A new Eugene Onegin, Orpheus returns, a second chance for Dead Man Walking: Opera North announces an imaginative new season for 2026/27

Verdi: Rigoletto - Sir Willard White, Callum Thorpe, Eric Greene, Roman Arndt, Themba Mvula - Opera North 2022 (Photo Clive Barda)

Opera North has announced its 2026/2027 season which is a canny mix of the new and the old. Autumn sees a new production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin alongside a revival of the 2022 production of Verdi's Rigoletto. Christmas at the Howard Assembly Room features a new production of Will Todd's A Christmas Carol.

Spring sees a revival of Don Giovanni alongside the company's first performances of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking in the production first seen last year at ENO. There is also a new concert staging of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde alongside the exciting prospect of a revival of Jasdeep Singh Degun’s reimagining of Monteverdi’s Orfeo.

The new production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Opera North's first in over 20 years, is a co-production with Irish National Opera and Opera Queensland. It will be directed by Patrick Nolan, artistic director of Opera Queensland, with designs by Leslie Travers and Elizabeth Gadsby, and conducted by Garry Walker, music director of Opera North. American baritone John Brancy takes the title role with Verity Wingate at Tatyana, Caspar Singh and Jingwen Cai as Lensky and Joshua Bloom as Gremin.

Director Femi Elufowoju Jr returns to Opera North to revive his production of Rigoletto which debuted in 2022 [see my review], conducted Patrick Lange. . Blake Denson makes his Opera North and role debut as Rigoletto, while Jasmine Habersham returns as Gilda, with Leonardo Sánchez as the Duke. Sir Willard White returns as Count Monterone, and other cast members include Callum Thorpe, Themba Mvula and Thomas Elwin.

Building on the success of the company's ‘Pay what you can’ performance of La bohème which saw 89 percent of tickets booked by people who had never been to an opera before, tickets for an additional Rigoletto performance will be offered on a ‘Pay what you can’ basis with support from the Laidlaw Opera Trust. A relaxed matinée for anyone who prefers a more informal theatre environment is also planned in Leeds.

Playwright David Simpatico, takes Dickens’ original words from A Christmas Carol and added some extra festive sparkle by including variations on traditional Victorian carols, all set to music by Will Todd. Garry Walker conducts and PJ Harris directs with members of the Chorus of Opera North accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble.

I missed Alessandro Talevi's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni when it was new, so look forward to making its acquaintance. The conductor is Chloe Rooke, with Mark Stone in the title role, with Sara Cortolezzis as Donna Anna, Alexandra Lowe as Donna Elvira, David Ireland as Leporello, Anthony Gregory as Don Ottavio, and Claire Lees as Zerlina.

The production of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking is a co-production with English National Opera and Finnish National Opera. Directed by Annilese Miskimmon and conducted by Ben Glassberg, the cast features Christine Rice reprising her role (and making her Opera North debut) as Sister Helen with Johannes Moore (who made such an impression in Britten's Peter Grimes recently, see my review) as Joseph De Rocher and Kate Royal as Mrs Patrick De Rocher.

Monteverdi & Jasdeep Singh Degun: Orpheus - Jasdeep Singh Degun - Opera North 2022 (Photo: Tom Arber)

Orpheus, which features music by Monteverdi alongside that of Jasdeep Singh Degun, places the South Asian and western baroque singers and musicians centre stage, focusing on the incredible musicality of the piece, winning awards when the production was new in 2022. For this revival, Jasdeep Singh Degun and Ashok Gupta are music directors and the production is presented in collaboration with SAA-uk.

The new staging of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde will be conducted by the company's principal guest conductor, Anthony Hermus, and directed by Peter Mumford (who directed the company's Ring Cycle). The cast includes John Matthew Myers and Wendy Bryn Harmer (in their Opera North debuts) in the title roles. The production debuts at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall and travels to the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham and Symphony Hall, Birmingham before ending at the newly refurbished Leeds Town Hall.

Summer 2026, sees the company back at Nevill Holt Festival for the second year of their five-year collaboration. James Hurley directs Donizetti's Don Pasquale, conducted by Michael Papadopoulos. An opera that the company has not performed for 35 years. Grant Doyle sings the title role, with Harriet Eyley as Norina, Aaron Godfrey-Mayes as Ernesto and Henry Neill as Malatesta. Plans for the 2027 collaboration with Nevill Holt will be announced later this year.

Highlights of the Orchestra of Opera North's 2026-2027 Kirklees Concert Season include Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and Mahler’s Ninth conducted by Garry Walker. Antony Hermus will conduct Debussy, Ravel and Richard Strauss, while guest conductors include Ryan Wigglesworth and Erina Yashima. Distilled, the company’s popular series of intimate lunchtime chamber concerts, continues at Dewsbury Town Hall and the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, featuring repertoire chosen and played by members of the Orchestra.

The company's widely admired In Harmony programme reaches over 3,200 pupils each week in 13 schools, while structured vocal and instrumental learning pathways are offered through the Company’s Talent Development Programme. The coming year brings Opera North’s first matinées for primary schoolchildren featuring the popular operatic whodunnit The Big Opera Mystery, and a Creative Industries Insight Day for secondary schools, which will include workshops and a performance of Don Giovanni adapted for schools at Leeds Grand Theatre.

Building on the success of the monthly Melodic Memories sessions for people with dementia and their carers, Opera North will be launching a new monthly Dementia Café to be held in the company’s HAR bar on New Briggate in Leeds. The adult online singing workshops From Couch to Chorus return with an opportunity to sing with the Chorus of Opera North either remotely or in person.

Full details from Opera North's website.

Letter from Florida: Lisette Oropesa delivers fireworks at Palm Beach Opera's 2026 Gala

Lisette Oropesa & members of Palm Beach Opera - Palm Beach Opera 2026 Gala

Palm Beach Opera 2026 Gala; Lisette Oropesa, Micheal Borowitz; Mediterranean Ballroom, The Breakers (1896, Palm Beach Inn), Palm Beach, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras (2 March 2026)

What do fireworks, opera and Cuba have in common? 

Behind and over our shoulders, the first notes of Jules Massenet’s Gavotte served as a sound and voice check for one Lisette Oropesa. All relaxed systems go. Bird of passage concert galas like these bubble over when there is something of a laid back tone. 

As Manon, Ms. Oropesa’s way invites something like insouciance. Her direct communications to the audience between numbers take another direction, inviting something of the formal. The soprano has a way of making a comfortable fit out of the fun and frolic and the glitz and glamour for Palm Beach Opera’s (PBO) 2026 Gala presentation.

Throughout Europe and the Americas in 2026, opera’s most historic spaces will play host to its most luminescent performers in concerts like this one. To have this event in Palm Beach is a bit of an exceptional coup, with one exceptional headliner after another dating back to when Renee Fleming came to town in 2013. Others that have topped PBO Gala marquees over the years – Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Sondra Radvanovsky, Christian Van Horn, Nadine Sierra, Matthew Polenzani, Piotr Beczala, and Anna Netrebko.

Palm Beach Opera 2026 Gala at The Breakers, Palm Beach

A coterie of the company’s male resident artists, Lisette Oropesa’s escorts, framed the stage and the fireworks around the piano for that first number. The evening’s expectations may have been high, but the explosions came from the lower part of the stave as much as above it. Oropesa’s Manon, while still in warm-up mode, is the personification of the adage “youth is wasted on the young.” 

Divine Impresario - Nicolini on Stage: countertenor Randall Scotting explores the musical world of the first major castrato to sing in London

Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage: Broschi, Gasparini, Handel, Porpora, Mancini, Ariosto, Giaj; Randall Scotting, Mary Bevan, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Signum Classics
Reviewed 3 March 2026

The first major castrato to sing in London who wowed audiences with his performances, Nicolini is an intriguing figure and on this disc Randall Scotting weaves a fascinating selection of arias written for Nicolini into an engaging recital

If you refer to an 18th century castrato then the likelihood is the first name to come time mind will be Farinelli who caused a sensation during his lifetime and whose reputation remains. But there were others, and the first to cause a stir in London, singing in the first complete Italian opera there, was Nicolò Grimaldi known as Nicolini. In London, Nicolini is associated with his roles for Handel: the title roles in Rinaldo (in 1711) and Amadigi di Gaula (in 1715). But he was more than simply a singer, being involved in the operas themselves.

It is these aspects of Nicolini's career that countertenor Randall Scotting's new disc on Signum Classics, Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage seeks to illuminate. Joined by soprano Mary Bevan, the Academy of Ancient Music and Laurence Cummings, Scotting performs music from Broschi's Idaspe (Venice, 1730), Gasparini's Ambleto (London, 1712), Handel's Rinaldo (London, 1711), Porpora's Siface (Venice, 1726), Handel's Amadigi (London, 1715), Gasparini's Antioco (London, 1711), Mancini's Idaspe Fedele (London 1710), Ariosto's Tito Manlio (London, 1717), Gasparini's Tomiri (London, 1709), and Giaj's Mitridate (Venice, 1729).

Nicolini made his debut in London with Scarlatti's Pirro e Demetrio which had nearly 60 performances between 1708 and 1717. Another early success was Mancini's Idaspe fedele, where Nicolini wowed audiences with a scene where, wearing a flesh-coloured bodysuit, he wrestled with a lion. A scene so popular it had to be encored. Nicolini had brought the score of Idaspe with him to London, but it was adapted for London according to his wishes with the music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch (of Threepenny Opera fame). 

Nicolini had created the role of Idaspe in Mancini's Idaspe fedele in 1705, so when he came to London the opera was clearly a favourite he wanted to revive. And still, in 1730 in Venice he would return to the role of Idaspe for the fourth time, this time in Ricardo Broschi's Idaspe (originally written for Broschi's brother, Farinelli).

Painting of a rehearsal for Scarlatti’s Pirro e Demetrio by the Venetian master Marco Ricci from around 1709; Nicolini stands poised at the center of the scene.

Opera historian Angus Heriot claims that with his arrival in London, Nicolini was "perhaps more than any other single person responsible for the popularity of Italian opera in England". Nicolini was based in London from 1708 to 1712, then for the next four years he iterated between Italy and London, returning for Handel's Amadigi and Ariosti's Tito manlio. By the 1720s he is a somewhat mature, more elder-statesman performing in Europe but seems to have had something of a golden season in Venice in 1729 and 1730. The disc reflects these two, the London operas and the late Venetian ones.

From Wynton Marsalis to Scriabin, from Mozart to Missy Mazzoli: Edinburgh International Festival launches the 2026 season on theme of All Rise

Nicola Benedetti (Image: Andrew Perry)

Under the title All Rise, this year's Edinburgh International Festival is presenting 24 days of performances from 7 to 30 August 2026. Nicola Benedetti's fourth programme as Festival Director features 147 performances in total with five world premieres and eight works commissioned by the festival. Over 2000 artists will be taking part, of which over 700 are Scots. And the Festival feels that nowhere else in the UK does a festival have the ability to take such creative risks

Whilst this year's title, All Rise, rather makes me think of 'The Ladies who Lunch' from Sondheim's Company, the phrase is in fact the name of a work by Wynton Marsalis that will open the festival, performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (with Marsalis in his final year as artistic director), the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Edinburgh Festival Chorus and Jason Max Ferdinand Singers, some 200 performers in all, conducted by James Gaffigan.

This opening work points to the Festival's theme, as it sheds a spotlight on the USA during the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Independence (though whether, by August, we will feel like celebrating the USA is a moot point.) The Festival is presenting the largest number of American artists in its history and aims to focus themes arising from a focus on the USA - freedom, ingenuity, hypocrisy, prejudice. The Festival was founded in 1947 in the belief that culture could help rebuild understanding between nations. Benedetti explained that in 2026 what they wanted to do was avoid the myth and effectively remythologise through art to create a truer but messier story of the USA.

The Festival will feature the premiere of Missy Mazzoli's opera The Galloping Cure, with libretto by Royce Vavrek. The work will be staged by Tom Morris, thus reuniting Mazzoli, Vavrek and Morris after the 2019 staging of Breaking the Waves. The new opera is an allegory about the opioid crisis, a darkly funny tale that is a devastating critique of contemporary society. It features a cast including Daniela Mack, Justin Austin and Susan Bullock, conducted by Stuart Stratford.

Still on the American theme. Zurich Opera will be bringing their production of Verdi's A Masked Ball, directed by Adele Thomas and conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. The production uses the original, Boston version of the libretto but resets the piece in the American Gilded Age. There are two casts, Stephen Costello, Dalibero Jenis and Elena Stikhina, and Piero Pretti, George Petean and Erika Grimaldi.

There are two operas in concert. Mozart's Don Giovanni features Maxim Emelyanychev conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Konstantin Krimmel, Michael Sumuel, Louse Alder, Janai Brugger and Hera Hyesang Park. Strauss's Elektra features Karina Canellakis conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Irene Theorin, Vida Mikneviciute and Nina Stemme.

Verdi: A Masked Ball - Zurich Opera (Photo: Herwig Prammer)

The return of the King's Theatre after refurbishment means that the venue becomes the focus for some of the theatre programme. International Theater Amsterdam is bringing Ivo van Hove's production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America with the two plays compressed into a single five-hour evening.

A collaboration between the Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Holland Festival, all three of which were established in 1947, will feature A Trial, conceived and directed by Christiane Jatahy with actor Wagner Moura. A sequel to Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, the work will put Thomas Stockmann on trial, and it will be up to the audience to judge. Belgian company Olympique Dramatique brings together a cast of Deaf and hearing actors to reimagine Chekov's The Seagull performed largely in sign language. Khashabi Theatre with writer/director Bashar Murkus and dramaturg Khulood Basel will be presenting a retelling of the legendary 14th century poem The Epic of Bani Hilal combining physical theatre, music, puppetry and dance, mixing Palestinian folklore with Arab performance styles.

The Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra is finally making its Festival debut and besides the opening concert there is also Duke Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige and the premiere of a collaboration with pianist Yuja Wang. A jazz-adjacent concert will feature the National Youth Orchestra of the USA conducted by Karina Canellakis in Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F with Kirill Gerstein and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.

There is a residency for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, when Gustavo Dudamel conducts concerts including the UK premiere of Gabriela Ortiz's Revolucion diamantina, a work focusing on female violence and Mexican feminism, and Thomas Ades's Inferno, alongside Beethoven symphonies. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal and conductor Rafael Payare will be performing Coleridge Taylor's complete 1899 cantata trilogy, The Song of Hiawatha, the first time it has been performed at the festival. There is also a concert featuring music by Canadian Indigenous composers. The Berlin Philharmonic returns to the Festival after a gap of 20 years with a two-concert residency conducted by Kirill Petrenko including by Elgar's Enigma Variations, music by Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, and Scriabin's Symphony No. 3 'Le divine poeme'.

Bach to Bach will feature a marathon day of Bach's music with a come-and-sing Bach chorales event, the complete cello suites from Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Vikingur Olafsson in recital.

The Epic of Bani Hilal - (Photo: Khulood Basel)

Concerts at the Queen's Hall feature the Dunedin Consort in the Scottish premiere of Tansy Davies's Passion of Mary Magdalene based on non-canonical gospels and ancient texts, guitarist Sean Shibe's Festival debut, a new commission from composer Stuart Macrae and performances from the Festival's Rising Stars.

Alabama's The Legacy Museum, in its first international exhibition, is presenting The Legacy of Slavery at the Playfair Library charting not only the history of racial injustice in America but also Scotland's links to slavery. A series of post-show talks with the creative teams will complement seven productions in the opera and theatre programme.

Over 50,000 tickets will be available for £30 or less including £10 'give it a go' tickets for all events. And there are free tickets for 8-18-year olds, NHS staff, charity workers and low-income benefit recipients.

Full details from the Festival website.

A life of quiet industry: songs by Ina Boyle alongside her teachers & friends from Ailish Tynan, Paula Murrihy, Robin Tritschler, Iain Burnside at Wigmore Hall

Ina Boyle

Ina Boyle: a Rediscovery, songs by Ina Boyle, Charles Wood, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Elizabeth Maconchy; Ailish Tynan, Paula Murrihy, Robin Tritschler, Iain Burnside; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 10 March 2026

An exploration of Irish composer Ina Boyle's song legacy in performances that were never less than engaging and sometimes profoundly moving, leaving one puzzled as to why we don't know this repertoire better 

Ina Boyle is an intriguing figure: she might be said to have lived a life of quiet industry, with music and family being important to her. She was relatively prolific even though she hardly travelled after World War Two, yet few songs were published in her lifetime.

Born and brought up in County Wicklow, family was important, and she lived in Wicklow all her life. Though she had some success during her lifetime, she remained somewhat on the fringes. Lessons with Ralph Vaughan Williams during the 1920s and 1930s and friendship with some of his other female pupils has led her to be associated with composers such as Elizabeth Maconchy (with whom she had a 50-year friendship), Elizabeth Lutyens and Grace Williams, but it is worth bearing in mind that she was around 20 years older than them.

Her music is in the process of being rediscovered yet though there have been discs of her songs (on Delphian) and her orchestral music (on Dutton Epoch), it has not yet reached common currency.

On 10 March 2025 at Wigmore Hall, Ina Boyle: a Rediscovery presented Ailish Tynan (soprano), Paula Murrihy (mezzo-soprano), Robin Tritschler (tenor) and Iain Burnside (piano) in a programme of Ina Boyle's songs performed alongside those of her teachers, Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and her friend Elizabeth Maconchy. Rather impressively for a programme of somewhat less-known music, all of Boyle's songs were performed from memory.

Meaning & drama: Bach's St John Passion from Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists with Peter Whelan, Nick Pritchard, Konstantin Krimmel

Bach: St John Passion - Nick Pritchard, Peter Whelan, Konstantin Krimmel, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists - St Martin in the Fields (Photo: Paul Marc Mitchell)

Bach: St John Passion; Nick Pritchard, Konstantin Krimmel, Julia Doyle, Rebecca Leggett, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Peter Whelan; St Martin in the Fields
Reviewed 10 March 2026

Nick Pritchard's Evangelist on compelling form and complemented by a performance of satisfyingly dramatic urgency from Peter Whelan, choir and orchestra in an account of the St John Passion that filled the space

Peter Whelan, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists are in the middle of a short tour of Bach's St John Passion. Last week they were in Barcelona and early next month they are in Budapest, with a performance in London on 10 March 2026 at St Martin in the Fields [and yes, the day after Peter Whelan conducted his Irish Baroque Orchestra at Wigmore Hall, see my review].

Nick Pritchard was the Evangelist and sang the tenor arias, Konstantin Krimmel was Jesus and sang the bass arias, with Julia Doyle singing the soprano arias, and Rebecca Leggett (from the choir) singing the alto arias. The other solo roles were taken by choir members with Malachy Frame as Pilate, Cressida Sharp as the maid, Will Wright as the officer and servant and Tristan Hambleton as Peter.

Bach: St John Passion - Nick Pritchard, Peter Whelan, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists - St Martin in the Fields (Photo: Paul Marc Mitchell)

Whelan conducted the standard version of Bach's St John Passion, with a choir of 23 (including a mix of male and female altos) and orchestra of 23. Whelan directed from the harpsichord (an instrument that in sound terms was a bit underpowered) with continuo also provided by organ and lute. In sonic terms it was a very powerful, up-front performance with the choral and orchestral sound enveloping the audience. Balance was good and in the big choral numbers you never felt that the focus was too much on the choir.

The first Thai composer to be commissioned to write for a major European opera house: Prach Boondiskulchok's new operas in Amsterdam and Brussels

Prach Boondiskulchok

Composer Prach Boondiskulchok is perhaps as well known as a pianist, as part of the Linos Piano Trio [see my review of their 2023 disc, Maurice Ravel: In search of lost dance] but that may be about to change.

His opera short Lesson will be premiered in the Opera Forward showcase at the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam on 12 March by Dutch National Opera as part of a programme of seven new operas under the banner of Harvest. Harvest is the result of mezzo-soprano and director Cora Burggraaf’s invitation to a group of contemporary composers to each write a short monodrama in close collaboration with several well-experienced singers. Each composer and musician collaboration provokes a fresh approach to straddling the tension of opera: contextualising itself within historical repertoire whilst innovating forwards, with new conceptualisations of colour and texture. 

But his full-length opera Burmese Days, based on George Orwell’s 1936 debut novel Burmese Days, has been commissioned by La Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels and will be premiered in summer 2027. The work is an exploration of the colonial mores at an exclusive members club in the dying days of the British Empire.  Controversy and tensions arise when the club admits their first non-European member.   Political ambitions and romantic entanglements spill over against the backdrop of colonial machinery and Buddhist cosmology.  The opera is scored for classical ensemble Het Muziek and virtuoso musicians from Myanmar and Thailand (Hsaign Waing and Piphat music) – this will be a modern synthesis of Western and Southeast Asian music traditions.

In 2025, Boondiskulchok was a resident composer with Het Muziek (formerly Asko|Schönberg Ensemble) conducting research and development for his new opera, Burmese Days.  He is the first Thai composer to be commissioned to write for a major European opera house. 

Further information from his website.

Storytelling, musicality & musicology: Hugh Cutting, Peter Whelan & Irish Baroque Orchestra in The Trials of Tenducci at Wigmore Hall

Thomas Gainsborough: Portrait of Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci (c. 1773)
(Photo: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts)

The Trials of Tenducci: Mozart, Johann Christian Bach, Gluck, Thomas Arne, Johann Christian Fischer, Tommaso Giordani; Hugh Cutting, Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 9 March 2026

Irish Baroque Orchestra makes a welcome visit to London with a wonderful evening combining story-telling and virtuosity, exploring music associated with the impecunious Italian castrato Tenducci on his travels in England & Ireland with performances of great presence and bravura

When I interviewed Peter Whelan last year he talked about his interest not only in music but in the stories behind it, [see my interview 'Spurred on by the story-telling'] and this is exemplified by his series of discs with Irish Baroque Orchestra exploring Ireland's 18th century musical heritage by focusing on particular characters. Notable amongst these was their 2021 disc The Trials of Tenducci on Linn Records [see my review] focusing on the Italian castrato, Tenducci who made a career in England and Ireland along with getting himself into one or two scrapes!

On Monday 9 March 2026, Peter Whelan and Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO) were joined by countertenor Hugh Cutting for a concert version of The Trials of Tenducci at Wigmore Hall. The programme included music that Tenducci had sung, music by composers with whom he was friends and music by contemporaries in Ireland, including pieces by Mozart, Johann Christian Bach, Gluck, Thomas Arne, Johann Christian Fischer and Tommaso Giordani.

New music, rare Mahler, the Big Sing, Eric Coates & young musicians: Cheltenham Music Festival 2026

South Cotswold Big Sing Group

Artistic director Jack Bazalgette has announced the full programme for the 81st Cheltenham Music Festival which runs from 3 to 11 July 2026. Bazalgette, promises "a chance to bring all kinds of people together and take the temperature of classical music today, get really excited for its future, and expand our horizons ever further."

The festival opens with Nicholas Collon conducting Aurora Orchestra in Jessie Montgomery's Strum, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with soloist Benjamin Grosvenor and Mozart's Symphony No. 41 'Jupiter' played from memory.  David Crown will be conducting Cheltenham Bach Choir and the Musical and Amicable Society Orchestra in Verdi's Requiem with a terrific line-up of soloists - Ella Taylor, Rebecca Afonwy-Jones, Tom Elwin and Julian Close. Then the festival will be closed by John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London in a programme of English music from Vaughan Williams to Richard Rodney Bennett, with a focus on the music Eric Coates.

Another large-scale concert in more ways than one takes place at Tewkesbury Abbey when Adrian Partington conducts the British Sinfonietta and South Cotswold Big Sing Group in Bruckner's Te Deum and Mahler's Das Klagende Lied. Mahler wrote Das Klagende Lied between 1878 and 1880, then continued tinkering with it until the work was finally premiered in 1901. During that time, Mahler radically restructured the performing forces and reduced the work to two movements from three. Adrian Partington has opted to perform Mahler's 1893 revision which is still in three parts but reduces the performing forces somewhat (the number of harps in the first part being reduced from six to two, and the vocal soloists from eleven to four!). This is thought to be the first time that this version has been performed in the UK.

Soloists include pianists Mariam Bastsashvili (in Schubert and Liszt), Angela Hewitt (in Bach, Schumann and Ravel) and Pavel Kolesnikov (in an extended recital exploring Chopin’s complete Nocturnes). Siblings Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason have a duo concert, performing Fanny Mendelssohn, Nadia Boulanger, Robert Schumann and a transcription of Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata. Soprano Sophie Bevan and pianist Christopher Glynn join Harriet Walter for Shakespeare's Sisters featuring music inspired by Shakespeare alongside readings.

Senegalese multi-instrumentalist Dudù Kouate will be joining Irish folk musician, Shunya, and Jess Gillam Trio will deliver an energetic repertoire inspired by classical, jazz and folk.

The Festival's second Friday will feature a showcase concert for the members of this year's Composer Academy led by composer Laura Bowler, with the Carice Singers and George Parris. 

New commissions feature across the programme: Irish-Italian violinist Violetta Suvini and Friends will perform three world premieres – from Jasmine Morris, Ben Nobuto and Imogen Davey. Vision String Quartet will perform their own commissioned piece for the first time, alongside works by Mozart and Grieg, all from memory.

In exciting collaboration, Fantasia Orchestra will perform with Jasdeep Singh Degun several of the sitar player’s own compositions, including a brand new co-commission, In Search of Redemption. They will also perform, among other pieces, Terry Riley’s revolutionary In C.

The collaboration with BBC New Generation Artists returns this year with recitals from Astatine Trio, Hana Chang (violin) and Oleg Shebeta-Dragan (clarinet). Also returning will be the Festival's Concert for Schools and SEND-focused Relaxed Concert for Schools and Relaxed Concert for Families. And the winner of the Gloucestershire Musician of the Year, 18-year-old Herbie Asquith-Dixon (violin) will perform Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 with Gloucestershire Symphony Orchestra, conductor Glyn Oxley.

Cheltenham Bach Choir at Cheltenham Town Hall (Photo: Still Moving Media for Cheltenham Festivals)

For the Festival's opening weekend there are free pop-up concerts around town featuring a wide variety of artists from two brass bands, a saxophone quartet, and Tewkesbury Pub Singers to Iranian voice and guitar, Ukrainian bandura and voice, and Community "come and sing".

Full details from the festival website.

From Sappho to Strozzi to Errollyn Wallen: Nardus Williams, Elizabeth Kenny & Mary Beard's Women and Power at Wigmore Hall

Riana Duncan cartoon from Punch (1988) - From Flickr

Women and power: Maddalena Casulana, Isabella de’ Medici, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Settimia Caccini, Rosa Giacinta Badalla, Claudia Sessa, Errollyn Wallen; Nardus Williams, Elizabeth Kenny, Mary Beard; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 8 March 2026

Mary Beard brings out the political undertones and classical references in music by 16th and 17th century Italian women composers in pleasingly direct and intimate performances from Nardus Williams and Elizabeth Kenny leading to the premiere of a terrific piece by Errollyn Wallen.

International Women's Day at Wigmore Hall began with Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective in Fanny Mendelssohn's Piano Trio, plus music by Madeleine Dring, Amy Beach and Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, then in the afternoon violist Rosalind Ventris presented a programme of unaccompanied viola music from 20th and 21st centuries by Lilian Fuchs, Imogen Holst, Elizabeth Maconchy, Thea Musgrave, Sally Beamish, and Amanda Feery.

In the evening, Nardus Williams (soprano), Elizabeth Kenny (lute/theorbo) and Mary Beard (speaker) presented Women and Power, an evening that mixed 16th and 17th century Italian music by women composers with Beard's illuminating discourse and ended with the premiere of Errollyn Wallen's setting of Carol Ann Duffy, Eurydice.

There were seven historic composers featured, Maddalena Casulana (c.1544-1566/83), Isabella de’ Medici (1542-1576), Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), Francesca Caccini (1587-1641), Settimia Caccini (c.1591-1660), Rosa Giacinta Badalla (c.1660-c.1710), and Claudia Sessa (c.1570-c.1613/9).

A rich feast of poetry, symbolism & mime: The Music Troupe in Edward Lambert's Lorca-inspired In Five Years’ Time

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time - James Schouten, Chris Murphy - The Music Troupe (Photo: Claire Shovelton)

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time; James Schouten, Rosalind Dobson, Mae Heydorn, Lucy Gibbs, Fiona Hymns, Jean-Max Lattemann, Chris Murphy, Thomas Stevenson, The Music Troupe, director: Walter Hall, music director: Alistair Burton; The Croft Hall, Hungerford
Reviewed by Chris de Souza, 1 March 2026

Turning the intimate space of the Croft Hall, Hungerford into a world of magic, The Music Troupe performs Edward Lambert's In Five Years’ Time, a rich feast of poetry, symbolism and mime, where Lamberts music adds and draws out something extra from Federico García Lorca’s words

If you were looking for interesting music theatre, would you look in Hungerford? Perhaps you should, because from time to time Edward Lambert turns up with his company The Music Troupe at the Croft Hall, and turns the intimate space into a world of magic. Never more so than on March 1st when they presented their latest production In Five years Time. It’s based on a surrealist play by Federico García Lorca, whose complex dream-scape, once believed unstageable, Lambert has made into a beautiful precis of moonlit characters who inhabit a past, present and future at any moment.

This is something music can do better than any other art form, and something which Lambert thrives on. Lorca’s poetic symbolism of water and shadow and moonlight comes to life through the easy flow of his melodies, and the wide open harmonies they create in combination.

Edward Lambert: In Five Years’ Time - The Music Troupe (Photo: Claire Shovelton)

The story of an artist trying to find his inspiration until he is finally killed became horridly and uncannily prophetic of Lorca’s own life. He was murdered during the Spanish Civil War five years to the day after he signed and dated his playscript.

Not only has German-born singer, Ute Lemper, found affection on the world’s stage as a cabaret-style performer, she’s also taken on starring roles in West End and Broadway musicals.

Ute Lempe (Photo: Steffen Thalemann)

Ute Lemper: Berlin Cabaret; Ute Lempe, conductor: Robert Ziegler; Cambridge Music Festival at Cambridge Corn Exchange

Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 5 March 2026

As part of the Cambridge Music Festival, Ute Lemper wowed a full house at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in a lovely and inviting programme of Berlin cabaret songs from the era of the Weimar Republic. 

As a teenager, Ute Lemper (who, incidentally, trained at the Dance Academy in Cologne and the Max Reinhardt Seminary Drama School in Vienna) fronted the punk-rock group, Panama Drive Band, at the age of 16. As her career blossomed, she established herself as a leading interpreter of Weimar Republic cabaret songs with Kurt Weill at the forefront of her expansive repertoire. 

An ambitious and adventurous performer, Lemper (born in Munster, Germany but now resides in New York City) enjoys a prolific career in musical theatre, too. For instance, she played Sally Bowles in the original Paris production by Jerome Savary of Cabaret for which she won the 1987 Molière Award for Best Newcomer as well as taking on the role of Velma Kelly in the revival of Chicago on Broadway and in the West End which duly won her the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.  

She also appeared in the original Viennese production of Cats (playing the roles of Grizabella and Bombalurina) and the title role in Peter Pan as well as recreating the Marlene Dietrich role of Lola in The Blue Angel directed by Peter Zadek.  

Furthermore, she dubbed the singing voices of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame for German-speaking audiences while the Marseille-born dancer, choreographer and opera director, Maurice Bejart, created a ballet for her, La Mort Subite, premièred at the Palais des Congrès, Paris, in 1991. 

Therefore, it comes as no surprise to learn that Lemper was named Billboard’s ‘Crossover Artist of the Year’ in 1993 being such a prolific and diverse singer. Her extensive discography includes excellent interpretations of Kurt Weill’s compositions from the late 1980s in addition to German cabaret songs sung by Marlene Dietrich and, indeed, those by Parisian singer, Edith Piaf, which were politically motivated and sung in underground locations in 1930s Berlin.  

Currently, she dedicates most of her concert tours to the theatrical show Rendezvous with Marlene, telling Marlene Dietrich’s true story in words and music. A hugely popular show, performances pop up the world over. In fact, Lemper’s latest album, appropriately named Rendezvous with Marlene, features 20 of the most beloved songs that she sang but, of course, reinvented by Lemper. 

But for her show at the Cambridge Corn Exchange (forming part of the Cambridge Music Festival) Lemper treated an admiring and eager audience to her 1930s Berlin cabaret show working alongside an eight-piece band directed by Robert Ziegler comprising Karen Street  (saxophones, clarinet, accordion), Andy Tweed (saxophones, clarinet), Noel Langley (trumpet), Joel Knee (trombone), Mitch Dalton (guitar), Andy Massey (piano), Steve Pearce (bass) and Ralph Salmins (drums). A brilliant bunch of musicians, you wouldn’t getter better. 

Featuring iconic works including works by Kurt Weill, Mischa Spoliansky, Friedrich Holländer and George Gershwin, the show depicted songs from the era of the fragile and shaky Weimar Republic (active from 1918 to 1933) plagued by extreme political violence and a crippling economic crises with its systemic flaws, proportional representation and the like causing weak coalitions thus allowing radical right-wing parties, particularly the Nazis, to exploit public despair and dismantle the republic from within. 

Fun & fresh: flute/voice & guitar duo, Emily Andrews & Francisco Correa talk improvisation & collaboration on their new disc of Stephen Goss's music

Emily Andrews & Francisco Correa during the recording of From Honey to Ashes

Later this month, the Deux Elles label is issuing a two-disc set of music by composer Stephen Goss for flute and guitar performed by the husband and wife duo, guitarist Francisco Correa and flautist / mezzo-soprano Emily Andrews. In late 2024 I chatted to Stephen Goss about the triple album out, Landscape and Memory (also on Deux Elles) issued in celebration of Stephen's 60th birthday [see my interview] and it turns out that both Emily Andrews and Francisco Correa were performing on that album. Francisco has also collaborated with Stephen several times, including performing Stephen's guitar concerto in Colombia and Francisco's first disc on Deux Elles, Winterbourne, featured Stephen's Winterbourne Preludes.

The new disc, From Honey to Ashes, features Stephen's music for flute and guitar, including From Honey to Ashes from 2007, La Catedral Sumergida written in 2024 for the duo and Stephen's Welsh Folksongs in arrangements that date from across Stephen's career from 1988 to 2025; a total of nearly 90 minutes music in all. Both Emily and Francisco enjoyed collaborating with Stephen on the disc, finding he gave them great flexibility to perform. Yet the recording process felt like a collaboration: they were a trio, only with one member (Stephen) not actually performing. Both Emily and Francisco commented that it was a fun way to work and there is a sense that all three voices are heard on the disc, that of Stephen, Emily and Francisco.

Continuing where Handel left off: Opera Settecento's completion of Handel's Titus L'Empereur at London Handel Festival was a terrific showcase for some of the composer's lesser-known arias

Handel/Renioult/Duarte: Titus l'Empereur; Steffen Jespersen, Rachel Redmond, Chiara Hendrick, Hugo Hymas, Lucija Vaarsic, Edward Grint, Francis Gush, Opera Settecento, Leo Duarte; London Handel Festival at St George's Church, Hanover Square
Reviewed 5 March 2026

Handel's tantalising unfinished, unrealised operatic fragment used as the starting point for a Racine-inspired opera showcasing some of Handel's lesser-known arias in engaging and involving performances 

During the 1731/32 season, Handel began a new opera, titled on the manuscript Titus l'Empereur. Only the overture, three scenes including two arias were completed. Handel seems to have abandoned the work and the material was reused in his next opera Ezio (which was delivered late). 

Having given us a whole sequence of Handel's pasticcios, Leo Duarte and Opera Settecento turned to Titus l'empereur for their latest project at the London Handel Festival. On Thursday 5 March 2026 at St George's Church, Hanover Square, they performed a 'new' Handel pasticcio, Titus l'empereur with new recitatives by Pierre-Antoine Renioult and arias from Handel's operas (mainly pre-1732) chosen by Leo Duarte. Countertenor Steffen Jespersen was Titus (emperor of Rome), soprano Rachel Redmond (queen of Palestine, betrothed to Titus) was Berenice, mezzo-soprano Ciara Hendrick was Antioco (king of Comagène and in love with Berenice), tenor Hugo Hymas was Paolino (a confidant of Titus), Lucija Varsic who won the audience prize at last year's Handel Singing Competition was Dalinda (a confidante of Berenice), baritone Edward Grint was Oldauro (a Roman tribune), and countertenor Francis Gush was Arsete (a confidant of Antioco).

Handel's libretto for the putative Titus l'Empereur has not survived, but it seems to have been intended as an adaptation of Racine's 1670 play Bérénice. Given Handel's use of French in the title (despite the opera being in Italian), commentators suggest that Racine's play was being adapted directly and that the halting of work was caused by the librettist not being up to the task. Bérénice is in fact a relatively strange work to be considered for adaptation for an Italian opera. The entire play is taken up with the complexities of Titus and Berenice's relationship when he becomes emperor but discovers the Roman people do not want a foreign queen, add in his friend Antioco's unspoken love for Berenice and you have a complex triangle. But that is it. There is no subplot. It is worth bearing in mind that when Handel set the Alceste story in his opera Admeto the librettist introduced an entire subplot that is not in Euripides and not in Gluck's Alceste.

Opera Settecento's solution was to enlist the help of Professor Patrick Boyde in creating a libretto out of Racine's play, which was then translated into Italian by Matteo Dalle Fratte and the recitative set by Pierre-Antoine Renioult in Handelian style. Leo Duarte chose the arias, focusing on the lesser known music from Handel's operas pre-1732 including some that had never been performed. The result did exactly what pasticcios were often intended to do, to showcase music. We had arias from Amadigi, Floridante, Giulio Cesare, Lucio Silla, Ottone, Rinaldo, Scipione, Tamerlano and of course the original ones from Titus l'Empereur which found their way, in altered form, into Ezio. For the more nerdy amongst us, it was a shame that the programme was not able to give us more context for this music. So that, for instance, at a climactic point in Act Two Berenice sings 'Piangero la sore mia' from Giulio Cesare, but it definitely was not the well-known version of the aria. [see Leo Duarte's comment on my Facebook post for a wonderfully full explanation of the origins of the arias].

With one exception, arias were sung with their original texts which is something that may not have happened in Handel's day but which is more understandable in our present musicologically conscious age. 

Whether Racine's Bérénice was the idea vehicle is a point in question. Handel may have indeed been right. The final opera as performed in St George's Hanover Square might have been called 'Titus the ditherer'. Or, given that the plot happens almost simultaneously with that of Mozart's opera, The Dithering of Titus!

Applications open for The Cumnock Tryst's 2nd International Summer School for Composers with Sir James MacMillan & Brett Dean

Dumfries House where The Cumnock Tryst's 2nd International Summer School for Composers takes place

The Cumnock Tryst's 2nd International Summer School for Composers will run from 22 to 28 August 2026 at Dumfries House. The course will be led by The Cumnock Tryst’s Founder and Artistic Director, Sir James MacMillan, and acclaimed Australian composer and violist, Brett Dean, and for the first time The Cumnock Tryst is partnering with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), who will provide an octet of musicians to work alongside the composers throughout the week.  

The inaugural course in 2024 attracted composers from across the UK, Europe, North America and China. The 2026 course will offer eight selected composers an exceptional opportunity to develop their craft throughout the week under the guidance of MacMillan and Dean as well as giving participants the invaluable experience of hearing their works shaped and rehearsed by professional orchestral musicians in real time. 

Sir James MacMillan commented: "The Cumnock Tryst is committed to encouraging the composers of today at all levels, from the very young in our East Ayrshire home to advanced international students at the beginning of their careers. The course also signals The Cumnock Tryst’s intentions to amplify our international standing and impact in the world of contemporary music."

Te course will culminate on Friday 28 August in a public performance of the new works at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s New Auditorium at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, presenting the eight compositions created during the course, performed by the RSNO ensemble.

The course is open to composers aged 18 and older. There is no maximum age limit, reflecting The Cumnock Tryst’s commitment to making the course as inclusive and accessible as possible. Applications should be submitted via the Cumnock Tryst website 

‘Somewhere further North’: has an authentic voice from England’s ‘living centre of music’ survived in Andrew Downes?

Andrew Downes (1950-2023)

During 2026 Prima Facie is releasing three albums celebrating the choral works of the late Andrew Downes conducted by David Trippett. 

The first disc is released this month (March 2026) and features the premiere recording of Andrew Downes’ A St Luke Passion alongside his sacred choral music performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Philharmonia Voices conducted by David Trippett. In this guest article, David Trippett considers Andrew Downes's legacy.

Recent calls to ‘level up’ appear to have aged badly. The political slogan of the 2019 general election was short lived, but its consequences left the fate of English National Opera in the balance, even as it sought to champion left-behind bastions of culture outside London (via a £4.8B fund allocated to ‘maintaining, regenerating, or creatively repurposing existing cultural … assets’).  For decades, cultural historians have been suspicious of centre/periphery models – noting their hidden assumptions about hierarchy, homogeneity, and national prioritisation. In the event, the levelling-up fund was quietly retired (in 2022), exposed as so much hocus-pocus. Few would question the degree to which London’s musical institutions have drawn the lion’s share of investment in the arts, so the idea that musical activities outside the capital are somehow lesser lingers stubbornly. Exceptions abound (I hear you shout!), yet the very word provincial still carries a telltale hint of condescension.

In 1903, Elgar felt the need was the other way around. In a letter to The Musical Times he judged that the real engine of musical growth in England lay outside the capital. ‘Some day’ he mused, ‘the press will awaken to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North.’

Mosaic Seasons presents Music of Our Time at Bechstein Hall

Mosaic Seasons was founded in 2023 by composer Tatiana Svetlova as a classical music festival based in the South of France and Monaco. The festival envisions envisions a creative dialogue between music, poetry, art, and dance, and its Music of Today series focuses on contemporary music. Svetlova is now expanding the reach of the festival to London and on 14 March 2026 Mosaic Seasons presents Music of Our Time at Bechstein Hall. Pianists Edna Stern, Evelyne Berezovsky, and Louis-Victor Bak will perform music by Silvina Milstein, Geoff King, Tatiana Svetlova, Edna Stern, and George Benjamin.

The programme opens with a pairing of Silvina Milstein’s Piano Phantasy after Mozart K. 475 and Mozart’s Fantasia No. 4 in C minor, K. 475. Milstein’s piece transforms Mozart’s Fantasia into a rhapsodic exploration of tonality. Geoff King's David in Hastings is the third movement of his suite family photos which was written as a companion to Schumann's Carnaval.

Audiences will hear two works by Tatiana Svetlova that blend playfulness with reflective depth. Sonnets No. 4 and 5 on the Theme of Bach’s Chaconne represents her own reflections on Bach's chaconne. Madonna and Child (for Gaudi’s La Pedrera) is a meditative homage to the architect Antoni Gaudi, who wanted to create the sculpture of Madonna and Child on the roof of La Pedrera in Barcelona, but the developer refused this plan. 

Edna Stern will perform three of her own compositions: Prelude without a C/do, Etude “La disparition d’après Perec” without E/mi, and Kidnapped: 7.X.2023. These pieces are inspired by Georges Perec’s novel La Disparition (a novel written without the letter E) and his poems that systematically suppress a letter. They explore this systematic absence through musical language. 

The evening concludes with George Benjamin's Shadowlines, sequence of six canonic preludes written for Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Full details from Bechstein Hall website. 

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival, which evolved from the old Norfolk & Norwich Triennial, blazes a cultural trail for the East Anglian region

Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus who perform Walton's Belshazzar's Feast at this year's Festival

By far the largest arts festival in the East of England and the fourth largest in the UK, the 2026 Norfolk & Norwich Festival runs from Friday 8 to Sunday 24 May offering a grand cultural feast to include a performance of Walton’s magnificent Belshazzar’s Feast by the Norwich Philharmonic Society. 

Without a shadow of doubt, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, one of the oldest music and arts festivals in England established in 1772 to raise funds for the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital, has a glorious and illustrious past of attracting major international soloists and orchestras which, I’m pleased to say, continues to this very day. 

However, the festival has moved on over the years thus becoming a triennial event in 1824 rotating between the cities of Birmingham and Leeds much in the same way as the Three Choirs Festival rotates to this very day between the cathedral cities of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester. 

And from 1988, the festival has been held on an annual basis and, therefore, each year presents a host of international performers working alongside emerging talent and homegrown East Anglian artists in an expansive and engaging programme featuring not only classical and choral music but also taking in drama, dance and film with the literature and visual arts side of the festival ever growing. 

A charity-funded organisation supported by Arts Council England and Norwich City Council with generous support coming from a multitude of sponsors and donors, the festival also offers a year-round programme of creativity and culture for children, young people and their communities like no other. 

This year’s edition not only takes over the fine city of Norwich for 17 wondrous and action-packed days but spreads out for the first time into Norfolk with events taking place at Wells-next-the-Sea, Lowestoft, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Diss and Swaffham thereby transforming the county into a hive of cultural activity.  

Norwich Cathedral Choir (Photo: Bill Smith / Norwich Cathedral)

Double, Double Toil & Trouble: the recorder quartet Palisander explore 900 years of music inspired by the mystical and magical

Double, Double Toil & Trouble : Palisander 
Reviewed 24 February 2025

An engaging look at music for recorder inspired by the mystical and magical spanning 900 years from Hildegard of Bingen through to the winner of the BBC Radio 3/National Centre for Early Music for the 2021 Young Composers’ Award

Having given us a debut disc broadly inspired by the idea of tarantism, the latest disc from recorder quartet, Palisander (Tabea Debus, Lydia Gosnell, Miriam Monaghan & Caoimhe de Paor), Double, Double Toil & Trouble is equally imaginative. With repertoire spanning some 600 years, the disc is inspired by the mystical and magical. 

There are modern versions of traditional pieces alongside music by Hildegard of Bingen, Diego Ortiz, Cipriano de Rore, Maddelena Casulana, Anthony Holborne Sweelinck, Bach, Tartini, and a suite from Purcell's The Fairy Queen, plus Kepler's Planets by Miriam Monaghan who plays with the group, and the winner of the BBC Radio 3/National Centre for Early Music for the 2021 Young Composers’ Award (18-25 Category), Kagura Suite by Delyth Field.

The Tempest: Vache Baroque collaborates with Out of Chaos theatre company to present a 17th century semi-opera remade

Pergolesi's L'Olimpiade at Vache Baroque in 2024 (Photo: Michael Wheatley) - [see my review] 

The 17th-century English tradition of the dramatick opera (often called semi-opera nowadays) remains a fascinating challenge for modern performers with much fine music attached to long and seemingly unworthy texts. Semi-operas ran in London from roughly 1673 to 1712, in other words from the Restoration to the establishment of regular Italian opera. Though the best known name attached to the genre is Henry Purcell, music could often be provided by a selection of composers. 

For more on semi-opera see my article The Invention of English Opera: the surprising history of opera in 17th century England - from masques to dramatic-opera 

In 1674, there was The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island with a libretto by Thomas Shadwell (who became Poet Laureate in 1689) based on John Dryden and William Davenant's adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest (this was a period when few Shakespeare plays were performed unaltered). The music by was provided by Matthew Locke, Giovanni Battista Draghi and Pelham Humfrey, a fine trio of composers. 

Towards the end of semi-opera in London (the large-scale ones were getting too expensive), The Tempest was revived again. This time in 1712, still with Shadwell's text but with new music that was long attributed to Henry Purcell but may be by John Weldon. In 1701 Weldon took part in, and won, the competition to set Congreve's libretto The Judgement of Paris to music and his music for this was recorded for the first time in 2025 by Julian Perkins and the Academy of Ancient Music [see my review].

Now for its Summer 2026 festival, Vache Baroque is joining forces with the theatre company Out of Chaos (artistic director Paul O'Mahoney) to present The Tempest, a semi-opera inspired by Shakespeare's play and featuring music by Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke, Pelham Humfrey, and others including a full Purcell masque, along with pieces by other European composers of the period, shanties, and improvisations. The Vache's landscape setting with its lake and trees makes it an ideal venue for the venture. The Tempest will be directed by Paul O’Mahony (of Out of Chaos), choreographed by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster and designed by Caitlin Mawhinney. Jonathan Darbourne will direct the Vache Baroque Band with a cast of singers including Stephanie Hershaw, Isabelle Peters, Camilla Seale, Conor Prendiville and Ross Cumming alongside actors from Out of Chaos.

Still on-theme, Water Music will feature a concert of water-themed works (but not Handel's famous one) featuring Sophia Prodanova (violin) and Isabelle Peters (soprano) plus sound recordist Chris Watson with music by Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi and Maria Martines (her cantata La Tempesta from 1778). Jonathan Darbourne directs the Vache Baroque Band and Singers.

Full details from the Vache Baroque website.