With the new opera season upon us, UK residents have an exciting year ahead of them in opera. Juan Diego Florez is already thrilling audiences in London in his role-debut as Orphee in Gluck’s ORPHEE ET EURIDICE, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner and featuring the Hofesh Shechter dance company from Israel, the final performance takes place on October 3rd. Later in the season at Covent Garden audiences will have the chance to hear German coloratura soprano Diana Damrau in the challenging role of LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, a role made famous at this house by the legendary Joan Sutherland. This will be a new production directed by Katie Mitchell and conducted by Maestro Daniel Oren.
On a small scale but with no less commitment and excitement, the ever-growing Fulham Opera will stage Wagner’s nautical supernatural-romance THE FLYING DUTCHMAN starring Associated Studios’ alumnus Janet Fischer. Opera-up-Close will continue to offer thrilling chamber sized performance with productions of THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, LA BOHEME and THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO starting from October 1st.
Scottish Audiences can look forward to new productions of Handel’s brooding masterpiece ARIODANTE directed by Harry Fehr and Gilbert & Sullivan’s hilarious MIKADO directed by Martin Llloyd-Evans. Opera North open their season with a brand-new production of KISS ME KATE led by the dynamic David Charles Abell and for their first production of 2016 will present Giordani’s tragic ANDREA CHENIER directed by regular Associated Studios’ guest-tutor Annabel Arden. In Belfast Opera Northern Ireland will present Handel’s AGRIPPINA in conjunction with Irish Youth Opera, followed by a brilliant re-imagining of Puccini’s final opera TURANDOT, staged by the enfant-terrible of the genre, Catalan director Calixto Bieito and conducted by Associated Studios guest tutor Maestro Jonathan Cohen
Summer 2016 sees our Festival Season in full swing with Garsington offering a rarely-staged production of Haydn’s CREATION alongside Rossini’s madcap L’ITALIANA IN ALGERI, Mozart’s elegant IDOMENEO and Tchaikovsky’s brooding EUGENE ONEGIN. Grange Park will present Lionel Bart’s timeless OLIVER starring Simon Keenlyside as the loveable villain Fagin alongside concert performances of Wagner’s epic tragedy TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, starring Anja Kampe and Bryan Register as the doomed lovers.
