Robert Fokkens in the first community rehearsal of The Trial of Dhegdheer
A new community opera The Trial of Dhegdheer, to be performed in Grangetown in Cardiff on Saturday 13 June takes a Somali folktale as its inspiration. The folktale, about a terrifying cannibalistic ogress with one exceptionally long ear, offers a way of presenting a wide range of perspectives, from the complications of recycling bags to carriages of injustice and features communities of Butetown and Grangetown alongside professionals, with community participants as jurors, witnesses and the Judge.
Contemporary opera company Music Theatre Wales (MTW) and Fio theatre company are coming together for the event which will be directed by Fio artistic director Mathilde Lopéz, returning to opera following Out of Her Mouth, her 2023 piece on Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre with Mahogony Opera and her 2022 production of Carmen at Longborough Festival Opera. The artistic team also includes includes poet, community activist and actor Ali Goolyad, electronic pop and soul producer/singer songwriter Eadyth, musician and producer Ani Glass and South African contemporary music composer Robert Fokkens. Design is by Gerald Tyler and Dotty Squibb with Gerald Tyler also providing construction and technical facilitation.
Gweneth Ann Rand who also performed in MTW and Fio’s The Jollof House Party Opera, will join the community cast in the central role of Dhegdheer along with local baritone Thomas Coltman as the Prosecutor and the performance will culminate in the traditional Somali singing form of Buraanbur led by Ifraax.
Further information from the TicketSource website.
Joshua Ballance at High Barnet Chamber Music Festival
High Barnet Chamber Music Festival has returned for its sixth season with a mix of the well-known and the not so well-known. Things kicked off last weekend with Song & Dance a free family concert for flute and harp from Hannah Gillingham & Lise Vandersmissen providing an introduction to chamber music for families.
Saturday 13 June sees the return of Mad Song, the ensemble founded by the festival's artistic director Joshua Ballance, with Fire & Water. This features Tristan Murail's La Barque mystique and Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II alongside Scriabin's Vers la flamme and music by Anna Clyne, Oliver Knussen, Richard Causton and Ravel.
The following week features a concert by the Elmore Quartet, a young British group who were winners of the 2026 Royal Over-Seas League Annual Music Competition and are currently Hans Keller Chamber Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Their concert includes quartets by Ravel and Shostakovich alongside Britten's early Three Divertimentos, Rebecca Clarke's Poem and music by contemporary composer Leo Geyer.
The Portrait Players (whom I saw earlier this year performing with Dame Emma Kirkby, see my review) feature music by Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, and their contemporaries along with music by contemporary composer Clare Elton.
The festival was founded during Covid to provide opportunities for some of the country’s most promising young musicians and it continues to offer some of the finest chamber musicians of their generation.
Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up - Sebastian Hill, Aidan O'Donnell - Guildhall School (Photo: David Monteith-Hodge)
Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up; director: Amy Lane, conductor: James Henshaw; Guildhall School of Music & Drama Reviewed by Edward Lambert (5 June 2026)
It was necessary to remind oneself that this was not a professional company. Amy Lane's production extracted every ounce of drama from the text and faithfully served the music
While student singers will understandably be keen to learn roles in ‘classical’ operas, there are advantages for them in performing new, unfamiliar works while in training. They can make such roles their own without regard to tradition or well-known interpretations. And the music colleges, with their resources and a huge amount of free labour at their disposal, may well consider it their duty to champion new opera when the larger houses can ill afford to take those risks. London owes a debt of thanks, therefore, to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for bringing Missy Mazzoli’s 2018 opera Proving Up to the Milton Court Theatre recently and there was no doubt that the young cast gave it their all and a lot more besides.
Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980) is a major force to be reckoned with in the USA and her operas flourish in the fertile soil of the American contemporary-opera scene. New operas by her will be premiered later this year at the New York Met (October) and the Edinburgh Festival (August). Her music is a far cry from the ingratiating, easy-listening style of Mark Adamo’s Little Women (seen at Opera Holland Park in 2022, see Robert's review) or even Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (ENO, 2025). So, what with Angel’s Bone at ENO Manchester/London this year, Einstein on the Beach and Mazzoli’s own Breaking the Waves (ENO, 2027), American opera is fast conquering the UK’s contemporary-opera scene as well. (Meanwhile, the Royal Opera hasn’t yet managed to stage a single John Adams opera - an omission which is barely credible).
Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up - Laura LeVoir, Miranda Kettlewell, Lowri Probert - Guildhall School (Photo: David Monteith-Hodge)
Unlike Breaking the Waves which is set in Scotland, Proving Up is American to the bone, its action taking place on the prairies of Nebraska following the state’s admission to the Union in 1867. The federal Homestead Act allowed migrants to claim free land if it was settled and cultivated for a period of five years. The process of supplying the required affidavits was known as Proving Up. It goes without saying that the legalities and fees involved excluded participation in the scheme by Native Americans.
Founded in 1977 by a group including composer Peter Maxwell Davies and poet George Mackay, the St Magnus Festival is week-long arts festival which takes place at midsummer on the islands of Orkney. This year is the 50th festival, running from 19 to 28 June 2026.
In this article, the festival's current artistic director, composer Alasdair Nicolson introduces his vision for the festival.
Half a century on from its founding, the St Magnus International Festival remains one of the UK’s most distinctive examples of what happens when artistic vision precedes infrastructure. Our 50th anniversary, celebrated this June, is not simply a mark of longevity, but a reminder of the continuing relevance of an idea first argued into existence around kitchen tables in Orkney in 1977.
The festival emerged from a meeting of local and artistic minds: the composer Peter Maxwell Davies, recently arrived on the islands, and the poet George Mackay Brown, and collaboration with the cathedral organist Norman Mitchell alongside a wider community willing to back what was, at the time, an improbable proposition. That a major international festival should take root in such a geographically remote setting required persuasion, persistence and a degree of collective faith. From the outset, it was not built around a venue or institution, but around a belief that new work and serious artistic engagement could, and should, happen here.
Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro - Timothy Nelson, Ellie Neate, Elinor Rolf Johnson - Wild Arts (Photo: Lucy Toms)
Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro; Elinor Rolfe Johnson, Timothy Nelson, Ellie Neate, Jack Sandison, Abbie Ward, director: Danielle de Niese, conductor: Orlando Jopling, Wild Arts; Layer Marney Tower Reviewed 7 June 2026
Danielle de Niese makes her directorial debut, encouraging a fine cast to give us a vivid yet magical evening in the theatre they drew us into the story, both gripping and entertaining
When I interviewed Orlando Jopling, artistic director of Wild Arts, in the middle of the company's rehearsals for their new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro he said that his 'aim is that people will forget that the cast is singing and that this will draw the audience into the story'. [see my interview] Having a well-known singer make her directorial debut at the same time is perhaps not the most obvious way to achieve these ends. Danielle de Niese made her debut at the Met in New York as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro at the age of 19 and went on to sing Susanna there. But judging by her new production of the opera for Wild Arts she has successfully adapted to a new way of working.
Danielle de Niese's production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro debuted this week at the barn at Layer Marney Tower (we caught the final performance there on Sunday 7 June 2026). Orlando Jopling conducted an instrumental ensemble of ten, with Timothy Nelson and Elinor Rolfe Johnson as Count and Countess Almaviva, Jack Sandison and Ellie Neate as Figaro and Susanna, and Abbie Ward as Cherubino. Designs were by Laura Jane Stanfield. The work was sung in a new translation by Danielle de Niese and Orlando Jopling.
The production is compact: it has to be, Wild Arts tour to 20 wildly different venues. Frankly, the entire opera barn at Layer Marney would probably fit on the Met stage, but this has the advantage of immediacy. The audience is very close and farces always benefit from a sense of physical impossibility. De Niese's staging was vividly immediate and highly active, responding to the farce elements of the story with action that was highly physical and nearly constant.
Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro - Timothy Nelson, Jack Sandison, Abbie Ward - Wild Arts (Photo: Lucy Toms)
The setting was 18th century, with frock coats and panniered dresses and an element of formality in relations. We never lost sight of the fact that Figaro and Susanna are servants, not matter how privileged they are. Yet there was a vein of modernity in the reactions which made the production immediate, these were real people before us. De Niese's solutions to the challenges of the staging were imaginative and not always naturalistic; this is a farce after all. Yet she never lost sight of the characters on stage, these were real people with real emotions. When needed, things came to a halt, focusing on a single character.
Joseph Phibbs & Dominic Sandbrook: Mrs T - Lucy Schaufer as Mrs T in rehearsal (Photo: Claire Shovelton)
Whether you love her or hate her, Mrs Thatcher remains an iconic figure but not a character who would immediately make you think of opera. However, ever since John Adams and Alice Goodman's 1978 opera Nixon in China (based on Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China), contemporary politics has proved surprising source-material for new operas. Now composer Joseph Phibbs and historian Dominic Sandbrook have teamed up to place Mrs Thatcher at the centre of a new opera. On 12 June 2026 at Kings Place, Mrs T: The Iron Lady Sings will showcase scenes from their new opera, Mrs T directed by Lucy Bradley, conducted by Lee Reynolds with Lucy Schaufer as Mrs T.
This will be Joseph Phibbs' second opera, his first was Juliana based on an updating of Strindberg's Miss Julie and first performed at the Cheltenham Festival [see my interview with Joseph]. Dominic Sandbrook is an historian best known as the co-host of The Rest Is History podcast. Their new opera is set against the backdrop of the turbulent 1980s, and it explores key events during Mrs Thatcher’s time in office: the Falklands War, the Cold War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the rise of patriotic nationalism that would eventually foster deep scepticism toward Europe, sowing the seeds of Brexit.
These growing fractures – both political and personal – provide the dramatic impetus to transform a political symbol into a complex woman whose downfall carries the scale, emotional depth, and wit of a Shakespearean play.
At this year's Aldeburgh Festival, which runs from 12 to 18 June 2026, the festival's Featured Artist will be Ryan Wigglesworth and over the 17 days of the festival there will be a chance to experience the various aspects of Ryan's career from concerts with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO), of which he is chief conductor, and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra, to a semi-staged production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and chamber music with friends and colleagues, all this alongside performances of Ryan's music and the premiere of his Viola Concerto written for violist Laurence Power.
Ryan comments that being Featured Artist means that to some extent he gets the keys to the toyshop and can help shape the festival. His performances are dotted throughout the festival but with hot spots at the beginning and end. The selections of performances bring the various parts of his life together, with orchestral performances, playing chamber music with colleagues which is a rare occurrence, and add in the premiere of his Viola Concerto.
Aldeburgh as a place is somewhere he has been involved with for a long time: it means so much to him, and he has always felt at home there. Oliver Knussen lived there and Ryan spent so much time with him there that the connection goes deep. Ryan adds that it is difficult to pinpoint what it is about Aldebugh, but it is a special place to work and the Aldeburgh Festival returns something of the founding ethos with friends making music together on stage. Britten and Pears created the festival because they wanted to do what they do but at home, and the festival has kept something of that ethos. This is why Ryan is drawn back to the place.
Ryan Wigglesworth conducting the Knussen Chamber Orchestra at the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)
Ryan's own works are usually tied to the performers for whom they were written. His Piano Concerto (2019), which he and the BBCSSO perform at Aldeburgh this year with Steven Osborne, was written for Marc-Andre Hamelin but pianist Steven Osborne has performed it a few times. What is important to Ryan are relationships that go beyond just the odd concert together, with performers such as Osborne and violist Laurence Power for whom Ryan has written his Viola Concerto. Ryan takes pleasure in getting to know them as musicians, and this is when the ideas come, when he has a player's particular sound in his head. He comments that Power has a unique sound and that he is built to get a sound out of the viola. For Ryan, Power has such a personal approach to everything he that it is a special gift to hear his own music played by Power. Also at the festival, Ryan and soprano Sophie Bevan are performing Ryan's song cycle Till Dawning (from 2018, setting poetry by George Herbert). The cycle was written for Sophie Bevan and as she is Ryan's wife he describes this as the deepest collaboration of all.
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro - Andrey Zhilikhovsky, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Louise Alder, Alex Esposito - Royal Opera House (Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic)
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro; Alex Esposito, Louise Alder, Andrey Zilikhovsky, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Svetlina Stoyanova, director: David McVicar/Lea Hausman, conductor: Bertrand de Billy; Royal Opera House Reviewed 4 June 2026
Still in robust health, David McVicar's classic production benefits here from a fine quality cast, all beautifully well-matched, so we were enthralled dramatically and musically
This was the third or fourth time I have seen the production, and it remains as engaging as ever. McVicar's fondness for placing the action in the context of a busy household with actors as the household staff providing a lot of incidental comedy that manages to never quite pull focus. That said, I did wonder whether things had become a little broader or perhaps this was just familiarity. With any performance of this production, there is the risk that the sets or the antics of the household will take precedence in the memory over the performances. There is little chance for intimacy here.
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro - Svetlina Stoyanova - Royal Opera House (Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic)
From the beginning, Bertrand de Billy took a practiced view of the speeds, keeping things flowing but never allowing the music to feel too rushed. Nor did he luxuriate even though he had the wherewithal to do so in both terms of the voices and the orchestra. Recitative-wise, I always enjoy this opera on a smaller scale so that the cast can really move the dialogue along but the Royal Opera House is hardly the space for that.
Tobias Picker: Lili Elbe - Lucia Lucas - Theater St. Gallen 2023
Ever since John Adams and Alice Goodman focused on Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China, contemporary opera (and contemporary American opera in particular) has mined recent events and politics for themes. Two recordings scheduled for release during July and August highlight this. In July, Bright Shiny Things releases the premiere recording of Tobias Picker's Lili Elbe, first grand opera created for and about a historical figure of trans identity, and then in August Blue Griffin Records issue Ricky Ian Gordon's The Tibetan Book of the Dead: An Opera, a work from 1995 intimately bound up in the AIDS crisis.
Tobias Picker's Lili Elbe centres on the life of Danish painter Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of multiple experimental gender confirmation surgeries, which tragically ended her life. The work was premiered at the Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland in 2023 [see my article] and recorded live at the dress rehearsal. This recording is being issued in August to coincide with the American premiere of the work at the Santa Fe Opera Festival, where Picker's first opera Emmeline premiered 30 years ago.
The work has a libretto by Aryeh Lev Stollman, Picker's partner of over 45 years, novelist, and neuroradiologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. Much of the material derives from historical sources. Picker who is drawn to writing operas about strong female protagonists, described Lili’s longing to fully inhabit womanhood as profoundly operatic -- a psychological and emotional conflict he sees as no less intense than that of typical operatic tragic heroines.
The title role was written for transgender baritone Lucia Lucas who sings on the recording and at Santa Fe and as does soprano Sylvia D’Eramo in the role of Gerda Wegener. The recording features Modestas Pitrėnas conducting the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen.
Ricky Ian Gordon: The Tibetan Book of the Dead: An Opera Eric Owens, Jonita Lattimore, Frank Hernandez - 1996 (Photo: Jim Caldwell)
Blue Griffin Records' recording of Ricky Ian Gordon's 1995 opera, The Tibetan Book of the Dead: An Opera is based on restored archival recordings made at The American Music Theater Festival in June 1996. The opera was co-commissioned by Houston Grand Opera and The American Music Theatre Festival and is inspired by ancient Tibetan Buddhist teachings, depicting epic journey of a dying soul through a series of spiritual and emotional planes along the road of rebirth.
The background to the opera is the AIDS crisis and the libretto dramatises, in seventeen scenes, the death of an individual, the journey through the "bardo," (in between) and the rebirth. The work's origins are intertwined with Ricky Ian Gordon's relationship at the time, with Jeffrey Grossi, who was already living with HIV when they first met. It was Grossi who encouraged the composer to learn Buddhist teachings and immerse himself in Sogyal Rinpoche's 1992 book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. [Sogyal Rinpoche was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who would eventually become a not uncontroversial figure - see the BBC article on his death in 2019]
The opera came together relatively quickly. David Gockley, who had asked Gordon for a commission for Houston Grand Opera, suggested the book as a source for an opera and a libretto was created within two days. Despite his illness and largely being confined to bed, Jeffrey Grossi was able to see one of the Philadelphia performances of the opera, where archival tapes were made.
It was these tapes that became the basis for the new release. Whilst working on his memoir Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera, Gordon wondered whether the archive tapes could be made viable. The final product is the result of painstaking work on the originals. The recording features artists from The Houston Grand Opera studio: baritone Frank Hernandez, bass Eric Owens, sopranos Nicole Heaston and Jonita Lattimore, mezzo-sopranos Beth Clayton and Jill Grove, tenors John McVeigh and Gabriel Gonzalez, and Orchestra 2001 conducted by Charles Prince.
Ricky Ian Gordon's The Tibetan Book of the Dead: An Opera is released on Blue Griffin Records on 14 August 2026.
Lullaby (noun) - A song sung to children to soothe them to rest. Also, any song which soothes to rest. (Oxford English Dictionary online)
Inevitably the idea of a lullaby is immediately associated with children but it can extend to any song related to rest and night. At the Southbank Centre's Purcell Room on Saturday 6 June, violinist Tamsin Waley Cohen and pianist Cordelia Williams are exploring lullabies including pieces associated with the atmospheres of night, slumber and dreams.
Central to the concert is a new work by Freya Waley Cohen (Tamsin's sister), Sweet as plum wine written for the performers. The piece is based on a 4,000-year- old lullaby text found etched on a Babylonian stone tablet in Akkadian cuneiform:
Little one, who dwelt in darkness Now you’ve come and seen the sun. Why the crying? Why the worries? What has made your peace undone? You have roused the household spirits You have scared the guardian gods ‘Who has roused me? Who has scared me?’ ‘Little baby woke you up!’ May you settle into slumber Sweet as plum wine, deep as love
Freya Waley Cohen explains what came next:
"I memorised this text and started to sing it to my daughter at night. A sort of lullaby improvisation that quickly settled into a set melody. This melody is what you hear in this piece, and the piece is both a setting of my personal version of this lullaby, and a response to the ancient text itself."
The remainder of the programme moves from Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel to the famous Brahms lullaby, to Fritz Kreisler's arrangement of Dvorak's Songs my mother taught me, to music by Schubert and John Cage!
Back in 2024, I chatted to both Tamsin Waley Cohen about her work at the Two Moors Festival [see my interview] and to Freya Waley Cohen about her Spell book [see my interview]
Before the concert there is a talk Night Music: The Creative Power of Parenting, when Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Cordelia Williams and Octavia Bright discuss how parenting has affected their creative practices.
Wagner: Das Rheingold - Deutsche Oper Berlin (Photo: Bernd Uhlig)
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen; director: Stefan Herheim, conductor: Sir Donald Runnicles; Deutsche Oper Berlin Reviewed by Tony Cooper (4 June 2026)
Auf wiedersehen! Following this Ring cycle, Sir Donald Runnicles bows out as General Music Director of Deutsche Oper Berlin, a position he has grandly held since 2009.
From my hotel on Bayreutherstraße just off Wittenbergplatz, Berlin’s most fashionable department store KaDeWe stares me straight in the face while a quick three-stop tube journey from Wittenbergplatz drops me right at the doorstep of Deutsche Oper situated at the junction of Bismarckstraße and Richard-Wagner-Straße located in the western part of the city in Charlottenburg.
Sir Donald Runnicles
A city I favour and enjoy so much, I’m in Berlin attending Stefan Herheim’s Ring cycle at Deutsche Oper, a large, comfortable 1850-seat theatre boldly designed in the Modernist style and simply ideal for large-scale productions. And none come much larger than those penned by Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and. Giacomo Meyerbeer.
In fact, I fondly recall enjoying Meyerbeer’s two great masterpieces Les Huguenots and Le prophète at Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2016. Both operas were written at the peak of his career in 1836 and 1849 respectively and the finale of Le prophète - culminating in fire, destruction and death - closely mirrors the catastrophic ending of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.
Obviously, my mind is furiously on fast rewind, therefore I also fondly recall the final performance of Götz Friedrich’s monumental (and well-loved) ‘Cold War’ Ring that ‘lived’ on Bismarckstraße for an astonishing amount of time: 33 years, in fact, from 1984 to 2017. A disciple of Götz Friedrich, multiple-award-winning Norwegian director, Stefan Herheim, studied under him at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 1994 to 1999.
Götz Friedrich crafted his ‘trade’ working as an assistant to the well-respected Austrian-born theatre/opera director, Walter Felsenstein, the iconic boss of East Berlin's Komische Oper in the early post-war years. His philosophy was that opera went beyond singing to encompass music-theatre: the intersections between music, sound and theatrical performance therefore Friedrich’s productions focused on pure dramatic and musical values which were thoroughly researched and, indeed, finely balanced.
Such philosophy as found in Friedrich’s productions defines in my humble opinion Stefan Herheim’s direction. He has certainly crafted a brilliant Ring from the ashes of Valhalla to keep the Wagner flame truly alight at Deutsche Oper. He pulls no punches either and pays full attention to detail often incorporating ideological and historical references in his work. For instance, his celebrated 2009 production of Parsifal at Bayreuth, which I greatly enjoyed, used Parsifal and the search for the Holy Grail as a metaphor for the development of Germany as a Christian nation.
It's not often that I write about the London Festival of Architecture, but on 5 June 2026 Renaissance-21 is presenting Flow Interrupted, a prepared piano performance by Teodor Doré at Roca Gallery, London.
Set within Roca Gallery — a striking space conceived by Zaha Hadid — and presented in collaboration with Cluster, this immersive performance explores water, pollution, and belonging through a disrupted, evolving soundscape. The performance reflects on our fragile relationship with water through the altered voice of a prepared piano. Objects placed within the instrument - fragments evoking debris and pollution - transform its natural resonance into a disrupted, unfamiliar soundscape.
The result blends prepared piano, immersive sound art, and environmental installation,
Teodor Doré is a London-based composer and pianist, a graduate of the Liceu Conservatory in Barcelona and founder of Renaissance-21.
Korngold: Violin Sonata, Schoenberg: Phantasy, Richard Strauss: Violin Sonata; Francesca Dego, Alessandro Taverna; Conway Hall Reviewed 31 May 206
Youthful Korngold and Strauss before he was Strauss in a remarkable pair of big late-romantic sonatas that remain surprisingly little known, in passionate and committed performances
On Sunday 31 May 2026, violinist Francesca Dego and pianist Alessandro Taverna brought a pair of big violin sonatas to Conway Hall, both works by well-known composers yet neither work known. This remarkable pairing featured the violin sonatas by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Richard Strauss alongside Arnold Schoenberg's late Phantasy. Beforehand, I gave the pre-concert talk exploring the background to both the Korngold and the Strauss.
In this guest posting pianist Gavin Roberts, artistic director of Song in the City, introduces Creative Minds in Song.
On Friday 5 June, audiences at St Giles Cripplegate will hear the latest chapter in a project that has quietly changed lives through song for more than a decade. Creative Minds in Song, a collaboration between Song in the City, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and writers connected to local MIND community services, brings together composers, singers and community writers to create entirely new songs from original texts. The 2026 performances mark the fourth major iteration of the project, following earlier projects in 2015 (as reported in the Guardian) 2021 and 2023.
At its heart is a simple yet surprisingly radical idea: that poets, composers and performers should work together as equal creative partners. Writers do not simply hand over texts to be set; they become active collaborators in an artistic process that unfolds over months of conversation, experimentation and discovery.
This year's project has explored memory, identity, humour, survival, imagination and mental wellbeing. Through a series of workshops and rehearsals, Guildhall composers and singers have collaborated with community writers to create a new body of songs, many of which will receive their first performances in June.
What makes the project distinctive is its commitment to placing artistic excellence alongside lived experience. Emerging professional musicians are challenged to respond to living writers rather than historical texts. Writers hear their words transformed through music, often for the first time. Performers become advocates for stories that are personal, complex and deeply human.
The impact of that process has been evident throughout the project's history. Participants in previous Creative Minds in Song projects have described the experience as helping them ‘re-engage my creative faculties in a context that was fully respectful of the situation I was in’, while another reflected that ‘my world is gently opening... small baby steps for a new beginning.’
For composers, the experience can be equally significant. One participant described it as the project that helped them realise ‘my main artistic interest as a composer’, while another reflected that it offered ‘great hope for the future of de-stigmatising mental illness’ while opening new possibilities around creativity, collaboration and accessibility.
Creative Minds in Song (2021)
Over the years, I have increasingly come to believe that the project's success rests on a culture of listening. The writers are not merely the subject of the work; they are its creative engine. Their words shape the music, and their experiences challenge everyone involved to think differently about collaboration, communication and artistic responsibility.
The project has also benefited from the expertise of a number of artists and mentors who have helped shape its development over the years. Poet and actor Alexander Knox has provided invaluable guidance in writing workshops. Countertenor Andrew Watts and mezzo-soprano Sarah Walker have served as performance coaches across several iterations of the programme.
The resulting programme is strikingly varied. Some songs are lyrical and intimate, while others are theatrical, humorous or experimental. Together, they form a rich portrait of contemporary lives and voices, brought to life by a new generation of composers and performers.
On 5 June at St Giles Cripplegate and again on 21 June at the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, audiences will hear these works for the first time. They will encounter new music, certainly, but also something perhaps rarer: a space where community and artistic creativity meet on equal terms.
Creative Minds in Song is presented by Song in the City, in partnership with the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and writers connected to local MIND community services. Song in the City is a London-based arts charity that creates concerts, workshops and interdisciplinary projects that combine artistic excellence with meaningful social engagement. Founded in 2011, the charity works across performance, education and community collaboration to make live music accessible, inclusive and socially meaningful.
BBC Philharmonic & John Storgårds at Bridgewater Hall in 2024 (Photo: Chris Payne)
The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra's recently announced 2026/27 season spans from large-scale symphonic concerts at The Bridgewater Hall to more intimate performances at the RNCM, alongside ambitious large-scale collaborations at Aviva Studios and innovative live experiences at the orchestra’s home in MediaCityUK.
Cassandra Miller is composer in residence for 2026/27, and works to be performed include Swim, inspired by two chords by Robert Schumann and the writings of Anne Carson, and Chanter (with soloist Sean Shibe) which draws on Scottish folk music and the work of smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul [see my review of the premiere with Sean Shibe in 2024]. The residency concludes with the UK premiere of Dad Goes to the Mountain, informed by Peruvian banda music and themes of memory and perception.
Chief conductor John Storgårds opens the season with Gabriella Smith's Breathing Forests, with organ soloist James Vinnie [see my review of the UK premiere at the 2025 BBC Proms] alongside Sibelius' Symphony No. 5. Other new music at Bridgewater Hall includes a new orchestration of Miho Hazama's Dawn in Retiro, and music by Jennifer Higdon, Gabriela Ortiz and Caroline Shaw. In the series of concerts at the RNCM, contemporary composers include Errollyn Warren, Edmund Finnis, Tom Coult, Julia Wolfe and Alex Paxton.
Large scale works include the relative rarity, Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety’ and Strauss's Alpine Symphony. Principal guest conductor Anja Bihlmaier conducts Brahms' German Requiem, with soloists Julia Grüter and Joshua Hopkins, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death with soloists Hera Hyesang Park, Jess Dandy, Robin Tritschler, Paul Grant.
Following the UK premiere of Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone, the orchestra continues its collaboration with English National Opera and Factory International with a new staging of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s iconic 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach, directed by Phelim McDermott. This completes ENO and Improbable’s Glass Portrait Trilogy, following the success of Satyagraha and Akhnaten. The production premieres in Manchester at Aviva Studios in June 2027
Schumann: Piano Quintet - Igor Levit, Leonkoro Quartet - Wigmore Hall (Photo: Tom Wright/Wigmore Hall)
Henriëtte Bosmans: String Quartet, Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet; Igor Levit, Leonkoro Quartet; Wigmore Hall Reviewed 31 May 2026
A completely absorbing performance of the Schumann bringing a real sense of urgency to the music and refreshingly lacking romantic self-indulgence. The Quartet's performance of Bosmans' piece made you wonder why it was not better known
Wigmore Hall's 125th Anniversary Festival continues apace. On Sunday 31 May 2026, pianist Igor Levit joined the Leonkoro Quartet - Jonathan Schwarz and Emiri Kakiuchi (violin), Mayu Konoe (viola), Lukas Schwarz (cello) - for the second of two collaborations. Having performed Brahms's Piano Quintet in F minor Op. 34 together on Saturday evening, Sunday morning saw them performing Schumann's Piano Quintet. The quartet began the concert with Henriëtte Bosmans' String Quartet.
The BBC Proms, the world’s largest classical-music festival, salutes the USA in this year’s edition marking 250 years since the signing of the US Declaration of Independence.
A feast of music like no other, the BBC Proms (running from Friday 17th July to Saturday 12th September) illuminates London’s famous Royal Albert Hall for eight action-packed weeks offering music lovers the sheer joy of getting to see and hear some of the world’s greatest orchestras and soloists playing some of the world’s greatest music in one of London’s most iconic venues that rock guitarist, Eric Clapton, fondly dubs ‘The Albert’. Pint of twos, please!
So closely associated with Sir Henry Wood - lovingly known as ‘Old Timber’ who, incidentally, was no stranger to Norwich as he was artistic director/conductor of the Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival from 1908 to 1930 - this year’s Prom series features UK premières of major new works co-commissioned by the BBC from American composers Wynton Marsalis and Jessie Montgomery with appearances coming from prime conductors and star soloists as Simon Rattle, Marin Alsop, Angel Blue and Joyce DiDonato.
Interestingly, there are so many associations with conductors and composers linked to Norwich and the Proms. For instance, the N&N Triennial commissioned Scottish-born composer, Thea Musgrave to write ‘The Five Ages of Man’, a masterful choral/orchestral work based on Hesiod’s ‘Works and Days’ - the scenario depicting the Greek myth of the decline and fall of humanity through five distinct ages: gold, silver, bronze, heroes and iron - premièred in St Andrew’s Hall on 6th June 1964 conducted by Charles Mackerras.
Now 97 years old, Musgrave - who lived in Norfolk, Virginia (twinned, by the way, with Norfolk, England) for over a quarter of a century with her husband, Peter Mark, general music director of Virginia Opera from 1975 to 2010 - has come up with a new work for this year’s Prom series (a BBC commission) offering a bassoon concerto entitled ‘Out of the Darkness’ performed by Amy Harman (matinee show: 23 August) who has had works written for her by Olav Berg, Heloïse Werner, Brian Elias, Roxanna Panufnik, Robin Holloway and Simon Holt. A pretty good tally!
Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in rehearsal - Ellie Neate, Danielle de Niese, Jack Sandison - Wild Arts (Photo: Anastasia Tikhonova)
Wild Arts is a small but dynamic company that presents music and opera, touring from its base in Essex, under artistic director and founder Orlando Jopling. This year the company presenting a new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro with Danielle de Niese making her directorial debut and Orlando Jopling conducting. The cast features Jack Sandison as Figaro, Ellie Neate as Susanna, Timothy Nelson as Count Almaviva, Elinor Rolfe Johnson as Countess Almaviva and Abbie Ward as Cherubino. The work will be sung in a new translation by Danielle de Niese and Orlando Jopling, and accompanied by a ten-piece instrumental ensemble.
I recently went to join the company at rehearsals in South London where Danielle de Niese was working on the end of Act Two with Timothy Nelson, Elinor Rolfe Johnson and Ellie Neate, and afterwards I was able to find out more from Orlando Jopling.
In rehearsal, it was fascinating quite how much stress Danielle de Niese placed on the words. Not only focusing on meaning and sense, but stress too and trying different readings, and it was illuminating to hear how different inflections affect the results. It was also clear that the translation itself was malleable with Danielle de Niese and Orlando Jopling working on alternative readings to achieve the right effect. For much of the scene (the moment from the Count's entry) the attention was on the recitative and focusing on it as dialogue, but when the trio started Danielle de Niese was also paying great attention to the staging logistics, the farce elements.
Afterwards, when I chatted to Orlando he commented that the singers were loving the rehearsal process and really believed in the work. Danielle de Niese has evidently come up with some interesting solutions to the challenges of staging various scenes, and Orlando describes the overall intention as being like good TV drama where details make so much difference. They are rehearsing the recitatives by speaking them so that the music comes in the natural rhythm of speech and pacing. Orlando's aim is that people will forget that the cast is singing and that this will draw the audience into the story. They have also been doing a lot of work on the music of the recitatives themselves, thinking about the placement of the chords, what they mean and whether the chord precipitates the next line or references what has just happened. Orlando adds that Mozart and Da Ponte are so amazingly brilliant that the music gives the right shape to the drama with so much satisfying detail.
Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in rehearsal - Wild Arts (Photo: Anastasia Tikhonova)
As regards the musical side of things, Orlando is the least of controlling of conductors. He feels that if the drama is right then the music will be right. He wants the impulse for the music to come from the singers' minds rather than insisting that they watch him all the time. He thinks that too often in performance control by the conductor is put ahead of the natural organic drama, responding to what the singers are feeling and thinking.
Mozart: Cosi fan tutte - Osian Wyn Bowen, Madeline Boreham, Paul Grant - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Craig Fuller)
Mozart: Cosi fan tutte: Madeline Boreham, Shakira Tsindos, Osian Wyn Bowen, Paul Grant, Elizabeth Karani, Paul Carey Jones, director: Cecilia Stinton, City of London Sinfonia, conductor: Charlotte Corderoy; Opera Holland Park Reviewed 28 May 2026
Musical quality triumphs in Cecilia Stinton's over-active Italian package holiday-themed production with a young cast led by conductor Charlotte Corderoy really showing their Mozartian chops
When Mozart's Cosi fan tutte last appeared at Opera Holland Park (OHP) in 2018 [see my review] the young artists playing the lovers were Eleanor Dennis, Kitty Whately, Nick Pritchard and Nicholas Lester, all now well on their way to being distinguished names, and one wonders what a production featuring them would be like now. The sisters being somewhat more mature, perhaps having a holiday fling!
That 2018 production was also firmly and attractively set in the 18th century. For their new production at this year's Opera Holland Park, director Cecilia Stinton [who directed Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor here last year, see my revew] and designer Neil Irish have decided to take the opera's ideas of two women holidaying near Naples and give it a more contemporary gloss so that the sisters are on a distinctly modern package deal holiday.
Mozaart: Cosi fan tutte - Elizabeth Karani - Opera Holland Park 2026 (Photo: Craig Fuller)
During the overture we watched passengers arriving for holidays against a backdrop of a huge Naples travel poster. The mood was deliberately upbeat and at the end of the overture Fiordiligi and Dorabella were left, unmet, at the airport. The setup seemed to be that Ferrando and Guglielmo were American servicemen stationed in Naples, and both Don Alfonso and Despina worked in the hotel where the sisters were staying. Act One unfolded against a series of imaginative (and very funny) scenes as the sisters did the usual tourist activities. The men's disguises were as ancient Romans and dressing up became a theme as, when the sisters finally took the plunge they dressed up too, as did Despina and Don Alfonso.
Throughout, Neil Irish's designs made the most of very little, creating a series of imaginative and effective settings yet allowing scenes to flow. A single ticket booth did multiple duty - airport arrivals, hotel reception, ticket desk at Pompeii - thus ensuring we knew where we were! The introduction of quasi-erotic Roman frescoes during Act Two only ensured that the opera's underlying theme was emphasised.
Richard Strauss & his father, Franz Photographed in 1901
On Sunday 31 May 2026, Italian-American violinist Francesca Dego and pianist Alessandro Taverna, who came to international prominence at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2009, make their debut at Conway Hall in a concert that features the violin sonatas of Korngold and Richard Strauss, alongside Schoenberg's Phantasy, Op. 47.
Both sonatas are relatively early works, and both Korngold and Strauss were child prodigies, much influenced by dominant fathers. Both composers would eventually escape their father's influence with Richard Strauss taking on board the music of Wagner and Liszt, whilst Korngold escaped into the Golden Age of Viennese operetta.
I will be exploring this and much more in my pre-concert talk, Late Romantic which takes place at 5.30pm in advance of the concert at 6.30pm.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of John Dowland. Numerous concerts, festivals and special projects are being held throughout the country to commemorate his legacy with Norwich at the forefront of the celebrations.
The famous English Renaissance composer, lutenist and singer, John Dowland, is being honoured and remembered in Norwich on the 400th anniversary of his death with a four-day festival in July featuring concerts, masterclasses, talks and workshops curated by two renowned Dowland experts - lutenist Daniel Murphy and lute-maker David Van Edwards.
Therefore, Dowland’s melancholic and beautiful music - either for solo lute, singer or ensemble - will be laid bare in all its ravishing beauty at Norwich’s historic Octagon Chapel in Colegate with the festival running from Thursday 23 July to Sunday 26 July.
Not only does Dowland 400 salute John Dowland - considered one of the defining and most famous musicians of the Elizabethan era - it also brings to life the lasting impact this pioneering musician had on music of the Renaissance period (circa 1400-1600) defined by a transition from single-line chanting to complex intertwining melodies. Driven by a cultural rebirth, this era saw the rise of music printing, secular courtly songs and expanded instrument families particularly the lute and harpsichord.
James Sillett: The Octagon Chapel, Norwich (Norfolk Museums Collections)
Launched in 2007, Tête à Tête will be 30 next year! But this year the company shows no sign of slacking. From 3 to 6 July the latest chapter in their longstanding partnership with the Royal College of Music features five new short operas. Fantasy & Fairytales features new work created for young audiences; each opera opens out a different fantastical world, drawing on folklore and storytelling to explore human experience. The creative team includes director Bill Bankes-Jones (artistic director of Tête à Tête), conductor Michael Rosewell and designer Sarah Jane Booth.
Fantasy & Fairytales includes Daniel Musashi’s Ogga Loggas, in which ancient forests and age-old curses teach us the importance of looking after our world, and Lasha Kharkhelauri’s Ramona, a Georgian tale of love and upheaval set inside a puppet theatre as well as Asher Joyce’s Three Lives, Deniz Dortok’s The Boy Who Went to Find Fear and Ruvin Meda’s The Nightingale and the Rose.
And from 8 to 20 September, the company's flagship Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival returns to the Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone for new operas that include a quadruple bill of young composers. There are operas on the last eight days of Mary Queen of Scots, Frankenstein, and a Cornish-language setting of Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott. There is an international collaboration spanning Finland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Germany, opera from a Ukrainian composer, a Hong Kong artist, an opera exploring relationships between people and their languages, incorporating Cantonese
And just to show that the company spreads its wings wider than London, last month (20 to 25 April) they presented The Rain Show in Tyneside and Cornwall. The Rain Show was a collaboration between British and Kenyan artists bringing workshops and performance into schools across North Tyneside and Cornwall. Delivered in partnership with Across Arts (led by producer Helene Mathiesen), and Baraka Opera Kenya, the project introduced young people to opera through cross-cultural exchange and culminated in a public performance on 25 April. The creative team featured librettist Nami Shah and composer Shaka Lwaki.
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