The biggest ever? ETO's Spring season

English Touring Opera's Spring 2016 tour will be their largest tour in decades with a tour from March to June 2016 which takes in 21 cities, 109 performances and 80 people on tour. The programme includes Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Donizetti's Pia de'Tolomei. Gluck's opera certainly does not get the outings which it deserves and certainly not on tour, whilst Donizetti's opera is getting its UK stage premiere!

Also in the tour is a revival of the award-winning children's opera Laika the Spacedog (by Russell Hepplewhite and Tim Yealland) along with Dust Child, a new opera for children with SEN (Special Educational Needs) composed by James Garner, written and directed by Anna Pool. Both will be performed in schools, libraries and studio theatre spaces.

Iphigénie en Tauride is conducted by Martin André and directed by James Conway, and Anna Fleischle will design. Catherine Carby sings Iphigénie with Grant Doyle, John-Colyn Gyeantey and Craig Smith. In Pia de'Tolomei, Elena Xanthoudakis makes her ETO debut in the title role, with by Luciano Botelho and Grant Doyle, conducted by John Andrews and designed by Loren Elstein. Don Giovanni is directed by Lloyd Wood and designed by Anna Fleischle and will be set in turn of the century Vienna with its echoes of Freud. The title role is sung by George von Bergen, making his ETO debut, and by Nicholas Lester, with Camilla Roberts/Gillian Ramm (Donna Anna), Anna Jeruc-Kopec (Donna Elvira) and Lucy Hall (Zerlina), conducted by ETO music director Michael Rosewell.

The tour opens at the Hackney Empire (Sat 5 March, Iphigénie en Tauride, Thu 10 March, Pia de’ Tolomei, Fri 11 March and Sat 12 March Don Giovanni), and continues to Hall for Cornwall, Truro, Lighthouse, Poole, Norwich Theatre Royal, Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, Buxton Opera House, Cambridge Arts Theatre, The Hawth, Crawley, The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, Grand Theatre Blackpool, Gala Theatre, Durham, Perth Festival, Perth Concert Hall, Exeter Northcott Theatre, Curve, Leicester, York Theatre Royal, Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Tent, Coronation Hall, Ulverston and Sands Centre, Carisle.