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| Mozart: Don Giovanni at Wateerperry Opera Pageant in 2025 (Picture: Julian Guidera) |
Waterperry Opera Pageant has introduced particulars of its 2026 season, the primary below new creative director John Savournin. Headline productions are Puccini’s La bohème and Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, each carried out in English.
For the corporate’s first ever manufacturing of La bohème, Faryl Smith makes her debut as Mimì, with Robert Forrest as Rodolfo, Ceferina Penny as Musetta and Jolyon Loy as Marcello, performed by Bertie Baigent, and directed by Ruth Knight [who directed Handel’s Rodelinda at Garsington last year, see my review].
The Elixir of Love [which was first performed by the company in 2021 in a production by Dan Ayling, see my review] sees the return of the artistic staff behind 2025’s Don Giovanni – director John Wilkie and conductor Charlotte Politi. There will probably be a brand new English libretto by David Eaton [John Savournin’s co-conspirator from Charles Court Opera], and the manufacturing options Daisy Brown as Adina, Matthew McKinney as Nemorino, Matthew Kellett as Dulcamara and James Geidt as Belcore.
There will probably be a revival of the vastly common 2023 household manufacturing, Peter Rabbit’s Musical Adventures, a energetic and accessible present introducing kids to reside classical music and storytelling within the enchanting setting of the amphitheatre, carried out by competition favorite Oskar McCarthy.
A model new live performance collection, Music within the Ballroom, offers audiences the possibility to expertise distinctive singers up shut, within the charming ballroom of Waterperry Home. Performers will embody the competition’s creative director, bass-baritone John Savournin, and baritone Roderick Williams, together with two recitals carried out in collaboration with younger artists from Opera Prelude.
Different occasions embody Final Evening on the Opera, an exuberant celebration of operatic highlights, and Serenades, a day of music by Mozart and Dvořák in a gorgeous out of doors setting, plus free occasions together with a sing-along Come and Sing workshop, kids’s Craft Workshops, and the Younger Artist Gala, celebrating the work of the competition’s Younger Artist cohort.
One other addition for 2026 is a brand new summer time venue: the intimate, atmospheric church of Saxon origin, St Mary the Virgin, beside Waterperry Home. The competition will current Residing Gentle: Visions of an Abbess, area particular efficiency impressed by the music and writings of Hildegard von Bingen, the Twelfth-century abbess, composer, and polymath. Directed by the competition’s Rebecca Meltzer, and rooted in Hildegard’s idea of the umbra viventis lucis – the reflection of the dwelling Gentle – this immersive efficiency displays Waterperry’s rising dedication to reimagining how vocal efficiency may be skilled.
Full particulars from the competition web site.
