Waterperry Opera Festival offers a socially-distanced mini-festival in Waterperry Gardens this August

Waterperry Gardens

This Summer, it seems that live music in gardens is going to be the way forward through the present restrictions. Both Glyndebourne and West Green are offering garden openings with live music, and Waterperry Opera Festival has just announced a mini-festival in Waterperry Gardens on 15 and 16 August 2020.

Founded in 2018, both previous Waterperry Opera Festivals have been sell-outs, with lively performances featuring young artists in Waterperry Gardens. This year, music director Bertie Baigent will conduct a costumed, semi-staged performance of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, directed by artistic director Guy Withers, featuring many of the singers who would have been singing in the festival's planned 2020 programme (now postponed until 2021). Audiences will be invited to attend the performances in socially-distanced pods on the front lawn of Waterperry House.

Associate artistic director Rebecca Meltzer will direct Jonathan Dove's song-cycle Ariel, based on Shakespeare's character from The Tempest. A film of the production will be streamed for those at home following the festival.

Waterperry Opera's 2021 programme will feature a new production of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore conducted by Bertie Baigent and directed by Jamie Manton, and a new chamber version of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, plus a dramatised version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Jonathan Dove's Greed.

Full details from the Waterperry Opera Festival website.