English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
Conductor Oliver Zeffman has commissioned the very first opera for a socially distanced world, which is now available to watch exclusively on Apple Music. Eight Songs From Isolation has been written by eight leading composers, specifically for streaming - rather than live performance - and is the first opera written for a time when the performers were unable to meet in person.
Leading freelance musicians unite in Parliament Square to call for targeted support for colleagues in the arts and entertainment sector.
Duo Lewis Murphy (composer) and Laura Attridge (writer) have launched a charitable song project entitled Notes From Isolation. The resulting songs, featuring some of the UK's top singing talent, are being released online between August and October 2020 and can be enjoyed free of charge.
The Royal Opera House is thrilled to announce an exciting, wide-ranging new line-up for its autumn programme. For the first time, extraordinary performances will be accessible online for a global audience through livestreams and for socially distanced live audiences at our home in Covent Garden. In a global first, we present a new opera in hyper-reality, alongside repertory favourites from both artistic companies.
Some of the most famous and outstanding stars from the opera world are to take part in a very special evening from Wexford Festival Opera, including Aigul Akhmetshina, Joseph Calleja, Daniela Barcellona, Juan Diego Flórez, Igor Golovatenko, Ermonela Jaho, Sergey Romanovsky, and many more.
Following its successful launch in 2019, OperaStreaming streams nine operas on YouTube from the historic opera houses of Emilia-Romagna during the 2020-21 season, with fully-staged productions of Verdi's La traviata in October from Modena and Verdi'sOtello from Bologna in...
‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival (10th-17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse and imaginative programme of 40 performances and events.
Bampton Classical Opera returns to the Baroque splendour of London’s St John’s Smith Square on November 6 with a concert performance of Gluck’s one-act opera The Crown, the first in the UK since 1987. The performance will also be filmed and available to watch on demand on the Bampton website from 9 November.
While many of us spent lockdown at home taking it a little easier, composer Andrew Synnott wrote an opera.
Owen Wingrave is part of the new Interim Season of 19 brand new events, all free to view online between September and December 2020.
The Arts Council has awarded innovative UK charity Music and Theatre For All (MTFA) a major new grant to develop three ambitious new projects in the wake of Covid 19.
English National Opera (ENO) will reopen the London Coliseum to socially distanced audiences on 6 and 7 November for special performances of Mozart’s Requiem. These will provide audiences with an opportunity to reflect upon and to commemorate the difficulties the nation has faced during the pandemic.
The Royal Opera House is proud to continue its curated #OurHouseToYourHouse programme into the autumn, bringing audiences the best of the ROH through a new series of Friday Premieres and cultural highlights.
After six months of closure, the Royal Opera House is thrilled to be opening its doors to the public as part of Open House London weekend, giving visitors a taste of one of the world’s most famous theatres for free.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields is thrilled to announce re:connect - an eight concert series with live socially distanced audiences at its namesake church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The autumn concerts will take place at 5pm & 7:30pm on two Saturdays per month with guest artists including baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Carolyn Sampson and composer-conductor-pianist Ryan Wigglesworth performing a wide range of repertoire.
Music and poetry unite and collide across centuries, from the Medieval to the Enlightenment to the present day. This year, the Oxford Lieder Festival will present a thrilling and innovative programme comprising more than forty events streamed over eight days.
The English Concert with artistic director Harry Bicket is delighted to announce a series of concerts from 1-15 October 2020. The concerts take place in historic London venues with star soloists and will be performed and streamed live to a paying audience at 7pm GMT on each performance date. The programmes include first-class vocal and instrumental works from the two pillars of the English Baroque, covering different aspects of the repertoire.
Glyndebourne has announced plans for a ‘staycation’ series of socially-distanced indoor performances, starting on 10 October 2020.
The Royal Opera House is delighted to announce two packed evenings of opera and ballet, live from our stage in Covent Garden and available to view wherever you are in the world online.
Following its sell-out success at Wilton’s Music Hall in September 2018, English National Opera’s acclaimed production of Benjamin Britten’s Paul Bunyan will be revived in May at the equally historically remarkable venue of Alexandra Palace Theatre.
The new venue follows the ‘inspired choice’ (Bachtrack) of Wilton’s with another painstakingly restored Victorian music hall. ‘London’s oldest new theatre’ was reopened in December 2018, the interior retaining the charm of the original 1875 hall but with the facilities to put on the most sophisticated new productions. The £23m restoration’s opening was widely praised, with the BBC declaring it ‘like walking into a novel’.
Paul Bunyan , an ENO Studio Live production, is a parable on the American Dream from Benjamin Britten and WH Auden, telling the story of the eponymous giant as he builds a lumber farm with a sprawling cast of accomplices. Seldom performed, its first ENO staging in 2018 was called ‘an exhilarating experience’ (5* The Mail on Sunday) ‘thrilling’ (The Guardian) and ‘a joyful spectacle’ ( The Daily Telegraph).
Jamie Manton returns to direct along with many of the original cast. ENO Harewood Artists Elgan Llŷr Thomas (‘particularly lovely singing’ -The Daily Telegraph) and Rowan Pierce (‘captivating’ - The Daily Express) reprise their roles as Johnny Inkslinger and Tiny respectively.
Zwakele Tshabalala takes the role of Hot Biscuit Slim in his second ENO performance after forming part of the Porgy and Bess ensemble in 2018. ENO Harewoood Artist Alex Otterburn also makes his second ENO appearance after singing Squibby in the world premiere of Iain Bell’s Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel. Former ENO Harewood Artist Barnaby Rea, last seen as Iolanthe’s Private Willis in 2018, takes the role of Ben Benny the cook.
The ENO Chorus (‘triple threats to a man’ - The Spectator) return to the secondary roles they filled with ‘boundless skill and personality’ ( The Stage)the first time round. Simon Russell Beale reprises his pre-recorded performance as Paul.
ENO Chorus Master James Henshaw conducts his second ENO production, having made his conducting debut in 2017 with another Studio Live production, The Day After.
ENO Studio Live is part of ENO Outside, which takes ENO’s work to arts-engaged audiences that may not have considered opera before, presenting the immense power of opera in more intimate studio and theatre environments. Other venues the company has appeared at include Hackney Empire, Regent’s Park Outdoor Theatre and The Gate Theatre, Notting Hill.
Performances will take place on the 9, 10, 11 (matinee and evening performance), 13 May.
Tickets will go on sale on the 8 (priority booking) and 11 February (public booking) (eno.org, 020 7845 9300)