Looking Ahead: Dartington 2019 - Joanna MacGregor's last festival as artistic director

Dartington Hall (Photo Aubrey Simpson)

2019 sees Joanna MacGregor's fifth and final year as artistic director of Dartington Summer School and Festival which runs at Dartington Hall from 27 July to 24 August 2019.

Highlights include Britten's The Turn of the Screw with Tom Randle as Peter Quint, and Britten's Saint Nicholas conducted by Steuart Bedford, along with Sarah Gabriel directing her new play A House on Middagh Street, about the house where Britten lived with WH Auden, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee.

Other large scale pieces include Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, and John Cage's Musicircus which will involve the entire Dartington and Totnes community! And Joanna MacGregor has commissioned a new piece from Eleanor Alberga for large choir and piano.

MacGregor's distinctive sense of programming can be seen when she pairs Moondog with Bach's The Art of Fugue,  and there is also Piazzolla, Harrison Birtwistle (who celebrates his 85th birthday) and Alice Oswald presents Nobody, her new long poem inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, with William Tillyer’s swirling, abstract paintings and improvisation with Joanna MacGregor.

Laurence Cumming conducts Handel's Saul, and Robert Howarth and Richard Williams direct Handel's Agrippina.

Full details from Dartington's website.