington” was orchestrated by relatively conservative collaborators. It makes sense as in his lifetime there was no expectation that an orchestra could swing or sing his melodies with the right kind of attitude. Working with a full symphonic orchestra may have been a good way to remain “beyond category”, but there is little to suggest that Ellington treated the submitted orchestrations as more than an easy way to fulfil commission requirements. Indeed, private recordings of Ellington himself playing the
music from various suites before they were orchestrated prove that much potential energy was lost the minute the scores escaped Ellington’s direct oversight.
At the same time, we know for dead certain that Ellington was interested in the larger frame. There was plenty of critical pushback to Black, Brown and Beige, but that did not stop the composer from producing many more ambitious projects. When he recorded the album Orchestral Works with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Orchestra, Ellington performed his piano parts with flair and vigour.
In Valediction: An Ellington Suite, which has been specially commissioned by 23Arts for The Grange Festival, I seek to reinvigorate Ellington’s work for full concert forces. Indeed, I believe we owe it to Ellington to keep his symphonic ambitions fresh, relevant, and exciting.
All the selections are from very late Ellington, when his delightful LPs of exotica like The Latin American Suite and The Afro–Eurasian Eclipse sat comfortably on the shelf next to bachelor pad LPs by Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones. In the concert hall, it is conventional to treat Ellington with reverence – almost with too much reverence, for nobody knew more about having a good time than Duke Ellington. Most of Valediction is intentionally entertaining, like the railroad tribute Loco Madi (the final and most lunatic entry in about 50 years’ worth of Ellington train pieces).
However, there are two selections that are more sombre in tone: The Lord’s Prayer is a piano prelude from the Westminster Abbey performance, now expanded with chimes, strings and solo trombone (Mahler said the trombone was the voice of God, and this was before Gustav had a chance to hear Tricky Sam Nanton or Lawrence Brown); the romantic ballad King Solomon is from the last piece Ellington ever wrote, Three Black Kings
The evening concludes with a relaxed set of variations on C Jam Blues, featuring all the players from both halves.
Ethan Iverson Pianist, composer, and critic Composer and Arranger Ellington: From Stride to Strings Queen Elizabeth II and Duke Ellington meeting in Leeds in 1958 © Duke Ellington Collection, National Museum Of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Creative Commons
An opera for young voices
Co-commissioned by The Grange Festival, UK; Garsington Opera, UK; Matera Consortium, Italy; Al Farah Choir, Syria; Alsama Project, Lebanon; Amwaj Choir, Palestine; Alsama Project (with Mascarade Opera Foundation)
July
Composer Richard Taylor
Librettist lisa luxx
Created in collaboration with young people from the participati ng groups
Conductor Jonathan Gill
Director Karen Gillingham
Vocal Director Lynsey Docherty
Designer Ruth Paton
Assistant Director/ Natasha Khamjani Choreographer
Video Design Claudia Lee
Lighting Designer Paul Milford
Piano Tom Jesty
Flute Julian Sperry
Harp Cristina di Bernardo
Percussion Luke Baxter
With students from EVEREST COMMUNITY ACADEMY, BASINGSTOKE
PERINS SCHOOL, ALRESFORD HAMPSHIRE COUNTY YOUTH CHOIRS
and design students from UNIVERSITY OF CREATIVE ARTS
With Ms H Dibden , Ms E Freed , Ms J Cash (Everest); Ms M Alexiou , Mr O Graham , Mr M Blackwell , Ms J Knight (Perins); Kerry Kenward , Andrew Hayman , Ben Cooper (HCYC)
Production Manager James Boyd
Costume Supervisor Alexandra Cooper
Stage Manager Checca Ponsonby Deputy Stage Manager Elizabeth Barry Youth Company Manager Jo Lee
With thanks to Nicky Cambrook and The Grange Festival Volunteers
Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening is a contemporary myth, weaving together families from across the globe. The tale follows a young boy named Hamido, whose voice is taken by the hands of the Breeze across seas and continents.
Hamido’s voice gathers folksongs and sings to strangers who are in need of comfort, nostalgia and possibility. His travelling voice transcends borders – as music does – bringing siblings, grandmothers, bakers and young men closer to whatever they felt they had lost. Though the wayward Breeze carries Hamido’s voice under the watchful eyes of Moon, chaos soon ensues, ultimately leading to the reconnection of two long lost friends separated by migration.
Alsama, which means ‘sky’ in Arabic, started in 2020 offering new horizons to teenage refugees by establishing secondary schools and cricket hubs for illiterate Syrian youth in Lebanon’s refugee camps. Creating their own unique curriculum has enabled students to catch up on 12 years of lost education in just six years. Graduates receive an international accreditation, opening doors to both employment and further education. The Dawn to Dusk project has enabled Alsama and The Grange Festival to create a long-lasting partnership through interactive workshops and joint rehearsal sessions. Alsama students will perform their interpretation of The Moon is Listening in November 2023 at the Baalbeck Festival in Lebanon with Mascarade Opera Foundation.
Opera has long been regarded as a platform for storytelling and cultural expression, and remains a medium to explore the complexities of human conditions. Taking this to the next step, Learning at The Grange is delighted to take part in an ambitious artistic initiative that showcases the creativity and talent of young people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening is a contemporary youth opera that has united young people from the UK, Italy, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria who have collaborated digitally to share their stories and aspirations through the universal language of music and text. Under the guidance of composer Richard Taylor and librettist lisa luxx, the ideas and perspectives of these young people have been imaginatively woven into a mythical youth opera that promises to be a thought-provoking and inspiring work
Our Hampshire students have had the opportunity to connect with young people from the Alsama Project, a school for Syrian refugees in the Shatila camp in Beirut, through lively zoom sessions. This cross-cultural dialogue has been a testatment to the power of art to unite people from different backgrounds and promote social cohesion.
An ‘opera-pack’ consisting of learning vocal tapes, video footage, staging and design ideas has been created to inspire youth organisations to perform the opera in various settings. Our production will be the first performance of Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening, and will be followed by performances by our partner organisations over the next year, offering their own unique interpretations of the piece.
Learning at The Grange is proud to be part of this significant project that not only gives young people from different parts of the world a creative voice but also promotes cross-cultural understanding. We look forward to sharing the results of this bold co-commision with audiences around the world.
Susan Hamilton Director of Learning
As with any ambitious creative project, the process of bringing Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening to life was one of intense debate and exchange of ideas. It involved countless hours of in-person and virtual meetings with the young participating groups from around the world. Through this process, a diverse and vibrant array of themes and concepts emerged, sparking a global conversation that served as the foundation for the project.
But the true magic happened for me in the music itself. From the very beginning, short snippets of poetry based on these themes were written, then set to music by the various groups. Lines were sung and shared, with all recordings subsequently transcribed onto manuscript paper and carefully filed away.
For this contemporary folktale and mythical libretto, I worked closely with the material written by young people from Italy, Palestine, Syria, England and Lebanon. Young people of different ages and vastly broad life experience. Some shared songs, others shared dreams, and all shared details of their localised life. To weave these together was a challenge, but one which was an act of sewing together the countries that seem so far away into one cohesive narrative. One that shows we are all intimately entwined, through songs and skies.
I read and re-read the creative writing generated by the young people and developed characters based on the insights they gave us into their personalities. Converging a number of traits into one or two characters from each location. I researched old lullabies from each country, and did this through asking people directly about old favourites that they haven’t heard since childhood rather than looking online, because I wanted to find the lost lullabies or the ones less known. The Moon and the Breeze became an anchoring point, these two elemental characters emerging through my own dream language.
The libretto arrived, and further creative sessions were held, this time working with the actual text and improvising with groups both in-person and online to find the words’ unique rhythms and shapes. My challenge was to knit together as many of these musical fragments as possible into a cohesive and performable piece while still retaining the essence of each contribution.
In this process, original text was sometimes swapped while retaining the melody, or a melody borrowed a partial phrase from another to create the desired effect. And new music was of course written to tie everything together. But throughout the process, some 180 co-composers were ever-present in my ear, their voices woven together into a harmonious whole.
Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is Listening stands as a testament to the possibilities of global collaboration and creative exchange, and the power of shared creativity across borders and beyond boundaries.
Richard Taylor ComposerEach role in the libretto has a different voice, a different drive, and I came to love them all. Driven too by Richard’s approach to composing, I was aware of the traits he would bring to life and aimed to write a story that allowed him all the space to play and breathe into the nuances of the script.
Knowing that this tale will be put on its feet by youth operas in each country is a thrill; I believe in the power of artistic collaboration as a way to bridge differences. To find that essential heart beneath all the obstacles and borders that hold us back from one another.
I live in Beirut, though my family are from Syria with some roots in Palestine and I was raised in England. Though I have never visited Italy, our partners there gave such a rich offering that I could peer inside the communities despite not having the privilege of meeting them. Tying together these disparate parts of myself, and disparate parts of the social world we live in, was not just an honour but a form of healing, a form of hope. This hope is everything that youth opera can be for any generation who gets to be involved in the productions.
lisa luxx Librettist
“True magic happened for me in the music itself”
2017
2017–2022
2018
IL RITORNO D’ULISSE IN PATRIA
Claudio Monteverdi
CARMEN
Georges Bizet
ALBERT HERRING
Benjamin Britten
A CELEBRATION OF ROGERS, HAMMERSTEIN & HART
The John Wilson Orchestra
REQUIEM
Giuseppe Verdi
AUTUMN 2017
MANSFIELD PARK
Jonathan Dove
2019
DANCE AT THE GRANGE
Studio Wayne McGregor AGRIPPINA
Georg Frideric Handel
IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA
Gioachino Rossini
LE NOZZE
DI FIGARO
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart FALSTAFF
Giuseppe Verdi BELSHAZZAR
Georg Frideric Handel
THE ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart CANDIDE
Leonard Bernstein
DANCE AT THE GRANGE
Studio Wayne McGregor
INIMITABLE, IRRESISTIBLE HOLLYWOOD AND BROADWAY
TIME CAPSULE
Learning at The Grange Youth Opera
The John Wilson Orchestra #LITONLINE
Learning at The Grange
Youth Opera
THE GRANGE FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL SINGING COMPETITION
THE GRANGE FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL SINGING COMPETITION
LA CENERENTOLA
Gioachino
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Benjamin Britten MANON LESCAUT
Giacomo Puccini
MY FAIR LADY Lerner & Loewe KING LEAR
William Shakespeare
THE YEOMEN OF THE GUARD
Gilbert & Sullivan FROM BLUES TO RHAPSODY
Jazz at The Grange
DANCE AT THE GRANGE
Shobana Jeyasingh Dance
New English Ballet Theatre OUR WORLD Learning at The Grange Youth Opera
PRECIPICE Sinéad O’Neill PAGLIACCI Ruggero Leoncavallo
Rossini
2022 MACBETH Giuseppe Verdi
TAMERLANO Georg Frideric Handel
THE QUEEN OF SPADES Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony (Rome, Pappano); Heidi Schiller Follies (National Theatre)‚
Mme Armfeldt A Little Night Music (ON); Jack the Ripper (ENO); The Queen of Spades (ON, Birgitta) Kostelnichka Jenůfa (Oviedo, Vlaamse)
Mama Lucia Cav&Pag (Barcelona).
Future Engagements: Lady Billows Albert Herring (ON).
Biography: Dame Josephine Barstow is recognised as one of the world’s leading singing actresses. During a long career she has performed in most of the world’s major opera houses and with many of the great conductors singing a varied repertoire of Verdi‚ Richard Strauss‚ Puccini and Janácek among others. In 1985 Josephine Barstow was awarded a CBE and the International Directors’ Fidelio Award. In 1995, she was created DBE.
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS Festival Debut.
Biography: The Tokyobased Grammy-nominated saxophonist and composer Patrick Bartley, Jr. performed on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and was featured in the Emmy-nominated HBO special Wynton Marsalis: A YoungArts Masterclass, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. After graduating from the Manhattan School of Music, he became a sideman in high demand, performing and recording with musicians such as Louis Hayes, Jonathan Batiste, Mulgrew Miller, Jeff Coffin and Wynton Marsalis. He has performed at world-renowned venues such as the Staples Center, Madison Square Garden and the Black Sea Jazz Festival.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Supported by Sally Ashburton
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Lady
Louisa Wolseley, The Master (WFO); The (female) Pope
The Burning Question (Tête à Tête Festival Opera); Teresa La Sonnambula (Random Opera Company)
Zaida, Il Turco in Italia (Longhope Summer Opera); Charlotte Werther (Interocrea Festival).
Future Engagements: La suora infermiera Suor Angelica (WFO); Una Popolana La Ciociara (WFO); Guido Ferranti The Duchess of Padua (Tête à Tête Festival Opera).
Biography: Described as “A true vocal personality” by Alberto Mattioli in Amadeus Magazine, Italian–Egyptian mezzosoprano Arlene Belli is a recent alumna of the National Opera Studio in London. Her last performances include concerts with WNO, ENO and ON appearing at St David’s Hall (Cardiff); Coliseum (London) and Cadogan Hall (London) where she was described by Opera Now magazine as “A magnetic Italian mezzosoprano who stole the show as Carmen”.
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Previous Appearances: Mansfield Park (2017).
Recent Engagements: Falstaff (La Fenice); Don Giovanni (Greek National Opera, Danish Royal Opera) Street Scene (Teatro Real, Madrid); Nixon in China (Scottish Opera); Giselle (National Ballet of Japan); Les pêcheurs de perles (the Met/ENO).
Future Engagements: Measure for measure (Stefan Zeromski Theatre, Poland); Nixon in China (Teatro Real Madrid); Don Giovanni (Gothenburg Opera).
Biography: Dick Bird designs sets and costumes for theatre, opera and ballet. Dick Bird’s designs for opera include Falstaff (La Fenice); Don Giovanni (Greek National Opera, Danish Royal Opera) Street Scene (Teatro Real, Madrid); Nixon in China (Scottish Opera); Les pêcheurs de perles (the Met/ENO) La donna de lago (ROH).
AMORE/2ND WOMAN
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Galatea Acis and Galatea (Ryedale Festival); Offstage voice Glyndebourne Opera
Unplugged: Contemporary Opera Workshop (RAM); Young Artist/Chorus, The Marriage of Figaro (WOF).
Future Engagements: Cover Frasquita/ Chorus, Carmen (WOF); Chamber Music Festival with Kaleidoscope Collective (RAM). Biography: Caroline Blair is currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) with Marie Vassiliou. She is generously supported by both RAM and the Leverhulme Trust. At the Academy she has been awarded numerous prizes, most notably 1st Prize in the Joan Chissell Lieder Prize and winning a scholarship for the Sir Elton John Programme where
she studied in Munich. Aside from classical singing, Caroline has been featured as a solo backing singer on Mercury Award Winning C Duncan’s Album Health.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Supported by an anonymous donor Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Title role Dido and Aeneas (Les Arts Florissants); Israel in Egypt (SCO); Irene Theodora (Philharmonia Baroque); Messiah (OAE); Mozart Requiem (LPO); Judas Maccabaeus (RIAS Kammerchor); Weihnachtoratorium (Casa da Musica).
Future Engagements: A UK tour of recital programme Battle Cry: She Speaks; St John Passion (Les Arts Florissants); Messiah (Warsaw Philharmonic); performances with the SCO, Czech Philharmonic and the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston.
Biography: Helen Charlston is a current BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (2021–23); and finalist of the 2021 Kathleen Ferrier Awards for which she was a recipient of the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize. Helen was a ‘Rising Star’ of the OAE 2017–2019, and was selected for Le Jardin des Voix academy with Les Arts Florissants, 2021. Helen’s other accolades include the first prize in the 2018 Handel Singing Competition and finalist in The Grange Festival International Singing Competition.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Previous Appearances: Beshazzar (2019).
Recent Engagements: MacMillan 5th Symphony (SCO, EIF – World premiere; Britten Sinfonia, Barbican – London premiere); The Creation, Handel and Haydn Society, Boston; LSO, Barbican); Mass in B minor (Lausitz).
Future Engagements: Nelson Mass (Saffron Hall) Messiah (SMITF) Coronation Mass (Handel and Haydn Society, Boston) Monteverdi Vespers (Barbican).
Biography: Harry Christophers stands among today’s great champions of choral music. In partnership with The Sixteen, he has set benchmark standards for the performance of everything from latemedieval polyphony to important new works by contemporary composers. Under his leadership, The Sixteen has established its hugely successful annual Choral Pilgrimage, created the Sacred Music series for BBC television, and developed an acclaimed period-instrument orchestra.
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Supported by The Tait Trust – Isla Baring
Previous Appearances:
Tytania A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2021). Recent Engagements: Marzelline Fidelio (Sydney Symphony Orchestra); War Requiem (MSO); Violetta La traviata (WAO); Adina L’elisir d’amore (West Green House); Golden Cockerel (Adelaide Festival); Beethoven Symphony No. 9 (Tasmania Symphony Orchestra).
Future Engagements: Fiordiligi Così fan tutte (Opera Queensland); Woglinde Das Rheingold (Sydney Symphony Orchestra); Violetta La traviata (Opera Australia); title role Theodora (Pinchgut Opera).
Biography: Australian/British soprano Samantha Clarke is the winner of the 2019 Guildhall Gold Medal and prize winner in the 2019 Grange Festival International Singing Competition. Her operatic roles include: Helena and Tytania A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Fiordiligi Così fan tutte; Donna Elvira Don Giovanni; Pamina Die Zauberflöte; Countess Le nozze di Figaro; Anne Trulove The Rake’s Progress; The Governess The Turn of the Screw; title role Theodora.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Previous Appearances: Belshazzar (2019).
Recent Engagements: Turandot (Geneva, Tokyo Nikikai); Un ballo in maschera (Danish National Den Norske Opera, Asreal-Theatre Bonn).
Future Engagements: L’elisir d’amore (SFO, Parsifal HGO); Albert Herring (Opera North)/ Biography: Tim trained in classical dance and has worked as a ballet dancer and trapeze artist for 20 years. Now concentrating on creating choreography for opera and theatre productions around the world. His own work includes In search of Youkali, a collection of Kurt Weill songs using aerial dance and traditional cabaret.
Previous Appearances: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2021).
Recent Engagements: Peter Grimes (La Fenice, Venice); Golden Cockerel (Santa Fe, Dallas); Flying Dutchman, Ariadne auf Naxos (Bologna, Ural Opera); La traviata (Philadelphia); Tosca (Mariinsky Theatre); Carmen (Irish National Opera); The Bartered Bride (Garsington); La Donna del Lago (the Met, Santa Fe); My Fair Lady (Teatro San Carlo, Teatro Massimo Palermo)
Future Engagements: Turandot (Teatro Petruzelli); Tristan und Isolde (San Francisco); Ariadne auf Naxos (La Fenice, Venice). Biography: Born in Glasgow, graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney 1992. Productions include: La donna del lago (the Met, Santa Fe); The Tsar’s Bride (ROH); Rusalka (National Theatre Tokyo); Tannhäuser (La Scala); Peter Grimes (Kennedy Centre, Oslo, Santa Fe); Tristan und Isolde (La Fenice); Tosca (Mariinsky St Petersburg, Canadian Opera); Mirandolina (Wexford); La traviata (Bucharest).
From 2007 to 2012 Paul was Artistic Director of the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo. He has translated several plays by Chekhov and Molière, and volunteers as often as he can with Los Angeles-based charity GayforGood, painting schools, clearing orchards and gardens.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Fidelio (ON); La Princesse de Trebizonde (LPO/Opera Rara); Madama Butterfly (Opera National de Bordeaux); The Magic Flute (WNO). Future Engagements: Rusalka (Tenerife); Das Land des Lächelns (Zürich).
Biography: Paul Daniel was Music Director of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine from 2013–2021 and has held the same post at the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Galicia. From 1997 to 2005 he was Music Director of ENO and prior to that Music Director of ON and of Opera Factory. Operatic engagements include Covent Garden, Brussels, Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, the Met, Tokyo and Bregenz. He has worked with leading orchestras throughout the UK, Europe and the USA and has recorded a wide repertoire including a DVD of Lulu from La Monnaie. He was created CBE in the 2000 New Year’s Honours list.
DAWN TO DUSK
Lynsey enjoys a wide and varied music career as an operatic soprano, producer and vocal director. She has sung lead soprano roles with companies including Dorset Opera Festival, Buxton International Opera Festival, Iford Opera Festival, UK tours with Opera Della Luna, International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, and the Wagner Society of Great Britain and the Mastersingers at the ROH. In concert she has performed at concert halls, festivals and cathedrals nationwide. Lynsey is passionate about arts in education, and for 20 years has created opera projects with organisations, in such diverse settings as schools, prisons, orphanages (Tajikistan), and with people with dementia and special needs. She is the Founder Director of Celebrate Voice Festival – an award-winning, multi-genre festival of voice in Wiltshire.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements:
Jenůfa (Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin); Otello (the Met); Mavra and Miserly Knight (Scottish Opera); Messa di Requiem (Brucknerhaus Linz) and Eugene Onegin (New Israeli Opera). Future Engagements: This season he will also sing Turiddu Cavalleria Rusticana (West Green Opera), and in future seasons he will sing in concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and return to Opéra Royal de WallonieLiège. Biography: The Siberian tenor Alexey Dolgov is currently celebrating one successful debut after another at important venues all around the world. His performances have gained him high critical acclaim for his ‘clarion tenor’ Montreal Gazette; ‘naturalness and superb timing’ Metro Weekly, Washington DC; he also ‘shines as an actor’ Washington Post Alexey has worked with conductors such as Placido Domingo, Vasily Petrenko, Daniel Harding, Semyon Bychkov, Kirill Karabits and Gustavo Dudamel.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE/DIDO AND AENEAS
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: The Phantom of The Opera (Shanghai Ballet); Bonnie & Clyde (Garrick Theatre); Seven Deadly
Sins and Bluebeards Castle (Teatro Colón); Othello (National Theatre); Spitting Image Live (Birmingham Repertory Theatre); The Trials (Donmar Warehouse); Orfeo et Euridice (Vienna State Opera).
Future Engagements: Shrek The Musical (UK Tour); The Box of Delights (RSC); Black Sabbath – The Ballet (Birmingham Royal Ballet) The Nutcracker (Acosta Danza) 9 to 5: The Musical (Korea following West End, UK tour and Australian Tour).
Biography: Nina Dunn is an award-winning video and projection designer who has created work for a wide range of shows internationally across opera, dance, theatre, immersive and live events. She is the founder and Creative Director at PixelLux Design and an educator within her field. Awards include a Knight of Illumination Award (Video and Electronic Content, Alice’s Adventures Underground); Great British Pantomime Awards (Best Design, Cinderella); a Broadway World UK Award (Best Video Design, Bonnie & Clyde); a LIT Award (The Assassination of Katie Hopkins); two WhatsOnStage nominations (The Assassination of Katie Hopkins, The Shark Is Broken) and two OffWestEnd nominations.
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
Festival Debut.
Biography: Trumpeter and bandleader Dominick Farinacci graduated from The Juilliard School and launched his career in Japan with a prolific run of eight albums. He has served as Ambassador to Jazz at Lincoln Center in Doha, Qatar, performed around the world and been recognised by The New York Times as “a trumpeter of abundant poise.” He has been a featured guest on ABC’s Good Morning America and been profiled in Vanity Fair. Music icon Quincy Jones has said of Dominick’s accomplishments in performance, recording, education and advocacy: “This kid is 360 degrees!”. In 2022 he was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize.
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Supported by Nigel Beale and Anthony Lowrey
Previous Appearances: Fenton Falstaff (2019)
Recent Engagements: Osvaldo Il Proscritto (Opera Rara); First Brother The Seven Deadly Sins (LSO tour); Donizetti Requiem (Orchestra della Svizerra Italiana OSI); Elias (Stadttheater Klagenfurt); On Wenlock Edge (Wigmore Hall).
Future Engagements: Sørensen‘s St Matthew Passion (Danish National Symphony Orchestra); Recital (Oxford Lieder).
Biography: Winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Alessandro Fisher is an Associate Artist of The Mozartists and was a BBC New Generation Artist. He holds a 2022 BorlettiBuitoni Trust Fellowship.
DAWN TO DUSK
Jonathan Gill studied composition with William Mathias before post graduate training at the Opera School of the RCM under James Lockhart. Most recently he was MD for Beauty and the Beast (London Palladium and tour); The Lion King (UK tour also Associate MD at the Lyceum Theatre); The Go-Between (West Yorkshire Playhouse, Derby and Northampton for which he was also MD, won the UK theatre award for best musical production 2012).
Jonathan conducted 600 performances of The Sound of Music on its UK tour, starring Connie Fisher. He has given first performances of works by Jonathan Dove, Matthew King, Richard Taylor and Gareth Williams.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Previous Appearances: Bardolfo Falstaff (2019); Oswald King Lear (2021)
Recent Engagements: Triquet Eugene Onegin (Scottish Opera); Soothsayer in the world premiere of Giulio Caesar (Opera di Roma); Flute A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera Zuid, Festival d’Aix en Provence and Beijing Music Festival).
Future Engagements: He will be the Director and Set Designer for Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor (Opera Zuid); Red Whiskers Billy Budd (The George Enescu International Festival); Narr Wozzeck (Staatsoper Berlin – debut).
Biography: Christopher has performed many roles for the ROH, ENO and Glyndebourne
Touring Opera. On CD/DVD‚ he recorded the title roles of Albert Herring and The Martyrdom of St Magnus‚ roles in Billy Budd‚ The Beggar’s Opera‚ Peter Grimes‚ A Midsummer Night’s Dream‚ King Priam‚ Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria‚ and operas by Oliver Knussen and Tan Dun. He has filmed Britten’s The Journey of the Magi with Pierre Audi‚ directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at University of Illinois and has written several books.
DAWN TO DUSK
Karen Gillingham is a director, workshop leader, presenter and collaborator who passionately believes that engagement in the arts can have a transformative and profound effect on someone’s life and aims to widen access and provision through Opera and musical theatre.
Directing/Presenter credits include:
Dalia Garsington Opera, GO Create the Opera Imaginarium Presenter/Co-Creator YouTube series, Future Visions and Our World The Grange Festival, Streetwise Opera CoLab Trinity Laban and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance, BBC PROM 66 Royal Albert Hall, A Tale of Two Dragons BBC Singers Barbican, Water in the Desert NYU Abu Dhabi, Bat out of Hackney Hackney Empire, A Trip to the Moon LSO Barbican – Sir Simon Rattle, Silver Birch Garsington Opera, Watchers in the Wings film Royal Opera House, Beautiful World National Theatre Abu Dhabi, Hospital Passion Play London V&A, Twenty Women
Singing tour of prisons Welsh National Opera, Magna Carta – The Freedom Game Royal Albert Hall Surrey Arts, Out of the ruins Royal Opera House, Worldskills opening ceremony O2 London, South of the River English National Opera and Beached Opera North in Bridlington.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES / ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
Supported by The Mascarade Opera Foundation Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Emma, Khovanschina (Paris Opera); Mimi, La bohème (WNO); Violetta, La traviata (ROH, Israeli Opera, Royal Danish Opera); Woolf Works (The Royal Ballet); Rachmaninov, The Bells (Philharmonia Orchestra).
Biography: Anush Hovhannisyan began her career as a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. She is the winner of First and Public Prizes, Deutsche Grammophon and Royal Danish Opera Special Prizes at the 2016 Stella Maris Competition, the winner of the 2014 Ernst Haefliger International Swiss Competition and represented Armenia at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2017.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Previous Appearances: Belshazzar (2018); Tamerlano (2022).
Recent Engagements: 1923 (Istanbul); Der Fliegende Holländer (Teatro Comunale di Bologna); La traviata (San Francisco Opera); Dmitry (Marylebone Theatre); All’s Well That Ends Well (RSC); Tosca (San Francisco Opera); Secret Cinema ‘Casino Royale’ (Shanghai/London); Solar (Linz).
Future Engagements: Dalibor (Brno/WNO); La traviata (LA Opera); Elixir of Love; Tristan and Isolde (San Francisco Opera).
Biography: Robert is a London based, international award winning production designer working in opera, theatre and large scale events.
COMPOSER AND ARRANGER
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
Festival Debut.
Biography: Pianist, composer, and writer Ethan Iverson was a founding member of The Bad Plus, a game-changing collective with Reid Anderson and David King that performed across the world and in venues as diverse as the Village Vanguard, Carnegie Hall and Bonnaroo. During this time, Ethan was also engaged in performances and recordings with jazz masters like Billy Hart, Paul Motian, Tootie Heath, Ron Carter and Charlie Haden. As “NYC’s most thoughtful and passionate student of jazz tradition”, Time Out New York selected Ethan as one of 25 essential New York jazz icons. Ethan has also published articles about music in the New Yorker, The Nation and JazzTimes
DRUMS
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
Festival Debut.
Biography: Jerome Jennings is a drummer, sideman and Emmy award-winning composer. His debut recording The Beast is a reflection of the everyday joys and traumas of black life in the USA. It was named one of the top three Jazz releases by NPR, received a four-star rating in Downbeat Magazine, and was nominated in France for the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque award for Album of the Year in 2016. Jerome’s second recording, Solidarity, released in 2019 was recognised by NPR as best music that spoke truth to power that year. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Jerome is Professor of Jazz History at Montclair State University.
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
DAWN TO DUSK
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Debuts with Dallas, Pittsburgh and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras; Prague Radio Symphony. Returned to Minnesota Orchestra; Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg; Opéra Montpellier; BBC Proms, BSO. European and North American tour with Mikhail Pletnev; Die Tote Stadt (ENO).
Future Engagements: La bohème (Opernhaus Zurich); Opéra National de Bordeaux; Orchestre National de Montpellier; Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra; Korean Tour, Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Biography: Karabits has been Chief Conductor of BSO for 14 years – an internationally celebrated relationship. Together they have made many critically acclaimed recordings and performed regularly at the BBC Proms. Karabits has also worked with many leading ensembles of Europe, Asia and North America, and was named Conductor of the Year at the 2013 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Supported by Patrick Mitford-Slade Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Le Roi des Trèfles L’amour des trois oranges (Regents Opera); cover Colline La bohème (WNO); cover Commendatore Scottish Opera); Il Padre Guardiano La forza del destino (Regents Opera); Fafner The Ring Cycle (Gafa Arts Collective).
Future Engagements: Flemish Deputy Don Carlos (Geneva Opera House); Duke Bluebeard Bluebeard’s Castle (Regents Opera).
Biography: Edwin Kaye is a British bass who attended the RNCM with David Lowe and now works with Matthew Best. A recent winner of the Fulham Opera Robert Presley Verdi Prize, Edwin has previously held soloist positions with State Opera Stara Zagora and State Opera Ruse in Bulgaria. Through consort and choral singing, Edwin has held positions with the BBC Daily Service Singers, Christian IV Vocal Ensemble and various churches across England.
Previous appearances: #LitOnline (2018), Our World (2022).
Recent Engagements: People’s Flag dance film for the Eurovision Song Contest as part of the mass movement team and assistant to the Director Jeanefer Jean-Charles and the Queens Jubilee Pageant as part of the choreographic and staging team.
Future Engagements: She is currently working on several Youth Opera projects including the international partners of the Dusk to Dawn project and Into Opera in Norwich.
Biography: Natasha trained at London Studio Centre and began her career as a performer before deciding to concentrate on being a creative from behind the scenes. Her versatility enables her to work across the industry including education, theatre, commercials, bespoke commissions, and Ceremonies. She is Co-Artistic Director of Folk Dance Remixed; a ground-breaking company fusing folk and hip hop dance and music that tours nationally each year as well as co running a theatre school in London called DNPA
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Eugene Onegin and Marullo Rigoletto (Bregenzer Festspiele); Così fan tutte (Glyndebourne Touring Opera and Vilnius Opera); Boris Godunov, Carmen and La bohème (Warsaw Opera) and Il barbiere di Siviglia (Opera national de Paris).
Biography: Born in Pyatigorsk, Russia; Ilya is a recent alumnus of the prestigious Young Singers Project at The Salzburg Festival. Ilya was also a member of the Young Artist Programme of The Bolshoi Theatre where he studied with Dmitry Vdovin. During his time in the programme, he performed in chamber music concerts with Ivari Ilja, Liubov Orfenova, Semyon Skigin and Giulio Zappa as well as concerts of the Young Artists Programme of the Bolshoi Theatre in France.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: So far this 2022/23 season, Andrei has given very successful debuts as Pere Germont La traviata (Houston Grand Opera); title role Don Giovanni (Opera Australia) and Escamillo Carmen (Chicago Lyric Opera).
Future Engagements: Mussorgsky Songs and Dances of Death (Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen); Iolanta (RPO); The Bells (Bergen Philharmonic) and a recital at Oxford Lieder.
Biography: Ukrainian baritone Andrei Kymach was the First Prize Winner of the prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2019. Recent highlights include the title role in Don Giovanni (WNO); Schaunard La bohème (Bayerische Staatsoper); and house and role debuts as Sir Riccardo Forth I puritani (Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona) and Lord Enrico Ashton Lucia di Lammermoor (Auditorio de Tenerife). Future seasons will see engagements at ROH, Salzburg Festival and Paris Opera.
GUGLIELMO
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Supported by David and Simone Caukill
Previous Appearances: Clorinda La Cenerentola (2021).
Recent Engagements: Ernestina, La scuola de’ gelosi (Turin); Susanna Le nozze di Figaro (Dresden); Romilda Xerse (Martina Franca); Merab Saul (TaW); Soprano I Great Mass in C minor (Palermo); Carolina Il matrimonio segreto (Turin); Ifigenia Oreste (Halle). Future Engagements: Corilla Viva la Mamma! (Novara and Savona). Biography: Carolina trained at the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini. In 2019, she became a member of the young artists programme at TaW. Carolina has worked at Teatro Regio Torino, Festival della Valle d’Itria, Oper Köln, Glyndebourne Festival, Semperoper Dresden, Teatro La Fenice, Händel- Festspiele in Halle, Sage Gateshead, Theater an der Wien, collaborating with Fabio Luisi, Christophe Rousset, Laurence Cummings, David Parry, Calixto Bieito, Claus Guth, Barrie Kosky, Keith Warner.
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Previous Appearances: Ford Falstaff (2019); Lescaut
Manon Lescaut (2021).
Recent Engagements: Title role Eugene Onegin; Figaro
Il barbiere di Siviglia (WNO); Don Giovanni (Kilden); title role Orphée, Marcello La bohème (ENO); Chou en Lai Nixon in China, Malatesta Don Pasquale (SO); Marcello La bohème (NZO); title role Eugene Onegin; Belcore L’elisir d’amore (WGH); Guglielmo Così fan tutte‚ Dandini
La Cenerentola, Figaro Il barbiere di Siviglia, Frédéric Lakmé (OHP)‚ Valentin Faust (Dorset). Future Engagements: Il Conte Le nozze di Figaro (State Opera of South Australia).
Biography: Australian baritone Nicholas Lester studied at the Adelaide Conservatorium of Music and the National Opera Studio, and was a State Opera of South Australia Young Artist. His studies were sponsored by Glyndebourne and he was a recipient of an Independent Opera/ National Opera Studio Postgraduate Voice Fellowship‚ and won several awards. In 2014 Nicholas was delighted to be voted Best Male in a Leading Role by the Opera Holland Park audience for his performance as Figaro Il barbiere di Siviglia
Previous Appearances: Mansfield Park (2017), Le nozze di Figaro (2019).
Recent Engagements: Dead Man Walking (GSMD); Le Villi/Margot la Rouge Double Bill (Opera Holland Park).
Future Engagements: A Star Next the Moon – a new opera composed by Stephen McNeff based on the novel Pedro Paramo (GSMD). Biography: A selective list of professional work includes many productions for Scottish Opera and Opera Holland Park including Isabeau, The Mikado and L’amore dei tre re World premieres include Lliam Paterson’s The Angel Esmeralda and Julian Philips’ The Tale of Januarie (GSMD). Other productions include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Barbican); Roméo et Juliette (Operosa); Mitridate, Re di Ponto (COC at Sadler’s Wells). Martin is Resident Producer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
ORFEO / DIDO
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Previous Appearances: Angelina La Cenerentola (2021).
Recent Engagements: Angelina La Cenerentola (WGH); Rosina Il barbiere di Siviglia (WNO, ON); Hansel Hansel and Gretel, Phoebe The Yeomen of the Guard (ENO); Fox Cunning Little Vixen, Cherubino Le nozze di figaro‚
Sesto Giulio Cesare‚ Hansel Hansel and Gretel (ON); Dorabella (NIOpera, Dorset) Tisbe La Cenerentola (WNO, OHP) 2nd Nymph Rusalka (Garsington, EIF).
Future Engagements: Mad Margaret Ruddigore (OHP/Charles Court); Dorabella Così fan tutte (ON).
Biography: Heather studied at RNCM under Barbara Robotham and Ann Taylor and the National Opera Studio under Susan Waters‚ supported by Scottish Opera. She was a Finalist in the Maureen Lehane Competition‚ is a Samling Scholar‚ and a trained ballet and ballroom dancer. She is generously supported by Mr and Mrs Goddard‚ The Sybil Tutton award and Mr and Mrs Blumer and is grateful to be the recipient of a Richard Angas Memorial Award.
DAWN TO DUSK Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Eating the Copper Apple
Future Engagements: what the dog said to the harvest Biography: lisa minerva luxx is a British Syrian writer and activist. Poetry Review celebrated her work as “vigorously intellectual and politically febrile.” Her poems are regularly broadcast on Channel 4, BBC Radio 4 and published by Penguin, New England Review and others worldwide. In 2023 she has two new shows on tour: what the dog said to the harvest, an opera installation about the racism inherent in climate disaster; and Dawn to Dusk: The Moon is listening
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Herman The Queen of Spades, Cavaradossi Tosca (Opera Brno); Vaudemont Iolanta, the Pretender Boris Godunov (Bolshoi); Jason Medea (Linz Landestheater); Herman The Queen of Spades, (Zurich Opera, Bolshoi, State Opera Budapest).
Future Engagements: Shapkin From the House of the Dead, Tenor Glagolitic Mass, Ismaele Nabucco, Cavaradossi Tosca (Opera Brno); Ismaele Nabucco (Olomouc Opera); Vaudemont Iolanta (Šaldovo divadlo, Liberec) Herman Pique Dame (Bulgarian National Opera and Ballet).
Biography: Martynyuk started his professional career as a soloist at Odessa Music Comedy Theatre, later he joined the Ural Operetta Theatre and Belarus State Academic Music Theatre. Since 2004 he has been a soloist at The Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus. Since 2018 he has been a soloist at Odesa State Opera, in Ukraine. His international appearances include Linz Landestheater, Zurich Opera, Bolshoi, State
Opera Budapest, Theater Erfurt, and the Real Filharmonia Galicia in Vigo, Spain.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Peter Grimes (Fondazione Teatro La Fenice Venice); The Phantom of the Opera (Opera Nationala Bucuresti); La Cambiale di Matrimonio (Muscat Royal Opera House).
Future Engagements: Turandot (Teatro Petruzelli); Der Rosenkavalier (Santa Fe Opera); The Merry Widow (Glyndebourne).
Biography: Gary McCann works extensively as a set and costume designer for some of the world’s most significant companies. His recent credits include: Eugene Onegin (Santa Fe Opera); Tosca (Irish National Opera, Wrocław Opera); L’Amico Fritz (Fondazione Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino); Ariadne auf Naxos (Bologna); Der Freischütz, Macbeth (Vienna State Opera) and Anna Bolena (Opéra de Lausanne, Royal Opera Muscat, ABAO Bilbao, Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liége). www.garymccann.com
DAWN TO DUSK
Paul Milford studied dance at The University of Chichester. However, he has found a love for choreographing the lighting rather than the cast and designing shows Including, The Four Seasons (James Wilton Dance) and The Tempest (Blue Apple Theatre). Whilst also touring a range of shows from stand-up comedy to masked theatre, contemporary dance and outdoor circus each providing its own joys and challenges. Paul also still dances when he can, though usually, he’s now in a harness on the side of a building.
DOUBLE BASS
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
Festival Debut.
Biography: A graduate of the Berklee School of Music and The Juilliard School, Yasushi Nakamura’s career as a bass player has flourished, with consistent engagements at the world’s best jazz festivals including Tokyo, North Sea, Monterey, Ravinia, as well as top venues such as Birdland, Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, The Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. He is praised for imaginative, quicksilver bass lines that deepen
the groove. Yasushi’s album Hometown from Atelier Sawano, featuring Lawrence Fields, Bigyuki and Clarence Penn, received JazzLife magazine’s Album of the Year Award in 2017.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Supported by Georgina Krone Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Eddy Turnage’s Greek, Guglielmo Così fan tutte, title role Eugene Onegin (Hannover Staatsoper Ensemble); Der Junker Der Schatzgräber (Opéra National du Rhin, French debut); Guglielmo Così fan tutte (Komische Oper Berlin).
Future Engagements: Debuts at Theater an der Wien and Garsington Opera.
Biography: James Newby is a former BBC New Generation Artist and has been awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, for his emerging status as one of the most outstanding young musicians of his generation. This summer he takes part in their 20th anniversary celebrations at the Wigmore Hall singing Mahler with Mitsuko Uchida. The release of his debut solo CD I Wonder as I Wander with Joseph Middleton was described in Gramophone as “a performance that sets the tone, announcing Newby as an impressive artist”.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Supported by an anonymous donor Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: Frasquita Carmen; Elsie The Yeomen of the Guard; Josephine HMS Pinafore (ENO); Musetta, La bohème (Nevill Holt Opera and ENO); Puzzles and Games, Alice in Wonderland (Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France); Buxtehude, Membra Jesu Nostri (Pinchgut Opera).
Future Engagements: Papagena and cover Pamina The Magic Flute (ENO).
Biography: London based Australian soprano Alexandra Oomens is a Harewood Artist with ENO. She is a graduate of the RAM opera programme where she received an Honorary DipRAM for outstanding performance and was also an alumna of the Georg Solti Accademia, where she worked with Alessandro Corbelli, Barbara Frittoli and Sir Richard Bonynge. In 2017, she made her European debut at the Concertgebouw, in the world premiere of a commission for the Holland Festival.
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
Mascarade Opera Foundation
Previous Appearances: From Blues to Rhapsody (2022).
Biography: Together with Max Fane and Roger Granville, Frankie Parham co-founded The New Generation Festival, a music, theatre and opera festival that showcased emerging talent, in Florence, Italy and partnered with the 23Arts Initiative. They also established Andermatt Music and co-founded Mascarade Opera, an Italian charitable foundation which runs a performance and training programme in collaboration with Teatro La Fenice in Venice designed for the career development of the world’s most promising young singers and répétiteurs. Frankie read Classics and Russian at the University of Oxford after which he studied Law at both SOAS and BPP University in London and qualified as a solicitor with White & Case LLP.
DAWN TO DUSK
Ruth is a set and costume designer for theatre, opera and dance. She trained at the Motley Theatre Design Course and currently holds a Lectureship in Design for Theatre at the University for the Creative Arts. Ruth has been an associate artist at Blind Summit since 2014.
Recent opera designs include productions for Longborough, Bregenz and Spoleto Festivals, the Abu Dhabi National Theatre, Hollywood Bowl LA, Princeton University and the Barbican.
Engagement, outreach and teaching forms part of Ruth’s practice and she is a lead artist for the Learning and Participation departments at Garsington Opera, English National Opera and the Royal Opera House where she also works on the annual Design Challenge. Ruth has designed many large scale community operas for ROH, ON, ENO and Garsington.
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
Supported by Georgina Krone Festival Debut.
Biography: FrenchMalagasy pianist and composer Mathis Picard, who has been dubbed a “rising star” by The Scotsman, is an ASCAP Next Generation of Songwriters Recipient, a member of the Montreux Jazz Foundation and an alumnus of The Juilliard School where he was mentored by Kenny Barron. He has been described as a “knockout, as dynamic a personality as he is virtuosic on the keys” (WhatsOnStage) and “one to watch” (Jazzwize). In 2022 Mathis released his debut solo piano album Live at the Museum, which was recorded with a live audience at the National Jazz Museum of Harlem in New York City.
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS
23Arts Initiative
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Previous Appearances: The Abduction from the Seraglio (2018), Il nozze di Figaro (2019), The Grange Festival Chorus Master (2022 and 2023).
Recent Engagements: Asst Conductor Peter Grimes (Palais Garnier) Asst Conductor Wozzeck (Bastille) Conductor Cambridge Philharmonic (West Road, Cambridge), Music Staff (Opera de Montecarlo, Kings Theatre Copenhagen, Korea National Opera, Polish National Opera).
Future Engagements: Conductor The Rake’s Progress (The Grange Festival), Asst Conductor Makropoulos Case (Bastille).
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Supported by Mr & Mrs Jean-Paul Luksic
Previous Appearances: Dandini La Cenerentola (2021).
Recent Engagements: Mercutio Roméo et Juliette (Teatro Petruzelli Bari); Malatesta Don Pasquale (Teatro Massimo di Palermo); Count Robinson Matrimonio segreto (Potsdamer Winteroper).
Future Engagements: Clistene Olimpiade (Innsbruck Festival).
Previous Appearances: From Blues to Rhapsody (2022).
Biography: Piers Playfair is the Artistic Director of the 23Arts Initiative, which he founded with his wife Lucy in 2011. The 23Arts Initiative is a USbased non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting world-class performing artists and programmes. 23Arts has a history of presenting year-round artist residencies, community outreach, educational visits and both pop-up style as well as traditional concert hall performances spanning across countless unique locations and venues. Featuring internationally recognised artists across all genres with a focus on classical, jazz, gospel, and blues, the mission of 23Arts is to provide a platform for the creation of new forwardthinking and ground-breaking independent productions. Piers’ work at 23Arts has included the curation of programmes and major productions for multiple venues and festivals, including the Fisher Center at Bard; the Kings Theatre, Brooklyn; the New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx; and, The New Generation Festival, Florence.
Biography: Tom is a British conductor, pianist and coach, working mainly in opera and freelance work takes him all over the world as well as across the UK. He has assisted and prepared orchestras and choruses for conductors including Alex Soddy, Susanna Mälkki, David Parry, Finnegan Downie-Dear, Yan-Pascal Tortelier, Kazuki Yamada. As a recitalist he has accompanied many of the most significant singers and instrumentalists of his generation. He is the Artistic co-Director of the Southrepps Music Festival.
THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Supported by Georgina Krone Festival Debut.
Recent Engagements: In concert, Charleston Festival, Sussex; Woman The Blue Woman (ROH); Cecilia March Little Women (OHP); Madeline Three Decembers (Wilton’s Music Hall).
Future Engagements: In recital, Laidlaw Music Centre, University of St Andrews Helene Marx in London (Scottish Opera); Hortense The Listeners (Opera Philadelphia).
Biography: Grammy Award winning Lucy Schaufer is voracious and versatile in her choice of repertoire. Her career takes her to theatres and concert halls performing in works from Sondheim, Mozart, Weill, Bernstein to the most demanding new music, leading Gramophone magazine to say “she occupies an undefinable space in the ‘who’s who’ of classical music.” Shortlisted for the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Singer of the Year, Lucy is an educator, creative producer, and Artistic Director of Wild Plum Arts.
Biography: Born in Chile, Christian Senn has been living in Italy since his youth. After taking a Master’s degree in Biology, he was admitted to the Academy for young singers at the Teatro alla Scala. Christian is one of the most sought-after baritones for Bel Canto repertoire, performing opera roles by Rossini such as the title role in Il barbiere di Siviglia and Dandini in La Cenerentola. Mozart singer of the first order, he sang the title role in Don Giovanni and Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro.
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS
Previous Appearances: Belshazzar (2019) and Tamerlano (2022).
Recent Engagements: L’elisir d’amore (Chicago Lyric); Peter Grimes (Brisbane Festival); Fidelio (RFH) Romeo & Juliet (Singapore); Salome (Santa Fe); Xerxes (Stockholm); Tannhäuser (Tallinn); Nabucco (Antwerp); Tristan und Isolde (Oslo); La traviata (Houston).
Future Engagements: L’elisir d’amore (San Francisco Opera).
Biography: Daniel studied at Bristol University, where he obtained a 1st-class honours degree in English, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a PhD for his thesis on the influence of Nietzsche and on D H Lawrence. He began his career as Associate Director of the Tricycle Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse. For the last two decades, he was worked as a freelance international opera director. His productions have been seen at major houses across Europe, the USA, Asia and Australasia.
ELLINGTON: FROM STRIDE TO STRINGS Festival Debut.
Biography: Christian Tamburr is a vibraphonist, pianist, composer and arranger who has performed in over 67 countries around the world. Downbeat magazine recognised him with the “Outstanding Solo Jazz Performance” award and he has received the “Critics Choice Top Rising Star” for his work on the vibraphone five times. He leads the critically-acclaimed Christian Tamburr Quintet, which performs regularly in venues such as The Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Newport Jazz Festival and venues throughout Asia, Europe and the UAE. His music can be heard on TV, in full-length motion pictures and at stage productions around the world.
DAWN TO DUSK
Richard Taylor composed the musicals Flowers For Mrs Harris (Sheffield Crucible, Chichester Festival Theatre) and The Go-Between (UK tour and West End, starring Michael Crawford), both Best Musical winners at UK Theatre Awards; the operas Confucius Says (Hackney Empire, RPS Award winner) and Ludd and Isis (Royal Opera), and dramatic cantata Calderland (Halifax Piece Hall, RPS Award winner). Other work includes commissions for BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta Soloists, ENO, as well as music for almost 100 plays in theatres across the UK and West End.
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
ORFEO ED EURIDICE / DIDO AND AENEAS THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Previous Appearances: Tamerlano (2022).
Recent Engagements: The Tempest (RSC); Vardy V Rooney (Ambassadors); How the Other Half Love (Salisbury Playhouse); The Famous Five: A New Musical (Theatr Clwyd/CFT); Fisherman’s Friends The Musical (UK Tour/Canada); Identical (Nottingham Playhouse/Salford Lowry); The Homecoming (Theatre Royal Bath/UK Tour); Peggy for You (Hampstead Theatre).
Future Engagements: The Sound of Music (CFT).
Biography: Johanna is The Chair of the Association for Lighting Production and Design, and a Fellow of Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Johanna recently received A Worshipful Company of Lightmongers Award for the promotion of new talent in entertainment lighting.
DORABELLA
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Previous Appearances: Nancy Albert Herring (2017); Paquette Candide (2018).
Recent Engagements: Hansel Hansel and Gretel and Elvira Don Giovanni (Scottish Opera); Hermia A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Rouen); Kate Owen Wingrave (GPO); Annina Der Rosenkavalier (Garsington); The Cunning Little Vixen (CBSO tour).
Biography: Kitty Whately trained at Chetham’s School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the Royal College of Music’s Opera School. She won the Kathleen Ferrier Award and the 59th Royal Overseas League Award, was part of the prestigious Verbier Festival Academy and a BBC New Generation Artist. Kitty is in high demand as a recitalist and concert artist, and appears on several recordings. She recently released another CD Befreit – A Soul Surrendered (Chandos) with pianist Joseph Middleton.
Photography credits:
Helen Charlston © Benjamin Ealogeva
Harry Christophers © Marco Borggreve
Kirill Karabits © Konrad Cwik
Ilya Kutyukin © Diana Guledani
Andrei Kymach © Diana Guledani
Carolina Lippo © Mary Marshania
Heather Lowe © Victoria Cadisch
Alexandra Oomens © Julie Ewing
Christian Senn © Rita Antonioli
Children love to sing, and the children of Twyford School are no exception. This year we are celebrating our one hundredth pupil taking part in The Grange Festival, since our long-standing and fruitful relationship with The Grange began thirteen years ago.
It all started with a phone call in 2010. Scott Cooper (Director of Artistic Administration) phoned the School to see if we would be interested in training up 15 pupils to be choristers for Tosca. The 15 lucky children were a brilliant bunch. We loved every moment of Tosca and we found the time to rehearse and perform part-songs in our School music gala under the name The Tosca Boys. Since then, we have leapt at the opportunity to get involved in opera each time we are required. The Queen of Spades has become a perennial favourite with 11 girls and 11 boys taking part; Oliver! was fantastic fun as we were not the only school involved; Albert Herring was particularly special as two of our Twyford boys took on the demanding solo role of Harry.
Rehearsals in London are always an adventure. Each year the excitement of working on the opera, at a professional level, is shown in the children’s faces when they first hear the adult singers. They are in awe when they hear the cast singing in their home clothes in rehearsal.
Of course, it is not just the singing that the children love. There are the people that they get to know, the Directors, Conductors, Choreographers and more, the beautiful little costumes that are their own for a week or two, the excitement of the dressing room, the backstage area and the wings and the sound of the full orchestra. The Grange itself is a wonderful place to run around. The Twyford children often challenge the adult chorus members to games of cricket on the oval lawn in the long summer evenings (we’re not bad at cricket!).
Music has been a prominent part of the curriculum at Twyford since 1855 when the young and forwardthinking George Kitchin was Headmaster. In 1862, our
lovely Chapel was built. We still sing in chapel every week to nourish our souls, directly opposite the dining hall where we nourish our bodies. We are very proud of our all-inclusive Junior Choir and our Senior Choir. Type Twyford School into Spotify and you will hear our Senior Choir singing some of the many Christmas Carols that we have commissioned from the likes of Alexander L’Estrange, Lin Marsh and Howard Goodall. Over the years, we have had many official and unofficial school songs: Domum, Onwards and Upwards, Jerusalem (written by our notable alumnus, CHH Parry) and Vince Patientia. Twyford School is thriving in the twenty-first century. We have 442 pupils, boys and girls, aged 2–13. They all receive class music lessons from specialist teachers and the vast majority choose to take additional instrumental lessons.
This year we are delighted to share that Twyford School has won the category for Best of the Best “Great for Music” in the Week Independent Schools Guide.
Once again this summer we are happy to be performing in The Queen of Spades at The Grange Festival. We are celebrating at The Grange with all our Festival alumni on July 2nd. Please come and find us and say hello.
David Hall Director of Music, Twyford School Children’s
At the heart of every opera company is its chorus. We value ours highly. We audition widely, and give them opportunities to understudy principal roles and rehearse them in these as much as we possibly can. We want to do more.
HARRY CHRISTOPHERS
I think for Michael and me, the notion of The Grange Festival Chorus and members of The Sixteen joining forces was an absolute no brainer. However there was a certain nervousness amongst the singers about how the two would work well together but that disappeared completely within the first few minutes of production rehearsals for Handel's Belshazzar in 2019 when it was abundantly clear that the process would be rewarding in so many ways and indeed inspirational.
My singers learnt so much from The Festival Chorus in movement and sheer stage practice; there was a sense of incredible freedom and above all great fun. I do believe also that The Grange Festival Chorus gained a real insight into baroque style from my singers and just how much character could be portrayed in their delivery. The prospect of Orfeo and Dido fills me with great excitement; two masterpieces of concise drama which revolutionised the world of opera.
FRANCESCO
Whenever I need to remind myself of the good side of being in this crazy opera business, I often find myself thinking of The Grange Festival Chorus. Whether it’s the rapacious singing of the gender-bending sorceresses of Macbeth, the life-affirming energy of the finale of Falstaff or the readiness to commit to my very fast Italian tempos for Verdi’s Requiem (the start of my love affair with the Festival!) this amazing group of young, versatile, ambitious, caring, and insanely talented artists is always in my mind.
I look forward to seeing them again, on stage and off-stage playing croquet in the dinner interval: I may never understand how croquet really works, but I know that when it comes to our commitment to opera and theatre, we speak the same language.
We treat our chorus members as a cohesive group of solo performers, and want them to appear as such in production. We think they punch above their weight, so that our 24 or so can sound like 60 or more, and be individual characters on stage.
Anyone who has enjoyed productions at The Grange Festival since its inception in 2017 can not have failed to have been enraptured by the exceptional performances of our chorus. Our extraordinary ensemble combines a wealth of knowledge and experience with the luminosity and brightness of timbre of younger voices. This unique balance is one of the essential ingredients in creating the range of colour and broadness of expression you’ll hear in performances here. But as important an ingredient is our artists’ devotion to detail and diligence of preparation. The sense of festive excitement that inhabits The Grange, from first rehearsal to final curtain, breeds an ambition and willingness amongst artists to incorporate an almost infinite amount of artistic input: notes from conductors, directors, coaches, designers and almost every member of the creative team refine the performance right until the opening night, and sometimes beyond. One of the most special qualities of which we’re most proud is the clarity and lustre of our chorus’s text. Too often in opera the sounds
that communicate the meaning of language get swamped by orchestration, staging, and sometimes just sheer weight of sound, and audiences are left peering at the surtitles to work out what’s going on. The Grange Festival Chorus have gained a reputation for a precision and directness of communication, meaning audiences never struggle to hear the story being told, regardless of orchestration, language or staging.
Perhaps most importantly, the opportunities and high standards here provide a perfect environment for our artists to grow and develop. Some of our singers already hold or have held chorus positions in major opera houses, and a number will become well-known soloists. Previous members of The Grange Festival Chorus are now found on stage in all of the UK’s major opera houses, and indeed in other festivals and theatres all over Europe. It is a testament to this very special house and to the relationships forged with you, our very special audience, that many of our singers arrange their busy freelance schedules to be able to return and make music here at The Grange.
SOPRANO
Isabel Maria Araujo
Isabelle Atkinson
Elena Garrido Madrona
Grace O’Malley
Rusnė Tušlaitė
MEZZO SOPRANO
Deirdre Arratoon
Rebecca Barry
Angharad Davies
Sophie Goldrick
Miriam Sharrad
TENOR
Joshua Baxter
William Diggle
David Menezes
Vladimir-Mihai Sima
Martins Smaukstelis
BASS
Tom Bennett
Will Frost
Tiziano Martini
Armand Rabot
James Wafer
Last year, we launched a new annual summer prize for a member of the company who has shone during the season and shows the most potential for a successful career.
It is aimed at young professionals, early in their careers. As well as singing it will also look at stage craft, and communication skills.
We nurture our young singers and provide specialist chorus coaching with such luminaries as Ann Murray DBE and Dame Felicity Palmer. Grants are occasionally awarded for specialist language or repertoire coaching. After his own long career, and as a Professor at the RAM, our Artistic Director Michael Chance is himself well placed to advise members of the company looking for vocal and professional guidance.
The Directors of each show and the resident Chorus Master are asked to observe the rehearsal process and performances closely and convey their recommendations to Michael Chance and Scott Cooper, Director of Artistic Administration, who together cast all the productions and are often in the rehearsal room.
The prize is £7500 and is awarded on stage after the final chorus performance of the Festival.
These young singers early in their careers have many financial challenges, not least the cost of singing lessons as well as repertoire and language coaching.
“Since my time as Artistic Director of The Grange Festival, we have held two international singing competitions. We have been able to offer performance opportunities to all the winners as well as substantial prize money.
I have refined my thoughts about how to recognise and reward young talent and potential and have come to the conclusion that a more considered and meaningful approach is through observation and reaction over a long period of intense work – in other words during the full period of rehearsal and performance of our Festival. This gives a more comprehensive and informative insight into the whole range of attributes which are likely to enable a young artist to sustain a successful and recognised professional career.
We look for talent, application, hard work, communication, a constant desire to learn and improve, and the ability to work with others, however challenging. All of these are necessary for a performer to be a success. Music demands them. A single appearance at a competition final doesn’t necessarily inform you so deeply.”
“We look for talent, application, hard work, communication, a constant desire to learn and improve, and the ability to work with others, however challenging”Isabel Maria Araujo, receiving the 2022 Festival prize from Patricia Hodge after the final performance of The Yeomen of the Guard © Maryana Bodnar
Arts charity Outside In is delighted to be launching a partnership with The Grange Festival with the exhibition Inside Outside In, which presents a series of works from the Charity’s own unique Collection. This is the first in a series of planned exhibitions and events to be developed as part of a new creative partnership, with exciting, site-specific installations and exhibitions in response to both the unique space of The Grange and to the Festival’s programming to be developed in the future.
Outside In is an award-winning national arts charity which provides a platform for artists who encounter significant barriers to the art world due to health, disability, social circumstance or isolation. It is an important and rare example of an organisation with national reach championing the work of artists excluded from the art world. It was founded by Marc Steene in 2006 at Pallant House Gallery, winning the Charity Award for Arts and Heritage in 2013. Outside In became an independent charity in 2017 and gained National Portfolio Organisation status with Arts Council England in 2018.
Outside In provides a digital platform for its artists to show their work alongside three core programmes of activity: artist development, exhibitions, and training. These activities, supported by fundraising and communications, all aim to create a fairer art world by supporting artists, creating opportunities and influencing organisations. The charity has developed its regional presence and now has hubs in the South of England, the Midlands and the North West with plans to develop a hub in the South West.
As well as being awarded the prestigious Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service in 2022 in recognition of its Ambassadors Programme, recent highlights for the charity also include the launch of its National Open exhibition, Humanity at Sotheby’s London in January. The exhibition can currently be viewed virtually online at outsidein.org.uk and will be touring to Project Artworks in Glasgow (12th August – 16th September) and then to Brighton and Hove Museums (24th November – 31st January).
“Without Outside In, I would not be here today. It literally saved my life”
Outside In ArtistGaze on Hu-MAN-ity (The Monster Who Will Save Us) by Lynn Cox Courtesy of Sotheby’s
The Charity’s first exhibition at The Grange, Inside Outside In, comprises of works selected from Outside In’s Collection of artworks made by non-traditional and outsider artists, including Dannielle Hodson, Laila Kassab, Greg Bromley, Manuel Bonifacio, Chaz Waldren, Joanna Simpson, Rakibul Chowdhury, David Jones, Jim Sanders and Scottie Wilson.
Including artworks spanning a range of mediums from ceramics, oil paintings and pencil drawings to cardboard sculptures and textiles, the Collection is the first of its kind in the UK and aims to become a lasting legacy for future generations and to provide a fairer and more inclusive definition of our culture. Many works have been acquired for the Collection from Outside In artists and others have been gifted or offered on long term loan.
“Outsider Art is often created for different purposes from the majority of conventional arts practice,” comments Marc Steene. “The work is often deeply connected with the artist’s lived experience, a means to express inner worlds and emotions, and does not worry about audiences or contemporary art contexts. The art is often not necessarily
for sale or even to be shared or seen. It is a tool for healing, sometimes to make sense of the artist’s life and sometimes to process or understand the unimaginable. There is a charge and immediacy in this work which strikes one with its bravery and honesty. We are made uncomfortable by this art which often does not reference anything other than the individual and their experience.”
Funding is vital in helping Outside In to achieve its goal of creating a fairer art world and reaching as many artists as possible who need its support. By becoming a patron or friend of the charity or by making a donation, you will provide essential resources to allow Outside In to continue its pioneering work, including artist outreach, creating opportunities for artists to show their work, nurturing and developing talent and building inclusivity. You will also be able to enjoy a closer relationship with the charity and be rewarded with a number of exclusive benefits.
To find out more about Outside In and how you can play an important part in supporting the charity and its life-changing work as a Friend, Patron or Supporter, please visit outsidein.org.uk.
Masks by Straiph Wilson Courtesy of Sotheby’s Kapaa by Gayatri Pasricha Courtesy of Sotheby’s“There is a charge and immediacy in this work which strikes one with its bravery and honesty”
Marc Steene
Born in December 1947 near Lisbon, Portugal, Manuel joined the fire brigade as a volunteer at a young age. His life’s ambition was to be in the army, and many of his works reflect this passion for army transportation; depicting helicopters, aeroplanes, motorbikes and boats. His work is also inspired by politics and everything he sees on TV – but most of it comes straight from his colourful imagination. Both as a member of ArtVenture (a creative day centre for adults with learning difficulties) and with his family, Manuel travels to London to explore galleries and exhibitions. His spare time is filled almost solely with his making of art but, with no sense of time, he just continues to create, making four or five images in the space of a few hours. His work helps him to expose his unique view of the world, and he is continuously creating; a drawing, a ceramic, a painting. Since he was selected as one of six Outside In Award Winners in 2012, Manuel’s artistic career has gone from strength to strength. He now has work in several collections, including the famous Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, has had a feature on his work in Raw Vision Magazine, and has been represented at the Outsider Art Fair in Paris.
My work is about exploring the relationship between everyday life and popular culture. I incorporate images of pop stars, movie icons, fashion, and cartoons. Disney means a lot to me, reflecting back to childhood memories and images that fill me with joy. Memento mori, death, and sadness also seep into my landscapes of people, a celebration of that person’s life – Michael Jackson, George Michael, and David Bowie to name a few. My style has proven to be popular, with my artwork exhibited and selling in Paris and London on many occasions.
I’m Greg, social worker by day, Cosmic Wormhole and multiverse fantasist by night. I am a self-taught artist originating from Hull in East Yorkshire where I have now returned to live after a 20 year triangular trip around the UK. About three years ago I had a stress-induced creativity eureka moment that has remained with me every day since. My art has filled an existential vacuum (as well as my house) and has become my vocation/obsession in life; I aspire that one day I will be able to live frugally as a pauper artist. My themes are the things that deeply interest me in life. I seek spirituality in the wonder of the macro and micro universe; I am also invigorated by our relationships with animals. I find it fascinating that our atoms are born in stellar nurseries and when we pass, our atoms disassemble and go on to form other things. The theory of a multiverse (i.e. that our universe is but one in a sea of others) is at the centre of my work, as it provides an infinite source of themes. Much of my work tries to speak of existentialism, emotional connection and filling the void of what it is to be human.
I like drawing, painting, printing, collage, pottery, and sculpture. I make art about ladies, owls, gentlemen, trees, and houses. Tulips, people, houses, portraits, boats, planes, trains, train lines, green tree. I like being an artist because of the lovely pictures I do. I like painting and writing. At the Avondale Centre when getting ready to make, I see it in my mind. I worry about the idea. Worry that I will get it all wrong. I look around and see. I see ideas in a book and copy. I see ideas at exhibitions. I like looking at my pictures. I like making art because it is a hobby. I like to try different things to draw.
Motorbike and Man 59.5x84cm, coloured pencil on paper Ophelia after a painting by Millais 60x40cm, acrylic and watercolour on paper On the birdboat to Nacada Louis Freeman lost his head and became man overboard 150x100cm, mixed media on canvas Henry VIII 43x53cm, pencil and acrylic paint on canvasDannielle Hodson (born 1980, lives and works in London) was educated at Central St Martins, London (BA Womenswear Fashion Design, MA Fine Art) and is a graduate of the Turps Banana studio painting programme. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and public institutions including:
Dannielle Hodson: Another Kind of Life, Four You Gallery (2021); Miniscule Venice, satellite programme 58th Venice Biennale (2019, in association with Cross Lane Projects); An Art School, Tate Exchange at Tate Modern (2017), and the National Open Art Competition 2016, Mercer’s Hall, London, where she won the Roy Pace Award. She is a Trustee of arts charity Outside In.
Whilst at school I enjoyed art and managed to get an O Level grade in this subject. For the next 25 years I did not do any art at all due to peer pressure and lack of confidence which I confused with being bolshie and loud and being an attention seeker. I moved to London in the early 80s, found employment, and started to use narcotics and other drugs. During the 23 years of my using, I ended up on the streets begging, hospital, prison and two rehabs. I also managed to hold down various jobs whilst using which was extremely stressful and demeaning. 26 years later, in prison, I enrolled in the art group and assembled a decent portfolio. On release being in rehab I got involved with Creative Futures, who sent a piece of my work to Pallant House Gallery for the Outside In competition, of which I was one of the six winners. Since then, I have entered numerous exhibits, done a life drawing group, continued with my residency at Pallant House Gallery, achieved Level 1/2 Certificate in Art and Design and am now onto a BTEC Foundation Diploma in Fine Art or working towards a Fine Art Degree and possibly a Masters in Fine Art and Illustration.
United states overlook me 2
pencil, ink and crayon on paper
Nothing is known about this artist other than that his work was created whilst in prison in Arizona, USA.
Laila was born in Gaza in 1985. As a child, she was deprived of the innocent feelings that a child should have experienced. The political and economic situation in Gaza contributed largely to her inability to live a childhood concerned with only her toys. She grew up suppressing emotions of despair and frustration. As a teenager, there was another layer of a burden that was added to her life journey: society. The societal pressures in Gaza. In her words, Kassab commented, “I was an elderly woman in the body of a child”. The inner Laila child was imprisoned for over 12 years until one day she decided it was enough. She decided to get over her fears and live a different lifestyle. She wanted to study art but her family refused. She continued her studies in a major she did not want to pursue, but she did not give up on her passion. She started taking art classes on the side. She promised she would continue her education as her family wanted, do it well and succeed as a social worker, while at the same time not giving up on what she loved the most: art!
56.5x44.5cm,
Untitled 56x66cm, pen, collage, ink on paper, mixed media
Prisoner of life 80x85cm, coloured pencil on paper
In Awe 2 65x55cm, watercolour on paper
I am an artist, illustrator and graphic facilitator who uses artwork and creative images to capture stories. I also draw at conferences and training days. I work on big projects, like working for the NHS and BILD, but I also like to draw from my own personal experiences and I am inspired by traditional tales and history. I like to create illustrations that celebrate, document and inform people about the world of disability. I draw because it helps me to calm down when I feel hyperactive. It relieves stress and gives me an outlet for my super amazing creative mind!
Friedrich Nagler (1920–2009) was an émigré, ‘outsider’ artist born in Vienna, Austria. He escaped Nazi occupation in 1938 and eventually settled in Hampshire, England. He always considered himself an artist and dedicated his life to producing a prodigious artistic output, working with a very wide range of materials. He also kept a record of his thoughts in the form of 42 books of poetry. He refused to either sign his work or exhibit during his lifetime, but posthumously his work has been exhibited at the England Gallery, London; Paul Smith shops in London and Tokyo, the Zetter Hotel in London, Pallant House gallery in Chichester, Hove Museum and is one of 14 artists featured in the Outside In virtual gallery Layers of Creativity curated by Jo Baring.
Although I have a degree in art, I was associated with art brut as a result of my visual language, the need to fill the space up, to use pure white and black paint and the theme of my work (religious spiritual experiences). I am fascinated with our mortality and have an impulsive strong inner need to paint. I like Iconography and feel that it is inspiring my art.
Nishioka will copy directly from an existing music score, meaning his works are related to actual pieces of music, although they may not be easily read by a piano player. He avoids distraction when creating by not listening to music, but he will hum songs as he draws. It seems there is always music in his head. As Nishioka’s astigmatism worsens in his left eye, the compositions of his musical score drawings move further to the right. He creates works other than his iconic music scores, such as letters and photo images that are his own personal take on the originals. The majority of his works are produced in black and white, although he experiments occasionally with colour, and it takes him about three days to complete a piece. Nishioka’s works are in the abcd collection in Paris, France, and he has had his work exhibited in Japan, Los Angeles USA, Prague and Paris.
I was born in 1952, exactly five hundred years to the year that Leonard Da Vinci was born. I went to a secondary boarding school at the age of 11. In 1968 age 16 I was awarded first prize for highest graded O Level in Art at my school. In 1970, I moved to Eastbourne, East Sussex and went to art school there and studied print making and illustration. I was the only one in my year to fail the illustration course. In 1972 I was awarded most meritorious student of the year for my printmaking. In 1974 I was awarded vocational certification printmaking and illustration. That year, I went to The Byam Shaw School of Art. I had to work in a factory, 12 hours a day seven days a week during college holidays. In 1976 I had one painting shown at the Royal Academy with the Stowell’s competition. In 1977 I was joint first prize for best painting at college. In that year I gained London Certificate in Art and Design (distinction) and upper second in Painting. In 2015 Pallant House and Outside In accepted my work at the Phoenix Gallery in Brighton Arts Festival.
Sanders’ work has an affinity with Outsider, and non-Western Art, sharing their common concerns with universal experiences of birth, love, sex, reproduction and death. By employing contemporary art methodologies, referencing a vast range of visual languages, and anthropological connections, he pulls the past into the present. Sanders makes comparisons between disparate social interactions across time in order to find and frame the essential questions of existence. He uses basic natural materials, discarded objects, a plethora of kitsch reliquaries and transforms them, restoring them to a strangely potent state of being. The resulting articulated sculptural objects are monumental, often taking the form of an altar or shrine. His work is often ritualistic, but at the same time, anarchic, nonconformist, disputing the religious readings of his iconic contents.
I like doing my own thing, my own style; faces, pattern and sculpture. I enjoy making art. I am definitely pleased when I see my work displayed. I would like to do more work in 3D.
Irish born, John Sheehy lives and works in London. After experiencing periods of homelessness, John began to paint in May 1999, aged 51. Early attempts revealed an enjoyment in conjuring imagery from imagination and memory. Over the past 24 years he has produced a vast body of work that also includes printmaking, ceramics and sculpture in addition to playwriting, poetry and music. While in formal terms, his paintings range between portraits, landscapes and the purely abstract, they often foreground personal or biographical recollections, evoking the artist’s travels and his native Ireland. Sheehy frequently returns to vernacular subjects that may appear folksy – donkeys, sailing ships, closely terraced houses and chimney sweeps – but when repeated across numerous works they become talismanic. The pace at which Sheehy produces work is extraordinary, and often is only limited by the availability of materials to hand including canvas, paper, roof tiles, window blinds and paving slabs. Even his largest paintings, some 10 by 20 feet in size, take less than an hour to complete.
As a dyslexic individual, I sometimes struggle to express myself in writing, but I believe that my dyslexia gives me a unique perspective on the world. As a result, I use my art to communicate and offer a different voice in the conversation about marginalised groups. Through the work of artists like myself, we can begin to break down the social divisions that exist in the arts and create a more inclusive and equitable society.
Joanna was born in 1959 and her work is inspired by available materials and is created in response to the environment and with compassion for all the children of the Lost Generation, Australia, and globally.
I use colouring pens, biros, and felt tip pens as I find I can have much more control over detail in my pictures. I really don’t think I could do the same with a brush and paint, I’m just not that good an artist so I usually keep to what I can do. I have done a variety of jobs in my life from portering and domestic cleaning to warehouse work and mini-cabbing to being a removal man and an electrician’s mate. Even a bit of missionary work in Hong Kong for a year where I was able to teach English to a cross-section of Chinese people there. Two things have stayed with me over the years: one is my music and the other is the Church which has always been a source of support and encouragement, and now I’m having quite some degree of success with my art as well.
Breeder 116x129cm, painting Gum nut folk Averaging 2x1cm, found objects Scottie Wilson (1891–1972) was a Scottish outsider artist known particularly for his highly detailed style. Starting his artistic career at the age of 44, his work was admired and collected by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Jean Dubuffet. The Church is in your Heart 44.5x57cm, coloured pen on paper
Jane Gordon Clark enjoys a triple career as sculptor, artist and designer. She trained in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford.
Jane’s work has been widely exhibited in galleries in London, the USA, Hong Kong and several other countries. She has had solo exhibitions and also exhibits in group shows, following which she has received private commissions for her sculpture.
Jane’s sculpture was displayed at the Henley Festival in 2019. She was invited to show a collection of work at The Grange Festival in 2018 and again in 2022. She is showing several works at The Grange Festival in 2023.
“I want my work to evoke the spirit, the essence of the subject, capturing a sense of movement and lightness. The intention is to capture and preserve a fleeting moment in time”. www.janegordonclark.co.uk
The Grange was first built in the 17th century and added to in the 18th and early 19th by Robert Adam and others, and remodelled in neoclassical style by William Wilkins. Around it, the pleasure grounds and terraces were laid out, looking over woodland and farmland, once worked and peopled, now empty – a landscape tamed and designed, a rural idyll.
Now, most of us live in the city. I grew up in Clydebank; for me the stories of the land were of the Highland Clearances, and of mythical, dramatic mountainous terrain devoid of people. I was nine when I first saw paintings of workers in the field at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. Paintings by Courbet, Millet and Corot, the Barbizon School of painters in the mid 19th century who worked outdoors and – as Gainsborough and Constable had before them – populated their landscapes not with figures from classical myth but with real people, labourers working the land.
There are few, if any, figures to be seen now if you look out from The Grange. I have brought some back, repopulating the landscape with figures, two-dimensional, black (for the moment at least), their poses taken from those famous nineteenth-century paintings. Upright shadows, in the middle distance. I have had this idea from since Art School “how much information does the eye need?” and it was The Grange that gave me the opportunity to realise it.
www.vigogallery.com
Nicola Godden is a sculptor whose subject matter has always been the human figure. She has produced work in both realistic and abstract form. Her large commissions have included Icarus for the London 2012 Olympic Village and the bronze sculpture of Sir Peter Scott for the London Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre in Barnes. www.nicolagodden.com
Pas de deux I
Bronze Resin 86cm width X 70cm height
Icarus bronze sculpture by Nicola Godden, MRSS Bronze
The designer Gary McCann is a mixture of the old and the new. His fascination lies in ‘stylistic fusions’ combining modern architecture with antique architecture or Brutalist design with Baroque design. And his ideal is to bring modern relevance to, in this case, Tchaikovsky while respecting the intentions of the composer and the librettist, finding an ‘equilibrium’. Despite embodying an Edwardian figure with his ornate handlebar moustache and charming manners, he’s embraced Artificial Intelligence, unlike a lot of us dinosaurs, and has used it to design this production of The Queen of Spades
McCann has always been interested in expressing himself through technological means, so when Midjourney, the AI-powered photo generation software, was made available to the public last August, he pounced on it. He explains:
‘I just felt it was an extension of the technology I’ve already been using anyway. It’s a sort of laboursaving process but it’s also a very interesting creative process where I can be presented with ideas that I curate, develop and can be surprised by…’ In other words, it saves his time and he has a work mate… He adds:
‘You know it’s intelligent so you treat it as if it’s intelligent. As a designer you’re always exploring multiple avenues, going down different rabbit holes, thinking about things in different ways and then when you do arrive at an idea you sort of infinitely finesse it in terms of proportions, dimensions, atmosphere, texture, lighting and this speeds up my entire process. I can come up with an idea, a flooded ballroom in Venice filled with black water with paper boats floating on the surface of the water or any idea that I want
and rather than me having to visualise that which I could happily do but that might take days or weeks I can interact with a programme that will visualise my ideas instantly, it comes back in a second. I give it an instruction, then it thinks about it for 30 seconds or a minute, then it gives me four options… and if I like option three, I get it to develop option three and if I don’t like any of the options, I get it to generate more and more options until I feel I’m guiding it towards what I have in my head. Then the question is how do I translate a 2D image into a 3D environment and I don’t necessarily just replicate what the AI creates. I’m bounded by gravity, spatial requirements, all the things you need to do when you’re building a set so for me unless I’m creating an art work for a poster, it’s not the end result. The end result is me using my 25 years of experience, knowledge and skills and generating a 3D version of what I’ve arrived at in a 2D digitally created image.’ McCann smiles full of Northern Irish charm, making it sound like falling off a log.
McCann’s fusion fixation has in a way run through his life. At school he was equally good at English, music and art and by becoming a designer he’s fused all three. Likewise, his designs are both traditional and modern. As he says: ‘Opera is about tradition, we’re performing things which have been performed for 300 years and times change, people change but the stories remain relevant. I’m extremely busy because I can walk this tightrope between tradition and the modern so people go and see Rosenkavalier and they think they saw an extravagant, Baroque beautiful show and in fact it was completely modern; I’ve totally transformed the way that ornament looks, I did it with neon… I think that duality is tremendously
helpful that you integrate something that’s modern, that has a modern aesthetic or a feeling, and it feels relevant to people’s lives today or Netflix or whatever they’re enjoying and at the same time for traditional opera audiences you can’t disregard them. They might be a sea of white hair but they love the art form.’
In this way AI is the ideal assistant for McCann because: ‘The thing about AI is it’s a form of fusion, it has a database of about 5 billion images and when you give it these prompts which are the instructions, you can get it to generate images, it’s called scraping. It goes through this database of billions of images and sort of fuses them together and analyses them and translates them into something it thinks you want to see based on the text instructions that you’ve given it’.
So, for The Queen of Spades, what kind of prompts did he use?
‘A 19th century Russian interior decaying gold leaf and peeling paintwork with atmospheric lighting and mysterious reflections’ bearing in mind ‘The original concept was a world of decay. We were looking at this idea that in Russia in the 19th century everything was kind of corroding and corrupted in terms of interiors and buildings.’
But if it’s merely a matter of putting in some text instructions, surely McCann’s future career is threatened by AI?
‘It definitely democratises art, you don’t have to be a brilliant painter to create exciting art works now so it’s quite epoch changing technology and I think it will affect certain industries very negatively, maybe graphic designers
and people who design patterns and textiles will be worried about the powerful nature of this tool that can in many respects replace what they do. I feel really well positioned in the level of which I’m working, the level of experience I have and the technology I’m using because I feel I’m one of the few people who can really harness the bizarre, freakish extraordinary things that come out of this technology and I’m in an industry where fantasy, extravagance, bizarreness and mystery are all really big parts of my tool kit and the work that I make, so it’s very exciting for me to be able to access this. Traditionally you’d look through references and come up with certain artists work and architects or conceptual art and think how do I build this into a set design if you want to draw on some references and in this way you don’t, I’ve actually generated my own references but then I interpret those. The 2D art work is not a final scenography. It’s something I need to translate it into 3D, I need to work out how it’s going to function scene to scene, what happens with lighting so there’s a long process beyond artificial intelligence.’
With McCann at the helm, it seems like a no brainer to use AI yet curiously he’s one of the few designers that do. But as he says:
‘I’m pretty lucky because I have digital interests and skills already and I can generate these extraordinary spaces and extraordinary things and I’ve got the resources behind me to be able to manifest them in the real world on stage.’ We’re in safe if future looking hands.
Louise Flind in conversation with Gary McCannJosephine Barstow is the polar opposite of the Grande Dames she’s so brilliantly performed throughout her career. She opens the door to her Sussex farmhouse, gamine and girl-like, hair pinned back into a low-strung ponytail dressed in jeans with a winning smile, cutting a spry figure which belies her 82 years. She farms 122 acres and lives with 30 odd Arabian horses (she’s been breeding them for 40 years), cattle and two enormous fluffy Rough Collies Elsa and his son Coco ‘this little guy is the apple of my eye… ‘ And she’s still at it…
Barstow was born in Yorkshire but her family moved to Cockfosters on her 8th birthday. When she was 11, she went to Minchenden grammar, a very academic school and ‘I hated it but I loved English and there was a very sympathetic teacher called John Wilks and he and I spoke about poetry and literature and that sort of opened the door I think’. The door to theatre. ‘I fell in love with straight theatre and more than once a week I would go to the Old Vic on my own aged about 14, – the tube fare was half a crown. To be honest I can’t remember why but one was in love with John Neville, a lovely actor, quite glamorous. I noticed later in life that he wasn’t actually a very good actor… He was playing Hamlet and I went to so many performances’. Then when she was 17 and brushing her hair one day it hit her like that (she snaps her fingers). She went downstairs to the kitchen and said to her mother ‘actually I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to be an opera singer’. This decision was largely influenced by the Thomas Beacham recording of La bohème. ‘I was entranced by it. It was issued in 1956 and I was 16, already in love with the theatre and I think that showed me this other window’. Her parents accepted this announcement
with one condition, that she must go to university. Meantime Barstow’s stipulation was to start singing lessons which she did ‘with a lovely Welshman Robert Vivian, who also lived in Cockfosters, and he taught me how to give…’
At Birmingham University Barstow read English and picked up a future husband Terry Hands, the theatre director. After graduating they agreed she’d support him by teaching while he went to RADA ‘and he used to come home and tell me what he’d been doing and I learnt so much from that’. This basic albeit indirect knowledge enhanced her career enormously enabling her to play such diverse characters from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk to Salome to Violetta… When I asked her if she has any regrets ‘I would have loved to have done Brünnhilde because it’s such a performing role and it’s often sung very beautifully but it needs physicality’. Her success as a performing singer for nearly 60 years has made Barstow a theatrical milestone.
At university Barstow plunged into the Guild Theatre Group run by students and started to do some opera, but learnt her trade on the job and initially ‘on the road’. While Terry Hands started the Liverpool Everyman, she auditioned for the touring company Opera for All and got an offer straight away to sing Aida and Mimi in La bohème ‘There were about 10 of us, a group of singers, one stage manager and a pianist and there was a lovely guy who ran it, Douglas Craig. They gave us a lorry for the scenery and one of those Commer vans for the singers and if you could drive which I did you took your turn driving. I did two seasons. We did three operas and if you had a major role in one, for the other two you took a smaller role and prepared the costumes and sets. I remember ironing the
men’s shirts after they’d warn them week after week and sweated in them, ha… but we were young and it was the most wonderful way to learn about audiences. I didn’t go to college; I don’t know much about music even now…’
Her summers were spent at Glyndebourne in the chorus, one year understudying Mimi in a production directed by Michael Redgrave. Here she met the Italian coach Ubaldo Gardini ‘wonderful guy and he moulded my generation – Mark Elder is another – to understand Italian music.’
While having the steely determination to fulfil the proclamation to her mother, she looks back now with a degree of amazement. ‘After the second year of Opera for All, I entered a competition, the Peter Stuyvesant Competition and I won it’ she whispers. ‘I got £750 plus I was to go to the London Opera Centre for a year. This opened doors because people from the opera houses came to do little productions and my real husband Ande Anderson, the production director at the Garden, came to direct. Terry and I weren’t living together and Ande was separated, and he became my husband until he died in 1996. I still talk to him now.’
Her big break came from Sadler’s Wells (the future ENO) when they offered her the second Lady in The Magic Flute with Charles Mackerras conducting and at the end of that season, they offered her La traviata ‘in a new production by Johnny Copley at the Coliseum and that’s when I took flight. People were queuing down to Trafalgar Square’. She expands ‘Violetta is a wonderful role once you get past a couple of pages at the end of the
first act… – the rest of the opera suited me very well’. Lady Macbeth also escalated her career when she covered it at Glyndebourne and Southern TV said they wanted Barstow for the filmed version. ‘I was very ambitious and that performance on the DVD was the first one I ever sang…’
Along the way Barstow gathered supporters, George Harewood, the late Chairman of ENO being one of them. I was singing Violettas and Don Carlo and he rang me and said I want you to look at Salome and I said George I can’t do Salome and he said listen to the recording of Montserrat Caballé. Within a couple of days, I was back on the phone ‘please George I have to do Salome…’ ‘At the first performance I remember thinking, in half an hour everybody in this theatre including me is going to find out if I can sing this… The last scene is a killer. After that I went all over the place singing Salome because there aren’t very many who are the right shape to take all their clothes off…’ Barstow sang throughout the world, Karajan and Solti were admirers but she’s retained resolute modesty and down to earth charm, a perfect Countess… and this will be her umpteenth Countess. With the interview over she’s keen for me to meet Elsa and Coco who bowl in and lovingly flatten me back onto the sofa. Barstow is stronger than me and places Coco’s paws on her shoulders unflinching – she’s got a few more Countess’s up her sleeve.
Louise Flind in conversation with Dame Josephine Barstow
STAGE MANAGEMENT
Stage Manager
Checca Ponsonby
Deputy Stage Manager
Elizabeth Barry
Assistant Stage Manager
Tsiala Corboz Werntz
BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
1st Violin
Leader
Amyn Merchant
Mark Derudder
Edward Brenton
Kate Turnbull §
Karen Leach §
Jennifer Curiel §
Joan Martinez
Stuart McDonald
Julie Gillett-Smith
Kate Hawes §
2nd Violin
Carol Paige *
Dmitry Khakhamov
Savva Zverev
Vicky Berry §
Lara Carter §
Rebecca Burns
Janice Thorgilson
Laura Riley
Viola
Tom Beer *
Miguel Rodriguez
Jacoba Gale §
Ana Teresa Alves
Liam Buckley
Judith Preston §
Cello
Jesper Svedberg *
Thomas Isaac
Auriol Evans
Philip Collingham Ω
Tabitha Selley
Double Bass
Nicole Boyesen §
Joe Cowie
Jane Ferns §
Flute
Anna Pyne *
Robert Manasse
Piccolo
Owain Bailey *
Oboe
Edward Kay * §
Holly Randall
Cor Anglais
Holly Randall
Clarinet
Barry Deacon *
Neyire Ashworth
Bass Clarinet
Helen Paskins
Bassoon
Tammy Thorn *
Emma Selby
STAGE MANAGEMENT
Stage Manager
Checca Ponsonby
Deputy Stage Manager
Elizabeth Barry
BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
1st Violin
Leader
Amyn Merchant
Mark Derudder
Edward Brenton
Kate Turnbull §
Magdalena Gruca-
Broadbent
Stuart McDonald
Joan Martinez
Kate Hawes §
2nd Violin
Carol Paige *
Dmitry Khakhamov
Savva Zverev
Vicky Berry §
Lara Carter §
Rebecca Burns
Viola
Tom Beer *
Miguel Rodriguez
Ana Teresa Alves
Eva Malmbom
Cello
Jesper Svedberg *
Thomas Isaac
Auriol Evans
Philip Collingham Ω
Double Bass
David Daly * §
Joe Cowie
Flute
Jenny Farley
Michael Liu
Owain Bailey
Piccolo
Owain Bailey *
Oboe
Edward Kay * §
Holly Randall
Cor Anglais
Holly Randall
Horn
Jonathan Farey
Edward Lockwood §
Robert Harris §
Kevin Pritchard §
Trumpet
Paul Bosworth
Peter Turnbull §
Trombone
Kevin Morgan * §
Robb Tooley
Bass Trombone
Kevin Smith §
Tuba
Stuart Beard
Timpani
Tom Lee
Percussion
Matt King * §
Harp
Eluned Pierce * §
Piano
Tom Primrose
THE GRANGE FESTIVAL
Soprano
Isabelle Atkinson
Isabel Maria Araujo
Elena Garrido
Madrona
Grace O’Malley
Rusnė Tušlaitė
Mezzo Soprano
Deirdre Arratoon
Rebecca Barry
Angharad Davies
Sophie Goldrick
Miriam Sharrad
Tenor
Joshua Baxter
William Diggle
David Menezes
Vladimir-Mihai Sima
Martins Smaukstelis
Bass
Tom Bennett
Will Frost
Tiziano Martini
Armand Rabot
James Wafer
Harry Bevan
Zac Cummings
Emma Howe-Davies
Ella Inglis
Florence LlywelynDavies
Sion Llywelyn-Davies
Jemima Murfitt
Yasmin Patel
Maya Placintescu
Javier Robinson
Varvara Romaniuk
Joshua Williams
The children appear by kind permission of the Headmaster
Twyford School
KEY
* Section Principal
§ Long Service Award (over 20 years)
Ω Diversity Champion Award
Clarinet
Barry Deacon *
Helen Bennett
Roshan Hughes
Bass Clarinet
Helen Bennett
Bassoon
Tammy Thorn *
Kim Murphy
Horn
Jonathan Barrett
Ruth Spicer §
Robert Harris §
Kevin Pritchard §
Edward Lockwood §
Trumpet
Jonathan Clarke
Joe Skypala
Trombone
Kevin Morgan * §
Robb Tooley
Bass Trombone
Stephen Williams
Tuba
Richard Evans
Timpani
Barnaby Archer
Percussion
Matt King * §
Ben Lewis
Harp
Eluned Pierce * §
When we were staring into the abyss in March and April 2020, all those many who had already bought tickets for the Festival came to our rescue in a timely and deeply moving way. We pledged to record their generosity in the theatre in perpetuity.
Here you all are:
Mrs Julia Abbott
Philippa Abell
Mrs Peter Albertini
Daphne and John Alderson
Charles and Clare Alexander
Rosemary Alexander
Nick and Sarah Allan
Dr Gerhard Altmann
The Amar-Franses and Foster-Jenkins Trust
Rhian and Tony Amery
David and Jane Anderson
Peter and Rosemary Andreae
Boo and Bill Andrewes
Phillip Arnold and Ann Andrews
Mark and Sophie Ashburton
Mary and Julian Ashby
Chris and Tony Ashford
M D Austen
Dr Simon Bailey
Niven Baird
Jamie and Carolyn Balfour
Patricia Ball
Caroline Barber
The Hon Mrs Susan Baring, OBE
The Tait Memorial Trust/
Isla Baring OAM
Cara and Oliver Barnes
Geoffrey Barnett
Robin Barton
Paul and Janet Batchelor
Tim Battcock
Richard and Patricia Bayley
Nigel Beale and Anthony Lowrey
Anne Beckwith-Smith
Peter and Valerie Bedford
Michele Beiny-Harkins
Christina Belloc Lowndes
Glynne and Sarah Benge
David and Elizabeth Benson
Nic and Maureen Bentley
Daniel and Alison Benton
Alice and Paul Beresford
Richard and Rosamund Bernays
Mike and Sarah Bignell
Anthony and Emma Bird
Simon and Julia Boadle
Bob and Elisabeth Boas
Sophie Boden
David Bogle
Sarah and Tony Bolton
Jeremy Bonnett
Robert and Caroline
Bordeaux-Groult
Sarah Boswood
Jonathan and Karen Bourne-May
Neville and Rowena Bowen
Michael and Belinda Boyd
Robert and Fiona Boyle
Viscount and Viscountess Bridgeman
Lord and Lady Bridges
Charles and Patricia Brims
Alison and Michael Brindle KC
Penny and Robin Broadhurst
Adam and Sarah Broke
Consuelo and Anthony Brooke
Nick and Sue Brougham
Hugh and Sue Brown
Mrs Charles H. Brown
Desmond and Jennifer Browne
David Buchler
Mrs Thomas Buckley
Peter and Pamela Bulfield
Anthony Bunker
Geoffrey Burnand
Mark Burrows AO
Martin and Sarah Burton
Tom Busher and Elizabeth Benson
Richard Butler Adams
Peter and Auriol Byrne
Sandra Carlisle and Angus Carlill
Brian Carroll
David and Simone Caukill
Julian and Jenny Cazalet
Bernard and Caroline Cazenove
Belinda and Jason Chaffer
Suzie Chesham
Rex and Sarah Chester
John and June Chichester
Seawall Trust
Julian and Josephine Chisholm
Julia Chute
Sir Christopher and the Reverend Lady Clarke
Jane Clarke
Ian Clarkson and Richard Morris, and David Morris
Henry and Louise Clay
Dr and Mrs Peter and Ros Claydon
Tim and Liz Coghlan
John and Suzanne Coke
Dr and Mrs Peter Collins
Gill Collymore
Oliver Colman
Dr Neville Conway
Miss Serena Cooke
Henrietta Cooke
Richard and Sindy Coppin
Diana Cornish
Corin and Richard Cotton
David and Nikki Cowley
Johnny and Liz Cowper-Coles
Lin and Ken Craig
Peter and Carole Cregeen
Julia and Stephen Crompton
Fergus Cross
Carl Cullingford
Edward and Antonia
Cumming-Bruce
Jill Cundy and Alan Padbury
Geoffrey and Ingrid Dale
Niki and Richard Dale
Josh and Anna Dale-Harris
Mr and Mrs Jerome Davidson
Peter and Pamela Davidson
Dame Nicola Davies
Anthony Davis
Ina De and James Spicer
Pru de Lavison
Baron and Baroness de Styrcea
Sir John and Lady de Trafford
Jan and Caryn de Walden
Elizabeth Dean
Michael and Anthea Del Mar
Linda and Hugo Deschampsneufs
Patrick and Nikki Despard
G and J Devlin
The Viscount Dilhorne and Professor S J Eykyn
FRCS, FRCP, FRCPath
Robert and Caroline Dixon
The Wykeham Gallery
ln memory of Ann Dussek
Howard and Donna Dyer
Christina and Andrew Dykes
Clive and Alison Earl
Paul and Pauline Eaton
Mark and Margaret Edwards
David and Julie Edyvean
Julia P Ellis
Martin and Eugenia Ephson
Felicity Fairbairn
Robina and Alastair Farley
Nicholas and Jane Ferguson
Catherine and Jón Ferrier
Simon and Hilke Fisher
Giles and 'Wenna Fletcher
Tom and Sarah Floyd
Tim and Rosie Forbes
Sandy Foster
Mr and Mrs John Foster
Licia Venturi
Lindsay and Robin Fox
Peter and Judith Foy
Andrea Frears
Constance Freer-Smith
John and Joanna French
Alan and Valerie Frost
Jonathan Gaisman
Dame Janet and Mr John Gaymer
Michael and Diane Gibbons
Martin and Jacky Gillie
Clare and Fergus Gilmour
Dr Asher Giora
Anne Glyn
Jane and Charlie Graham
Scott and Caroline Greenhalgh
Mr and Mrs M Griffin
Tim and Jenny Guerrier
Felicity Guinness and Simon Ricketts
Mr Laurence Habets
Sir Charles and Lady Haddon-Cave
Robert and Elizabeth Haldane
Allyson Hall
Tom Hankinson
Edward and Rosie Harford
Wendell and Andrea Harris
Roger Harrison
James and Rhona Hatchley
Keith and Sarah Jane Haydon
Sheelin and John Hemsley
David and Odette Henderson
John and Catherine Hickman
Philip and Wendy Hill
Will and Janine Hillary
Alan Hoaksey
Hamish and Venetia Leng
Robin Hodgson
Mr and Mrs I F Hodgson
Jenny Hodgson
Daniel and Diana Hodson
Malcolm and Mary Hogg
Christopher and Jo Holdsworth Hunt
Peter and Sue Holland
The Hollingbery Family
Linda and Peter Hollins
Ron Holmes
Roger and Kate Holmes
Holmes Family
Mrs Jane L Hough
Luke and Polly Hughes
David and Wendy Hunter
Barnabas and Campie
Hurst-Bannister
Nicholas and Deborah Hutchen
Graham and Amanda Hutton
Margaret Hyde OBE
John and Jan Jarvis
Martin and Sandra Jay
Anthony Johnson and Terence Drew
Nigel and Cathy Johnson-Hill
Owen and Jane Jonathan
Andrew and Caroline Joy
Michel Kallipetis KC
Ralph and Patricia Kanter
Diane Katsiaficas
Martin and Philippa
Kelway-Bamber
Dinah Kennedy
Kevin Kissane and Jonathan Hume
Emma Kjellin
Victoria Kleiner
Adrian Knowles
Stephen and Miriam Kramer
Lord and Lady Laidlaw
Dr Hugh Laing
Beth and Peter Lamb
Kenneth Law WS
Mr and Mrs Bill Lawes
Malcolm and Sarah Le May
Janet and Julian Le Patourel
Shaun Le Picq
Sue Leach
Nicky Levy
Mrs Roger Liddiard
Ben and Tom Linton-Todd
Anthony and Fiona Littlejohn
Simon Littlewood
Michael Llewellyn
Jon Long
Mr Alan Lovell
Mrs. Fiona Lunch
James and Béatrice Lupton
John MacGowan
Joe and Minnie MacHale
Pamela and Peter Macklin
Bill and Sue Main
Mrs Jennifer Makins
Charles and Sue Marriott
Chris and Clem Martin
Sue and Nigel Masters
James and Caroline Masterton
Fairhurst Estates
Louise Matlock
Harry and Emma Matovu
John and Mary Maunsell-Thomas
Ian and Clare Maurice
Alison Mayne
Mr and Mrs James McGill
Kathleen McGrady
Mrs Julia McMullan
Nigel and Anna McNair Scott
Anthony and Sarah McWhirter
Stephen Meldrum
Sarah and David Melville
Nigel Melville
Heleen Mendl-Schrama
Brian and Bernadette Metters
Antony and Alison Milford
Elizabeth Miller
Mr and Mrs Hallam Mills
Sylvia Mills
Patrick Mitford-Slade
Kate and Malcolm Moir
Dr and Mrs Jonathan Moore
David and Alison Moore-Gwyn
Christopher Morcom KC and Mrs Diane Morcom
Isabel Morgan
Diana and Nigel Morris
Ian and Jane Morrison
Richard and Chrissie Morse
David and Angela Moss
Margot Mouat
Colin Murray
Tom and Ros Nell
Jenny Newall
Guy and Sarah Norrie
Steve Norris
Peter and Poppity Nutting
The Ogilvie Thompson Family
Lavinia and Nick Owen
Major General and Mrs Simon Pack
John A Paine
For Elise
The Parker Family
Tim and Thérèse Parker
Nick and Julie Parker
Mary-Vere and Jeremy Parr
Clive and Deborah Parritt
William and Francheska Pattisson
Robin Pauley
Michael and Cathy Pearman
Geoffrey and Vivienne Pearson
Lucy Pease
Andrew and Cindy Peck
Ed and Sarah Peppiatt
Guy and Nathalie Perricone
Caroline Perry
Roger and Virginia Phillimore
Laura and Hayden Phillips
Jonathan and Gillian Pickering
Ernst and Elisabeth Piech
Hew and Jean Pike
Mr and Mrs Julio Pinna-Griffith
Fiona Pitcher
David and Christina Pitman
James and Kate Plastow
Lady Plastow
John and Judy Polak
The Countess of Portsmouth
Michael and Sue Pragnell
Nigel and Vicky Prescot
Dr Victoria Preston
Richard and Iona Priestley
Hugh Priestley
Tony and Etta Pullinger
Stephen Purse
Christopher and Phillida Purvis
Mrs Adam Quarry
Jane and Graham Reddish
The Hon Philip Remnant CBE
Anthony and Carol Rentoul
Florence and Robert Rice
Judith Rich OBE
Dick Richmond
Dr Lynne Ridler-Wall
The Rev'ds Tana and Royston Riviere
Miles and Vivian Roberts
James and Lygo Roberts
James and Catharine Robertson
Sir Simon and Lady Robertson
Charles and Catherine Hindson John O'DowdJames and Sue Robinson
Christopher Marks and Lindsay Rodes
Isabella Rogge
Kristina Rogge
Julian and Catherine Roskill
Simon and Alison Routh
Dr Angela Gallop CBE and Mr David Russell
Alan Sainer
Alicia Salter
Ginny and Richard Salter
Mike Sarson
David and Alexandra Scholey
Richard and Jackie Scopes
Charles and Caroline Scott
James and Judy Scott
Alex and So Scott-Barrett
George and Veronique Seligman
Katherine Sellon
Sophie Service
Edward and Philippa Seymour
Tom and Phillis Sharpe
Rebecca Shelley
Diane and Christopher Sheridan
Nigel Silby
Jeremy Sillem
Brigitte and Martin Skan
Paul and Rita Skinner
Jock and Annie Slater
Mim Smith
Dr Anthony and Mrs
Daphne Smoker
Miss India Smyth
Lady Snyder
Rupert and Milly Soames
David and Di Sommerville
Andrew and Jill Soundy
Hammy Sparks
Mrs Heather Spencer
Lord and Lady Spencer of Alresford
David and Unni Spiller
Fiona and Geoff Squire
Richard and Clare Staughton
Caroline Steane
John and Margo Stephens
Brian and Henrietta Stevens
Jeremy and Phyllida Stoke
Ian Strange
Della and Sheridan Swallow
Canon Ron and Dr Celia Swan
Ian and Belinda Taylor
The Tehranians
Richard Templeton and Belinda Timlin
Mr and Mrs Roger ter Haar
The Tesolin Family
Stephen A Thierbach
Sue Thomas
Nick Thomas and Eleanor Cranmer
David and Sarah Thomas
Jonathan Thompson
Peter and Nancy Thompson
Richard and Cynthia Thompson
Michael and Cara Thomson
Robin and Sarah Thorne
Elaine and James Tickell
Mr Peter Stewart Tilley
George and Lucinda Tindley
Alan and Alison Titchmarsh
Mr Zi Ken Toh
Mrs Carole Tonkiss
Jennifer Toomer
Richard and Elizabeth Tottenham
John and Pauline Tremlett
Professor Michael and Dame Jenifer Trimble
Sir Tom and Lady Troubridge
Clive and Tessa Tulloch
Ian Utting
Oona van den Berg
Kelsey and Rosemary van
Musschenbroek
Lou and John Verrill
Peter and Sarah Vey
Mr Niko Vidovich
Rupert Villers
Marion Wake
Mark and Rachel Waller
The Band Trust
Lisa Hawkins
Guy and Fizzy Warren
Richard and Judith Watts
Tony and Fiona White
Peter and Alexandra White
Andrew and Tracy Wickham
Penelope Williams
Clare Williams
Jane Williams
Mr and Mrs Craig Wilson
David and Jennie Wilson
Nicholas and Penny Wilson
Peter and Lissa Wilson
Jilly Wise
Sue and Stuart Woodward
Richard and Noely Worthington
John and Diana Wren
Tim Wright
Paul and Sybella Zisman and anonymous donors
SKYLARKS
The Allenby Sisters
Matt and Penny Andrews
John and Claudia Arney
Charles and Victoria Arthur
Dr Richard Ashton
Paul and Helen Baker
Mrs Claire Baker
Caroline Barber
Aurea Baring
Mr and Mrs David Barrow
Mr and Mrs Simon Barrow
Mr and Mrs Bartholomew Sefi
Michael and Carolyn Bartlett
Val and Christopher Bateman
Susi and Marcus Batty
Stephen Beard
Julian and Jane Benson
Dr Rebecca and Mr Andrew Berkley
Adrian Berrill-Cox
Hugh and Etta Bevan
John and Anne Bevan
Carol Blacker
Graham and Julia Bourne
Simon and Dorothy Broadley
Robin and Jill Broadley
Charles and Amanda Bromfield
Tony and Mo Brooking
Jo and Geoffrey Burnaby
Mrs Maurice Buxton
Karina and Max Casini
Mr and Mrs Paul Chase Gardener
Ann Chillingworth
Neil Chrimes
Olivia Christie
Christie Family
Sarah Coate
Mrs Laurence Colchester
Mr and Mrs Robin Collet
Alan and Ceanna Collett
Prof Richard Collin
Barry and Pamela Collins
Diana Cornish
Elisabeth Colquhoun
Dr John Crook
Philippa Crosse and Simon Hopkins
Annabel and John Crowley
Paul and Rosemarie Cundy
John and Susan Curtis
Emiliana Damiani
James and Liz Davis
Mike and Suzette Davis
Anne and Jonathan Dawson
Carl and Mary Dore
Christopher and Jenny Duffett
Louise Duffy
Mrs Saskia Dunlop
Ken and Sheena Eaton
Sir Malcolm and Lady Edge
Mr and Mrs John Ellard
Rob and Anne England
Alun and Bridget Evans
John Farr
Rosie Faunch
Elaine Fear and Sol Mead
Michael Fitzgerald
Marveen and Graham Flack
Jules and Jonathan Flory
Sir Robert and Lady Francis
David and Elizabeth French
Carol Geddes
Bruce and Karin Ginsberg
Ms P Glidewell
Philippa and Charlie Goodall
Colin and Letts Goodwin
Sam and Jane Gordon Clark
Mr Robin and The Hon
Mrs Greenwood
Alistair and Jenny Groom
Max and Catherine Hadfield
Dilys Hall
Robert and Gillie Hanbury
BLH
Rachel and John Hannyngton
Mr and Mrs Hayman
Basil and Caroline Henley
Michael and Geneviève Higgin
Peter Hildebrand
Jonathan Holliday and Gwen Lewis
Lizzie Holmes
David and Mal Hope-Mason
David and Patricia Houghton
Colin and Irene House
Stephen Howis
The Howmans
Bart and Carole Huby
Iain and Claudia Hughes
Robert Hugill and David Hughes
Sue Humphrey
Adam and Laraine Humphryes
Nicholas and Jeremy
Andrew and Juliet Huntley
Anthony and Jenny Isaacs
Allan and Rachel James
Professor and Mrs J Jennings
John and Sara Jervoise
Helen and Jonathan Jesty
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John and Jennifer Kelly
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Martin and Clare Knight
Mr and Mrs Morgan Krone
Simon and Antonia Strickland
Ian and Georgie Laing
John and Joanna Lang
Oliver and Victoria Larminie
Roger and Natalie Lee
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Dr Tom McClintock
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Cathy, Thea and Susi
Mr and Mrs John Muncey
Stephen and Fiona Murray
Tim Neill
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Erik Penser
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John and Elizabeth Platt
Anthony Powell
Anthony and Trish Proctor
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Louisa Quarry
Miss Mary Rackham
Jane and Douglas Rae
Catherine Rainey
Dr Martin Read and Dr
Marian Gilbart Read
Jane Ridley and Jeffrey Thomas
Stephen Riley and Victoria Burch
Xavier and Alicia Robert
Nerys Roberts
Annie Robertson
Roger and Geraldine Robinson
Lynda and Michael Rose
Peter Rosenthal
Keith and Rosemary Ross
Mr Peter Saunders and Mrs Jeannine Lindt Saunders
Madi and David Laurence
Richard and Ruth Saunders
Tom Seabrook
Hugh and Patricia Sergeant
David Shaw
Lynn Shaw
Philippa Thorp
Mary and Thoss Shearer
Julian and Carolyn Sheffield
Angus
Gill and Barry Smith
The Smith Family, Alresford and Swanage
Ian and Stephanie Smith
Michael and Wendy Smith
Drew Steanson
Kate Mather
Mr and Mrs Nicholas Stranks
Ron Sullam
Dr Jonathan Swanston and Miriam Coley
Hugh and Sandy Thomas
Mr and Mrs P M Thomas
Mrs. A. J. Thorman
John and Christine Thornton
Sarah Tillie
Roger Vignoles
Nick and Holly Villiers
Sandra and Paul Walker
Mr and Mrs Walsh
David and Meriel Walton
Johanna Waterous CBE and Roger Parry CBE
Philip and Annie Watson
Eleanor Wilkinson
Hamish and Elisabeth Williams
James and Sarah Williams
Mrs David Wilson
Edward and Marja Wilton
William and Celia Witts
Mary Rose and Charles Wood
Louise Woods
Mr and Mrs C Wright
The Wyatt Family and anonymous donors
GOLDCRESTS
Adam-Germain
The Rickards Family
Graham and Stephanie Airs
Chris and Denise Amery
Jean Anderson
Dr Martin T. Anthony
Lord and Lady Arbuthnot of Edrom
Julie and Keith Attfield
Fred Baring
Tom and Gay Bartlam
Robert Baty
Drs Peter and Beatrice Bennett
Charles and Ann Bonney
Mrs Alison Bradley
Mrs Sheila Gay Bradley
Matthew Bradley
Julie Bradshaw
Mr and Mrs J M Britton
George Brown and Alison Calver
Peter Bull
Russell Burdekin
Mr Thomas Cahill
Mariacristina Cammarata
Jeremy and Kate Cave
Jane Countess of Clarendon
The Clemson Family
Monique Clowes
Maria Cobbe
Richard and Verity Coleman
Marianne and Harald Collet
Rosie and Derek Collinson
Nathaniel Colman
Bob and Linda Connell
David Coplestone
Roseanne Corlett
Erica and Neil Cosburn
Morella and Robert Cottam
Alan Cracknell
Dr Olivia Cundy
Aimee Curtis
Mr Peter Davidson
Simon and Noni de Zoete
Sandrine Boinet and Erik Dege
Hilary and Rob Douglas
Jonathan and Lynn Dowson
Dr Graham and Janna Dudding
Hugh and Christina Dumas
Mr Mark Duncan
Sir James Eadie
Nicky Ebdon and Alex Rowland
Peter Eggington
Michael and Margaret Ewing
Roger and Ruth Facer
Mrs Christopher Ferrer
Andrew Foot and Michael Hart
Peter Forster-Dean and David Elsley
Rod and Marie Franks
Geoffrey and Elizabeth Fuller
Paul and Sarah Galloway
N J Gammon
Lindsey Gardener
Jillian Ede and David Gendron
Joanna Gibbon
Brett and Caroline Gill
David and Bridget Glasgow
Katy Gordon
Dr Stephen Goss
Gill Graham Maw
Susie Grandfield
Michael Greaves
Dr Carolyn Greenwood
Mike and Stephanie Gretton
Catherine and Stephen Hackett
Richard and Judy Haes
John and Margaret Hall
Dr Sally Hanson
Susanna Hardman
John Harris
Guinevere and Julian Harvey
Maggie Heath
Rob and Anne Heather
Helen and Philip Heims
Roger Holden
H R Holland
Mrs Simon Holmes
Hei Mun Hong
Denzil and Kate How
Heather Howard
Derek Cormack and Suzanne Howe
The Allenby sisters
John and Susan Hyland
Howard and Anne Hyman
Chris Jefferies
Mrs Charlotte Johnson
Miss Flora Johnston
Scot and Sally Johnston
Nicola Jones
Alison and Jamie Justham
The Karran-Smith Family
Mae Keary
Penelope Kellie
Jocelyn Kennard
Michael and Julia Kerby
Mr and Mrs Patrick Hofmann
Cathy and Alan Kinnear
Dr and Mrs S Knights
Regine Kopp
Liz and Roger Kramers
Lynn Lee
Caroline and David Lentaigne
Kiereen and Nicholas Lock
James and Susie Long
Claudia Da Graca Lopes
V Lowings and B Cozens
Jonathan and Clare Lubran
Andrew Lyndon-Skeggs
The Lyon Family
Stephen and Karen MacDonald
Ian and Jane Macnabb
JJ and Victoria Macnamara
Miss C Martin
Mr and Mrs P. T. Mealing
Elaine and Peter Mills
Wilsons Solicitors LLP
Michelle Nevers and Nathan Moss
John Muhlemann
Sally and David Murch
Tom and Catherine Neal
Emily Neill
Lord and Lady Northbrook
Nicki Oakes-Monger
Colin and Rosalind Osmer
Robin and Christine Petherick
Jeremy and Bryony Pett
Anthony and Sally Pfiffner
Frank and Doreen Pointon
Sebastian Pont
Professor Postma
Sue and Peter Prag
Raymond Sutton and Judith Prickett
Jean Boney and Chrissie Quayle
Dick and Fiona Rainsbury
John and Marie Randall
Mr and Mrs Nick Read
Neil and Julie Record
Merv and Fenella Rees
Anne Reynolds
Mr P and Mrs K Richards
Michael and Charlotte Robinson
Charles Rogers
Mr and Mrs Jeremy Rothman
Tim and Maitina Rumboll
Gillian and Terry Rush
Sebastian Salek, Jordan Bergmans, Alex Horkan, Charlotte Bennett, Alex Louch, Rachel Tait
Joseph Saxby
Ian and Rosemary Saxton
Ben and Sian Shawley
David and Rebecca Sheppard
Caroline and Mark Silver
Poppy Skepper
Ann Smart
Mr and Mrs Mark Sorby
Brian Spiby
RM Stables
Judy and Graham Staples
Dianne Steele
Mr Steensma and Mrs Steensma Bruynesteyn
David Stern
AnneMarie Stordiau
Rosie Sturgis
Swift Family
Tim and Charlotte Syder
Nigel and Robina Talbot-Ponsonby
Tom and Jo Taylor
Simon and Alison Taylor
Jeremy H Taylor and Raye Ward
Stephen Tedbury and Loveday Shewell
David Templeman
Tim and Jacky Thackeray
Prof and Mrs G M Tonge
John Trewby
Andrew and Diane Turnbull
M Tydeman
Edward and Katherine Wake
Anthony and Sue Walker
Sonia and Kevin Watson
Judith Wheatley
Angela Wheeler
Max Whitehead
Antonia Whitley
The Whittington Family
Kim Wilkie
Daniel and Thomas
Wilkinson-Horsfield
William and Madeline Wilks
Keith and Keren Williams
Mrs G C Williams
Wendy Wilson
Elizabeth Caroline Woods
Alan and Eleanor Wright
John Wynne-Williams and anonymous donors
11AM–4PM
The London auctioneers are looking forward to returning to The Grange Festival to offer free valuations on jeweller y, watches, ceramics, silver, sculpture, clocks, miniatures, objects of ver tu, paintings, watercolours, drawings, arms and armour and Asian works of art with the opportunity to sell in their forthcoming auctions.
Olympia Auctions will donate a percentage of their commission to support The Grange Festival programme for schools and the local communit y. No appointment necessar y
+44 (0)20 7806 5541 | www.olympiaauctions.com | enquiries@olympiaauctions.com
Mary Fedden, OBE, RWA (1915–2012) Pirro from Ermione, 1995. Sold £2,600
The home of Country House opera in South West England featuring renowned soloists, a full orchestra and a large chorus of emerging young artists
Marquee bar | Picnics | Formal Dining
Sung in French with English surtitles
Conductor: Jeremy Carnall | Director: Ella Marchment
26, 27 July at 19.00 | Matinée: 29 July at 14.00
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sung in Italian with English surtitles
Conductor: José Miguel Esandi | Director: Paul Carr
25, 28, 29 July at 19.00 | Matinée: 27 July at 14.00
Coade Theatre, Bryanston, Blandford Forum
Box Office: dorsetopera.com
07570 366 186
Original design by Augusto Ferri for the first Italian production of Le roi de Lahore in 1878 | Archivio Storico Ricordi
English Heritage Guardians are a cohort of like-minded supporters who champion the work of the charity and who benefit from exclusive experiences and bespoke events that take them to the heart of England’s heritage.
Get in touch today by contacting guardians@english-heritage.org.uk
We are delighted to support The Grange Festival’s 2023 season
The Grange PINK NV –the English way to celebrate your summer…
www.thegrangewine.co.uk
The country. But not as you know it. Try laidback luxury for size at Lime Wood.
