Shakespeare in Music? “Give me excess of it”. There is no sickening and the appetite never dies.

Devon Glover

"If music be the food of love" then take me to the Shakespeare in Music Festival (SIM) in Stratford-upon-Avon from 20 to 23 April. The SIM Festival is rapidly becoming the "go to" Festival for those who love music and love Shakespeare.

SIM’s first Festival - in May last year - was greeted by a local critic in the Stratford Herald as the best thing that had happened to classical music in the town during the sixteen years that he had been living there. Audiences were treated to a feast of song by artists at the height of their profession, among them David Padmore and Elizabeth Kenny, and others straight from training at the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, all delighted at the opportunity of singing and playing at the inaugural session of the Festival. 

This year the Festival offers a rich selection of fifteen events over the four days – from 20 to 23 April (Shakespeare’s Birthday).  Each morning and each afternoon there is a musical recital. There are songs Ancient and Modern from the harp and viola duo the Painted Fall, madrigals from the Arcadian Singers, songs by Castelnuovo Tedesco, Kenneth Leighton and Erich Korngold sung baritone William Drakett accompanied on piano by Simon Carrey, and Elizabethan and Jacobean music by the Bloomsbury Baroque Ensemble.  The Festival also features the young countertenor Benjamin Irvine-Capel accompanied on the lute by Kristiina Watt, and Sami Brown and Daniel Thomson of Dowland’s Foundry with an Elizabethan meditation on Facets of Time.

Each lunchtime an illustrated lecture fills in the background of Shakespeare’s music in his plays, of his time, and from four hundred years of musical legacy that lead from his age to the present day. One concentrates this year on Shakespeare’s drinking songs, another on the Walton score for Laurence Olivier’s patriotic 1940 take on Henry V, and another, by Devon Glover, the Sonnet Man from New York, will open the audience’s ears and minds to Shakespeare and Rap.

Dowland's Foundry

Evening performances take place in the atmospheric setting of Holy Trinity, Shakespeare’s memorial Church. A double bill on the first night offers a concert performance of George Bernard Shaw’s 1910 one-act play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets followed by Philip Hagemann’s 2008 short opera of the same name, inspired by the play but with a twist in the tail. The talented Stratford Chamber Choir then offer Vaughan Williams’ four unaccompanied songs as well as George Shearing’s settings of Shakespeare songs, alongside soloists from Rose Opera with enchanting interpretations of folk and courtly verses of Shakespeare’s time. And the Rose Opera singers will enchant the audience on the final night with their selection of favourite arias from Shakespeare’s operatic legacy, from Berlioz and Bellini, Gounod and Thomas, Britten and Tippett, Verdi and Wagner – yes, from his very first opera which was based on Love’s Labour’s Lost! 

In addition to all that, the Festival has been chosen for the first award of the Fischer Fund Prize for the best Shakespeare song composed in 2025. It is shared this year between a sonnet and a speech, interpreted by Mathilda Goika (mezzo) and Archie Inns (tenor) with Nigel Foster, the founder of the London Song Festival, at the piano,  for a musical celebration of Shakespeare’s Birthday.  

Performances in this Festival of Shakespeare and his musical legacy take place in Holy Trinity Church, the 13th century Guild Chapel, and the United Reformed Church, all central locations in Stratford-on-Avon.  Just check out the programme on the website and book on-line.

 Shakespeare in Music? "Give me excess of it". There is no sickening and the appetite never dies.