Celebrating 50 years of Star Wars & John Williams' 95 birthday with Antoine Tamesit, Philharmonia Orchestra & Caleb Young

Amazingly, the film Star Wars will be 50 next year; the original film was released in May 1997. And the composer of the iconic music for the film, John Williams, is 95 next year. In celebration, the Philharmonia and conductor Caleb Young will be celebrating both these events at the Royal Festival Hall on 9 February 2027. 

Across a remarkable career spanning more than six decades, John Williams has written music for over 100 films, working with some of Hollywood's greatest directors, including Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman. His extraordinary achievements include five Academy Awards and 54 Oscar nominations.

The concert will include music from Star Wars along with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Speilberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Hook. There will also be the chance to encounter Williams's work for the concert hall with his Viola Concerto with soloist Antoine Tamesit.

The concerto was premiered in 2009 by the Boston Pops Orchestra with the solo part written for the orchestra's principal violist Cathy Basrak, along with a significant role for timpani played at the premier by her husband. Williams has written over twenty concertante works spanning the Flute Concerto from 1969 to When The World Was Waltzing, for violin and orchestra (2025), including concertos for piano, violin, clarinet and cello.

Full details from the Southbank Centre website.

Extraordinary musicians. A remarkable place: 2027 season at the 11th century St Hubert's Church

11th century St Hubert's Church stands alone in a field in Hampshire on the South Downs near Rowlands Castle.  Inside are nationally important medieval wall paintings. Outside, the Idsworth valley around it is beautiful.

In 2026, the church created St Hubert's Music to present concerts at the church, bringing exceptional musicians to one of Hampshire’s most extraordinary little churches. The results exceeded anything they could have imagined. Now, under honorary president Jonathan Willocks, St Hubert's Music has announced its 2027 season under the title Extraordinary musicians. A remarkable place.

The nine concerts confirm their commitment to supporting emerging musical talent through a partnership with the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. The 2027 season begins in April with New Arts Opera, and then continues with Cuban guitar duo Ahmed Dickinson Cárdenas and Eduardo Martín.

Other performers during the year include the Hyde Quartet made up of musicians from the Royal Academy of Music, Quattro String Quartet making a return visit to the festival, and Korros Ensemble (flute, clarinet, harp). On period instruments there is the Zarek Trio (violin, viola da gamba, harpsichord),  and Ensemble Hesperi (recorder, baroque violin, baroque cello, harpsichord).

Pianist Hannah Watson Emmrich makes her debut a the festival, and Jonathan Willcocks directs musicians from Southern Pro Music in a concert at St Hubert's sister church, St Michael and All Angels, Chalton.

Full details from St Hubert's website.

The Song Within: Leeds Song Festival returns in April 2027 with a programme expanding the boundaries of the song recital

Audience at Leeds Song Festival 2025 [Photo: Tom Arber]

Leeds Song Festival returns in April 2027 with a week of song from 10 to 17 April under the theme The Song Within, exploring what lies inside a song: memory, identity, poetry, place, connection and emotion, while bringing together artists, audiences and communities in unexpected way. The programmes range from early lute songs through the great Lied tradition to more unusual repertoire including Hildegard of Bingen, Egyptian song, Elizabeth Maconchy, Messiaen and beyond.

In partnership with South Asian Arts UK, sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun appears alongside vocalist Spoorthi Rao, while Degun and Errollyn Wallen meet for a conversation before Wallen performs her own music later that evening in the HAR Bar at Howard Assembly Room. 

The Festival continues its relationship with the Leeds International Piano Competition, celebrating the music of its Artistic Director, Sir Stephen Hough. Support by the Royal Philharmonic Society is bringing forth new repertoire including a song cycle by London-based Chilean composer Anibal Vidal.

Some events are more than a song recital. Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, pianist Anna Tilbrook and illustrator James Mayhew combine song and live visual creativity, while soprano Carolyn Sampson's Star Falling, created with tenor and visual artist Andrew Staples and pianist Joseph Middleton, explores an immersive multimedia approach to performance and includes a world premiere by Roderick Williams.

Local poets and composers continue to be brought together in the Festival's A Leeds Songbook project, and this year visual artists respond to the new material by producing work that reflects the themes explored. There will be a Bring and Sing! mass performance of Mozart's Requiem, encouraging audience members to become performers.

The Festival's Young Artists Programme will feature masterclasses led by  Sir Simon Keenlyside, Roger Vignoles, Kate Royal, Christiane Karg, Mark Padmore, Audrey Hyland and Christoph Prégardien,

Full details from the Leeds Song website.

Soprano Roberta Philip on cat-walking for London Fashion Week, learning from models, and her upcoming recital at the London Festival of American Music

Roberta Philip [Photo: Ben Reason]

Soprano Roberta Philip is a versatile performer working across opera and jazz idioms in settings ranging from the cat walk to the concert platform. She is passionate about bringing lesser-known works by African American composers into the spotlight and has been praised for her "powerfully expressive" (The Opera Critic) and "outstanding voice" (The Stage).

Roberta performs with pianist Valentina Wang at the London Festival of American Music at The Warehouse on 11 November 2026.

What inspired you to become an Opera singer?

I grew up in a naturally musical family. My family would often burst into song at home, and my Nana, who is now 99, is infamous for having a hymn for every situation - big or small. My parents didn’t have the opportunity to learn instruments themselves, so they made sure my siblings and I did. I studied classical piano and violin, but singing initially remained something I did for fun, whether that was singing pop and R&B at home, musical theatre groups or singing in small jazz bands and choirs.

It was actually at the University of Birmingham that I began to see singing as something more. I auditioned for the Birmingham University Singers Chamber Choir, led by Simon Halsey, singing ‘Memory’ from Cats (one of the only remotely “classical” pieces I knew). I was accepted and went on to sing with the choir throughout the year. Through Halsey’s involvement with the BBC Proms Youth Choir, I also found myself singing in the chorus of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at my first BBC Proms.

Watching Roderick Williams, one of the soloists, sing with the orchestra at our first Royal Albert Hall rehearsal gave me chills. He was the first Black opera singer I had ever seen, and I remember thinking that this was what I wanted to do. The following year, the chamber choir audition panel encouraged me to take singing lessons, recognising my innate musicality. By the time I graduated, singing had become my principal study.

When I graduated, I began a full-time career in performing arts PR and had private singing lessons, sung with the London Symphony Chorus and used all my annual leave to do summer vocal development programmes.

A few years later, I went on to train at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where I completed my Master of Performance. My teacher, John Evans, was instrumental in transforming my voice and helping me recognise my versatility across genres as one of my greatest artistic strengths, showing me how it could inform and enrich my classical singing. Although my training has been rooted in classical music, my love of jazz and soul remains a fundamental part of who I am musically, and continues to influence the way that I approach performance.

In 2024 you performed at London Fashion Week. Are there parallels to be drawn between fashion and music?

In 2024, I was selected as one of a handful of Guildhall students to perform in British designer Patrick McDowell’s Orpheus Ball showcase for London Fashion Week. The collection explored the structures of orchestral music through fashion.

I performed Gershwin’s The Man I Love with my colleague Elizabeth Mwale on euphonium. We were the only musicians dressed in the collection, and we walked the catwalk whilst performing; a surprise twist within the show. I’m not a model, so it was a completely new experience, but I loved seeing how fashion and music could work together.

Through this show, I discovered a key parallel between opera and fashion. In opera, costume can be so much more than something you wear, it helps you inhabit a character and draws you into the narrative world. In the showcase, once wearing Patrick’s collection, I observed the very same transformation in the models, and experienced it myself.

You regularly collaborate with Pegasus Opera Company. What impact has this company had on your development as an artist?

Pegasus Opera Company has played a pivotal role in my development. I joined its mentoring programme in 2023–24, and had several opportunities to perform for industry professionals and connect with key organisations.

Pegasus also cast me in my first professional opera production, Ruth by Philip Hagemann, where I played the Narrator and covered the lead role of Orpah. In fact, I ended up performing both my own role and the role I was covering in every performance, which was an extraordinary learning experience and a significant step in my professional development.

My relationship with Pegasus has continued beyond that production, and I regularly perform in concert tours. Alison Buchanan, Artistic Director, has also been a huge mentor to me. What I value particularly is the way Pegasus has helped create opportunities while encouraging a broader and more representative operatic landscape. That connects closely with my own interests as an artist.

Your recital programme for the London Festival of American Music features music by William Grant Still, Gershwin and Florence Price, amongst others. How have you gone about putting this together?

I’m thrilled to be making my London Festival of American Music debut with a programme that explores the extraordinary breadth and evolution of African American music. I want to celebrate the richness of this repertoire, bring lesser-known works into the spotlight, and share the many different stories and musical traditions it encompasses.

One composer I’m particularly excited to feature is Brittney Boykin. I was introduced to her work during my time at Guildhall, where I discovered her song cycle Moments in Sonder, which sets poetry by Maya Angelou, one of my favourite poets. I contacted Brittney over email, and I was incredibly grateful that Guildhall purchased the collection for me to include in my Master of Performance final recital. It’s wonderful to be able to continue sharing this music beyond my studies.

For me, my LFAM programme captures a vast musical landscape; from the soulful roots of spirituals, to music shaped by the civil rights movement and the struggle for equality, to songs of unencumbered joy, intimacy and love. I’m passionate about broadening the classical canon and encouraging audiences to discover composers and works they may not know. This recital is an opportunity to celebrate that diversity, whilst showing that African American music cannot be defined by a single style, period or experience.

Roberta performs with pianist Valentina Wang on 11 Nov 2026, 7.30pm at the London Festival of American Music at The Warehouse, Waterloo.

Florence Price: Night, Hold Fast to Dreams, Travel's End , Sympathy
Brittney Boykin: Moments in Sonder
George Gershwin: 'Summertime' from Porgy and Bess
Undine Smith Moore: I am in Doubt, I Want to Die while you Love Me, Lyric for True Love
​William Grant Still: 'Give me no Body without your Soul' from Blue Steel, Grief
Margaret Bonds: Three Dream Portraits
George Walker: I Got a Letter from Jesus, Ev'ry Time I Feel de Spirit
Moses Hogan: Were you There?
Hall Johnson: Ride on King Jesus

It demands to be heard: the CBSO return to Coventry Cathedral with Britten's War Requiem for Remembrance Day in advance of a European tour

Coventry Cathedral [Photo: Garry Jones]

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is set to return to Coventry Cathedral for a performance of Britten’s War Requiem on Remembrance Day (11 November), also marking 50 years since Britten's death. 

The CBSO gave the world premiere of the War Requiem at the Cathedral in 1962. The work was commissioned to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, and the reconsecration marked by an arts festival that also included the premiere of Michael Tippett's King Priam, and Bliss's The Beatitudes (which had to be premiered in the Belgrade Theatre because of scheduling problems relating to the opening services and rehearsals for the War Requiem).

For the Remembrance Day performance, the CBSO's music director, Kazuki Yamada conducts the orchestra, CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth Choir and Trinity Boys Choir with soloists Olga Peretyatko, Andrew Staples, and Christian Gerhaher.

Following the Coventry concert, Kazuki Yamada and the orchestra will give performances of the War Requiem in Brussels, Luxembourg and Lucerne as part of a European tour which includes concerts in Freiburg, Nuremberg, and Viersen (which is near Düsseldorf). Rather strikingly the CBSO Chorus and Trinity Boys Choir also taking part in the performances of the War Requiem on the tour.

CBSO Chief Executive Emma Stenning said: "War Requiem is not a comfortable piece. It is, as Britten intended, a reflection on war and a cry for peace, and in many ways could not be more prescient, or more urgently needed from an orchestra right now. We are not staging it as an act of nostalgia. We are staging it because it demands to be heard."

Full details from the CBSO website.

The songs that make ordinary moments feel transcendent: Erik Sigurd's Sonnet live in Stoke Newington

"There was a time when you could sit in silence without reaching for your phone, when you looked forward to long car rides for the space to think, when you would listen to an album from start to finish. We find the songs that make ordinary moments feel transcendent."

This comes from the manifesto of Silent Songs, an independent record label, publisher and curator. And whilst their name might seem something of a tautology, in fact they focus on contemporary classical and ambient music, and in creating carefully curated live experiences around their artists.

One of these is the British-Swedish composer Erik Sigurd, whose piano music is described at 'soft and cinematic'. Sigurd has his debut album, Sonnet out on 12 November and to celebrate that, Silent Songs has gathered Sigurd and friends together for a concert at the Old church, Soke Newington on 13 November 2026.

In the first half, Sigurd will play his own solo piano music alongside music by key pianistic influences. In the second half he will be joined by string quartet - Eleonora Consta, Roman Lytwyniw, Luba Tunnicliffe, Zachary Owen, saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi, double bass Sam Becker and harpist Oliver Wass, for Sonnet, Sigurd's 14 movement chamber work.

In fact Erik Sigurd is the pseudonym that jazz and classical composer/pianist Leif Kaner-Lidström uses for recording meditative, often improvised solo works. You can also catch Kaner-Lidström performing with his own quintet, the Levitation Orchestra and the Jess Gillam band.

Further details from dice.

Day of Psalms curated by Edmund de Waal at Schwarzman Centre, Oxford culminates in Aurora Orchestra premiering Frideswides Psalms by Nico Muhly

St Frideswide in 14th century stained glass at Christ Church, Oxford [Photo: Wikimedia/Andrew Dunning]

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre is the University of Oxford's new centre for the arts and humanities. The Hopkins Architects-designed buildings house seven of the University's humanities faculties whilst the public performance spaces include a concert hall, studio theatre, and black box performance space.

As an example of the sort of cross-cultural fertilisation that we might expect, artist and writer Edmund de Waal is a Schwarzman Centre Cultural Fellow. He was been working with academics on exploring the continuing resonance of the Psalms across the three Abrahamic faiths and beyond. The culmination of this work is a Day of Psalms at the Schwarzman Centre on 28 November which includes a sunrise concert from GBSR Duo (piano and percussion), the Colin Currie Group in Steve Reich's Tehilim, and all manner of events exploring the psalms relevance from John Donne to writing workshops.

The evening concert will feature Nicholas Collon, Aurora Orchestra, the BBC Singers in a programme co-curated by Edmund de Waal. The concert features Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (a work that celebrates Bernstein's Jewish heritage with music worthy of Broadway), and Bach's Magnificat (not strictly a Psalm but reflecting the Lutheran tradition), plus a new work by Nico Muhly.

Muhly's Frideswide Psalms has been co-commissioned by Aurora Orchestra and the Schwarzman Centre. Frideswide was an Anglo-Saxon princess, who become the patron saint of Oxford and the University of Oxford. She is credited as the founder of an Oxford monastery which became part of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Muhly's new piece involves 'several interwoven psalms, whose imagery circles the life of the early medieval Saint Frideswide' with texts both from the Book of Common Prayer and the 14th century Wycliffe translation.

There are three opportunities to catch the programme, at Saffron Hall on 27 November, at the Schwarzman Centre on 28 November and at Kings Place, London on 29 November.

Further information about the Day of Psalms from the Schwarzman Centre website, and see Aurora Orchestra's website for details of their concerts. 

String instruments, they’ve been at the centre of my musical life for as long as I can remember.

Rachael Montesino Young (Photo: Stuart Wood)

Cellist Rachael Montesino Young on the influence of Jacqueline du Pré, both of whom studied with William Pleeth, and looking forward to her concerts with London Virtuosi Ensemble.

[see Robert's 2015 interview with her, 'From ritual humiliation to meditation']

String instruments, they've been at the centre of my musical life for as long as I can remember. Whether it's the soulful, human sound of the cello – my own instrument, the thrill of a virtuoso violin, the sobering and heart-warming viola or the plangent tones of a viol. Whether played as a solo instrument, as a choir of strings in a string orchestra, or the sound of the collective string sections of a great orchestra, the alchemy of string instruments in whatever form, are somehow able to express the whole range of human experience and emotion and even beyond, reaching out and hinting at other worlds beyond ours.

And in the hands of a great artist such as Jacqueline du pre, the possibilities are for expression are truly without limits. She was one who was able to create an endless possibility of colours – pale and limpid, fierce and heroic, wondrous, tender, melting, heartbreaking, romantic, heart-warming, ennobling and on and on. And for me more than any other string player I've heard, she was the supreme artist for this.

So, it's unsurprising that all my recent projects –both upcoming and newly minted, have strings at their beating creative heart. My just recently completed a cello album called The Bearable Lightness of Being collaborates with the pianist Sophia Rahman and is dedicated to my cello heroine Jacqueline du Pre.

I was very fortunate to have shared the same cello teacher as du Pre, in the late, great William "Bill" Pleeth, and so have first-hand experience of the teaching and some of the qualities Bill would have focused on developing in du Pre's playing. She was of course her own greatest teacher, as all great artists are, but it took someone of Pleeth's artistry, imagination and approach to the cello, to develop her genius to its full fruition.

The Bearable Lightness of Being takes as its inspiration du Pre's 'Recital' recording - with a few additional surprises along the way and is due for release in January 2027.

But my upcoming orchestral projects in London involve a slightly bigger beast than a cello as they are collaborations with the London Virtuosi Ensemble – LoVE.

LoVE is a string orchestra ensemble I recently founded, with an aim to continue and foster the rich and great traditions of English string playing.

I grew up listening avidly to recordings of the great chamber orchestras active in London in the 1960's,70s and 80s. Ensembles such as The English Chamber Orchestra – at that time led by the wonderful Emanuel (Manny) Hurwitz, The Academy of St Martin's in the Field – founded and led by Sir Neville Marriner and the many wonderful recordings made by string quartets - the top of my list for me being The Amadeus Quartet but there were many more.

LoVE also takes as inspiration the supreme technique and impressive ensemble playing of Russian virtuosi string orchestras from the 1960s and 70s such as The Moscow Virtuosi.

A Terrible Beauty, LoVE's debut concert is on December 1st is part of the Temple Church's, London Winter Music Festival and is a journey through pre-war, 20th century English String Music and verse written between 1900 –1939.

And It's a great honour for us all to be performing alongside two eminent and supreme actors – Dame Harriet Smith and Toby Jones, who will be performing the themed verse interspersed throughout the musical works on the programme.

The Artistic Director of the Temple Winter Festival Robert Ogden writes, "A Terrible Beauty explores the extraordinary flowering of English string music in the first decades of the twentieth century — music of radiant lyricism and haunting emotional depth, written in the shadow of a rapidly changing world. This programme brings together some of the most evocative and beloved works in the English string repertoire.

At its heart lies a profound sense of beauty touched by fragility. Composed between the final years of the Edwardian era and the uncertain decades between two world wars, these works reflect a society poised between nostalgia and modernity, serenity and upheaval. The soaring lines of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis seem to suspend time itself, while the aching tenderness of Finzi's Romance and Elgar's Elegy speaks of loss, remembrance and longing. Frank Bridge's elegant Valse–Intermezzo captures the glittering surface of a vanished world, and Michael Tippett's exhilarating Concerto for Double String Orchestra bursts forth with rhythmic vitality, yet beneath its energy lies an undercurrent of tension and unease, hinting at the uncertainties and gathering shadows of a world on the brink of conflict.

From the sweeping grandeur of Elgar's Introduction & Allegro to the luminous spirituality of Vaughan Williams, this is music of extraordinary richness and emotional power - at once intimate and expansive, deeply English yet universal in its humanity.

A compelling and atmospheric evening of string music, A Terrible Beauty invites audiences into a sound world of warmth, passion and poignancy"

LoVE's second London December concert is at King's Place on December 18th. Again, it's an evening of classical music and poetry but this time curated and themed to take the audience on a journey through the winter solstice and the reflective introversion it can evoke.

I'm particularly looking forward to collaborating with the wonderful up and coming Estonian Violinist Hans Christian Aarvik who was winner of the Neilsen violin competition 2022. He is featuring as soloist in his compatriot Arvo Pärt's evocative work Fratres. As a fellow Estonian Hans brings a depth and subtlety of understanding to Pärts music, as I've witnessed many times when he has appeared as soloist with conductor Paavo Jarvi at Paavo's Parnu Music festival.

Hans Christian Aarvik will also feature as soloist in the rarely performed Souvenir d'un Lier Cher in an arrangement for string orchestra.

So, Fratres will set the atmosphere and mood for the evening and the evening will also include evocative music from Shostakovich and Sibelius and will conclude with one of Tchaikovsky's masterpieces, his Serenade for strings.

This serenade is a rich and highly colourful work that I like to think depicts the journey between autumn & spring – a winter's journey. From the encroaching darkness, we are led into the winter solstice and on through the slow return of light that heralds spring.

We begin with the sombre, sobering, autumnal beauty of a chorale reminiscent of Russian orthodox choirs and then on through to a winter ball of the second movement, with all its elegance, gaiety and gossip. We are then taken through to a deep, reflective and introverted Elegy – Tchaikovsky at his most richly expressive using the strings to their full sonorous power and possibility. And then on to the finale which begins by evoking a scene of a freezing winter morning on the icy Steppe. The music gradually reveals a frozen winter landscape, and then we might faintly begin to make out peasants slowly waking and readying themselves for work. What follows their toil is revelry, drinking and dancing and so onwards abruptly to return to the heart-warming, ennobling embrace of the sobering, sacred chorale of the opening. The peasants have the last word however as their gaiety gradually returns growing more insistent, driving on to a triumphant and exuberant end, heralding the return of spring and the light.

If these projects and concerts spark any interest, we'd LoVE to see you! But if you can't make either of them at this busy time of the year, we are planning our debut recording in March 2027, so maybe you can catch up with our work through this recording.

We will keep you posted .....

Love Rachael Montesino Young x

Samling Institute for Young Artists: Celebrating 30 years of transforming the landscape for classical singers growing up in North East England

Samling Institute for Young Artists is celebrating its 30th birthday, that is 30 years of supporting early-career singers and pianists and through its innovative Samling Academy that has transformed the landscape for classical singers growing up in North East England. 

In celebration, on Friday 6 November there is a gala at Wigmore Hall when with alumni from Samling’s programmes and special guest Adrian Lester.

The concert illustrates the power of music to change lives, how composers and poets have harnessed the power of music to tell its own story. Music performed includes Franz Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, (with guest clarinettist Eliott Berdugo), Antonín Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs, Robert Schumann's Andersen Lieder and ends with one of the greatest love songs to art, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music in a special arrangement for eight solo voices.

Acting and a close attention to text are at the centre of Samling Institute’s teaching ethos and every programme includes a stage actor on the leadership team. Earlier this year, actor Adrian Lester, star of the RSC’s recent Cyrano de Bergerac, joined the Samling Artist Programme as a coach. Threading together the programme at Wigmore Hall, he will read poems by writers including Andrew Marvell, Walter de la Mare, Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy.

The performers will include British soprano Nardus Williams, Portuguese mezzo-soprano Cláudia Ribas, Scottish tenor Euan McDonald, Swiss baritone Felix Gygli, American pianist Jonathan Ware, British pianist Alfred Fardell, and four recent members of Samling Academy, soprano Tia Radix-Callixte, mezzo- soprano Lauren Bagge, tenor Benedict Munden and baritone Fabian Tindale Geere.

Full details from the Samling website.

Here be monsters! Prologue Opera bring Jonathan Dove's community opera The Monster in the Maze to Hastings

Jonathan Dove's 2015 community opera, The Monster in The Maze was written for Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Following those 2015 UK performances the work had to wait until 2024 to be performed again, when Music in the Round presented it in Sheffield [see my review]. For that performance, tenor Anthony Flaum played Theseus and now Prologue Opera, which Flaum founded in 2017, is bringing the production, directed by Rosie Kat, to Hastings.

Anthony Flaum, CEO & Founder, Prologue Opera. commented: "Jonathan Dove gave Hastings its first community opera on the pier in 1990. Nearly four decades on, the town isn't just the venue, it's the story. Every wave, every backstory, every voice in this production comes from Hastings itself. This is what happens when a community gets to tell its own myth."

The Monster in the Maze will be presented at the White Rock Theatre, Hastings with three public performances during half-term on 18 and 19 February 2027. For the production, Prologue Opera will be partnered by the White Rock Theatre, Hasting Philharmonic, The Bright Foundation, Dear Future Films and Sussex music hub Create Music. 

The performances will combine professional soloists, conductor and creative team with White Rock Youth Theatre, children’s chorus from local schools, an adult community chorus, Hastings Philharmonic players and a Learning Orchestra of local young players and place-based elements to root the project in Hastings.

The Monster in the Maze: images from the project launch in Hastings

The performers will include Sir John Tomlinson as King Minos alongside mezzo-soprano Louise Winter, tenor Anthony Flaum (as Theseus) and Tim Nelson (as Daedalus). There will be puppetry from The Bright Foundation and Long Nose Puppetry.

Sir John Tomlinson added, "I have never before performed in a Jonathan Dove opera, but admired them greatly from the audience, so I look forward to being King Minos in 'Monster in the Maze'. The Monster I know well from the inside, having sung the title role in Birtwistle's 'Minotaur' at Covent Garden some years ago. Like all Myths, it's as relevant now in our own time as much as ever it was, and it's such a powerful, deeply emotional tale."

As well as working with local schools, there will be workshops with children to co-create a piece based around the myth and the themes in the show. 

Full details from the Prologue Opera website, tickets from the White Rock Theatre.

Parabola and Circula: Marc Blitzstein's forgotten Bauhaus opera to receive its premiere recording on Capriccio as part of new series by the Bauhaus-Archiv.

Marc Blitzstein is one of those 20th century figures whose name is perhaps better known than his work. The name of his 1937 pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock still resonates, though his opera Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes, has not made it much past a first revelatory recording (from John Mauceri and Scottish Opera in 1992). His best known work is perhaps that undertaken on the music of another composer, Kurt Weill, as Blitzstein's translations and adaptations of The Threepenny Opera and Mahagonny played an important role in the widening appreciation of Weill's music in the period after the composer's death.

Blitzstein studied composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, then went to Europe to continue his studies. He failed to get on with Arnold Schoenberg in Berlin, but did study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Between 1929 and 1933 he travelled extensively in Europe, including a German tour with Aaron Copland. His music of this period includes his Piano Sonata (1927) and Piano Concerto (1931), works described as 'Boulanger-influenced products of American modernism' and which he referred to as "wild, dissonant and percussive."

Now, another side to this European Blitzstein has been revealed, his opera Parabola and Circula from 1929. In November 2026, Capriccio will release the world premiere recording of Marc Blitzstein’s Parabola and Circula, the work having been premiered in a concert performance at the Berlin Philharmonie on 21 September 2025, as part of Musikfest Berlin when the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra performed it under the baton of Karl-Heinz Steffens.

Marc Blitzstein in 1937
[Photo: Federal Theatre Project - Library of Congress]

The work was originally intended to receive its premiere in 1930 in collaboration with the Bauhaus in Dessau. However, the planned production never materialised, and the opera largely fell into obscurity. 1930 was the year that Hannes Meyer was fired as director of the Bauhaus, to be replaced by Mies van der Rohe who refocused the school's work to concentrate on teaching.

Since 2023, the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung has been exploring the largely overlooked musical history of the school through its Bauhaus Music project. The inaugural festival commemorated the legendary Bauhaus Week of 1923, presenting works by composers including Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill and Stefan Wolpe. In 2024, the festival took place under the highly topical theme of Freedom. A particular highlight of the research project followed in 2025 with the world premiere of Marc Blitzstein’s Parabola and Circula at Musikfest Berlin. The 2026 edition, taking place in Berlin on 13 and 14 November, explores the interplay of music, colour, movement and perception under the motto I Feel Air from Another Planet.

Parabola and Circula is set in an abstract world of geometric shapes and tells a tragic love story between a parabola and a circle. The couple live in seemingly perfect harmony with their adopted children, Rectangle and Point. However, their friends begin to question this unconditional love, arguing that it restricts the lovers’ freedom and independence. Parabola’s growing doubts ultimately lead to catastrophe, culminating in Circula’s death. In this opera of approximately one hour, Blitzstein combines geometric abstraction with the powerful human emotions at the heart of musical theatre.

Marc Blitztein's Parabola and Circula is released on the Capriccio label on 6 November 2026. Karl-Heinz Steffens conducts the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra with Aleksander Nohr, and Mari Eriksmoen. The release also marks the launch of a new CD series by the Bauhaus-Archiv. Full details from Capriccio. 

Celebrating 250 years of diversity: Odaline de la Martinez's London Festival of American Music returns for its 10th edition

Odaline de la Martinez's London Festival of American Music returns for its 10th edition from 9 to 13 November 2026 at The Warehouse. Celebrating 250 years of diversity, the Festival presents works by over 30 composers across five nights of concerts with three world premieres and 20 UK premieres. Over half the composers represented are women.

The Festival opens with Singapore-born conductor Tianhui Ng directing Lontano Ensemble in Latinos in America, a programme of works by Puerto Rican, Mexican American and Cuban American composers, many receiving their UK or world premieres. The next evening, Odaline de la Martinez conducts Lontano in Percussion!! featuring two works by Jewish émigrée Ursula Mamlok alongside three newly commissioned world premieres from Neva Derewetzky, Charles Shadle and Daniel Thomas Davis.

Soprano Roberta Philip joins forces with pianist Valentina Wang for African American art song from the classics of Florence Price, Undine Smith Moore, Margaret Bonds and William Grant Still to George Walker, Moses Hogan, and Hall Johnson — alongside the world of Britney Boykin's Moments in Sonder. Odaline de la Martinez and Lontano return with Solos, Duos and More, featuring Daniel Asia’s Pine’s Last Poems, Arlene Sierra’s A Young Mind in Old Bees, as well as works by Alfred Lerdahl, Barbara Jazwinski, Elena Ruehr, Augusta Reed Thomas, and Aaron Einbond. 

The festival concludes with Suzi Digby conducting VOCE Chamber Choir in choral works b y American composers including Eric Whitacre, Caroline Shaw, Frank Ticheli, Nico Muhly, Reena Esmail, Michael Gordon, Nick Strimple, Jake Runestad, Dolly Parton and Odaline de la Martinez.

Full details from the Lontano website.

Inviting the audience to experience music as something that is not only heard but also seen, embodied and mediated.

Lovemusic

On Sunday 1 November at the French Institute in London the French collective, Lovemusic is presenting an event that asks the question 'how do we listen when sound is inseparable from image, gesture, language and technology?'

Lovemusic specialises in new music, and the event blends together music, theatre, dance, video, light and technology for an experience where you’ll need to open your eyes as much as your ears. From a dialogue between flute and sign language by Helmut Oehring, Kuba Krzewiński’s unique approach to violin and cello, to Tine Surel Lange’s portrait of the contemporary urban landscape and Finbar Hosie’s ASMR and screening experiment. From Mathis Saunier’s performance to Neil Luck’s Production Apocrypha, discover a one of a kind programme supported by the Diaphonique fund for contemporary music.

Full details from the French Institute's website.

It really deserves to be heard & seen: baritone Charlie Epps on Gothic Opera's UK premiere production of Halévy's La Dame de Pique

Charles-Aimable Battaille as André Roskow in
Fromental Halévy's La Dame de Pique at the Opéra Comique in 1850

 Gothic Opera’s production of Fromental Halévy's La Dame de Pique opens this Thursday (29 October 2026) at Battersea Arts Centre, directed by Jonny Danciger, conducted by Hannah von Wiehler. 

Loosely based on the Pushkin story of the same name, Halévy’s La Dame de Pique pre-dates Tchaikovsky’s better-known opera adaptation by forty years and premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1850.

Saskia Bibb hears from baritone Charlie Epps, who plays the role of André Roskaw on 29 and 31 October.

So you've just finished studying at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Tell me how this project has helped with starting out in the profession.

It's really important that these opportunities exist, where there's a fully staged, fully invested-in and believed-in opera. The fact that it hasn’t been performed for so long makes for a perfect opportunity for young artists to revive it and, in many ways, to invent something new. There are some stage directions and some documented evidence of how it would have been performed at the premiere, but there’s a lot of space for creativity as well, which Jonny [the director] has really tapped into.

This is my first professional role - and the audition was my first professional audition - so it’s also great not having to compare myself to anyone else who may have performed the role! You're creating a standard for yourself, with people around you who are in the same boat. It's a really nice way to start and to gain experience.

Tell us about your character. How do you see him?

New work by Jay Capperauld celebrates 20th anniversary of Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Big Guitar Weekend

Jay Capperauld at the premiere of Galvanic Dances with accordionist Ryan Corbett, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, Catherine Larsen-Maguire

The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s (RCS) Big Guitar Weekend celebrates its 20th anniversary this year as it runs from Thursday 29 October until Sunday 1 November. Since its launch in 2006, it has become one of Scotland’s leading guitar festivals, bringing together international artists, RCS faculty, alumni and new talent.

One of the highlights of this year's Big Guitar Weekend is the premiere of Arachne by Scottish composer Jay Capperauld [see my 2025 interview with Jay]. Arachne will be performed by RCS graduate and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Samrat Majumder alongside Allan Neave, Head of Guitar and Harp at RCS.

Jay Capperauld graduated with a Masters in Composition with Distinction from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2014. In 2023, he was commissioned by His Majesty King Charles III to compose Schiehallion! for the Honours of Scotland celebrations. His accordion concerto, Galvanic Dances (premiered by Ryan Corbett and the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, conductor Catherine Larsen-Maguire) won the European Composition Award 2025.

Commenting on the premiere of Arachne, Allan Neave said: "It is a fascinating piece with a great narrative. Jay has never written for guitar before, so he has brought some fresh approaches to the instrument. He has written a section that sees the player creating the movements and sounds of a spider spinning thread and scurrying across the fretboard. It’s pretty cool."

Other events in the Big Guitar Weekend include a masterclass and headline concert by guitarist Lorenzo Micheli; Samrat Majumder and Ian Watt, an RCS alumnus, join forces for Lachrimae – The Lute Music of John Dowland and Johann Sebastian Bach, and music by Stephen Goss, Michael Tippett, Giulio Regondi and Emilio Pujol; on Saturday there is a showcase from the Junior Conservatoire of Music; Zoe Barnett closes the festival with a programme heavily inspired by Spanish repertoire.

Full details from the RCS website.

James Baillieu to take over from Tamsin Waley-Cohen as artistic director of the Two Moors Festival

James Baillieu (Photo: David Ruano)

Having first played at there in 2016 and now with a home on Dartmoor, pianist James Baillieu is to take over from Tamsin Waley-Cohen as artistic director of the Two Moors Festival.

The Festival takes place each October in venues across Dartmoor and Exmoor. In October 2027, Tamsin Waley-Cohen will be sharing the role of artistic director with James Baillieu. This will be a handover period with James who will take over as sole artistic director of the Two Moors Festival in 2028. 

Since it was founded in 2001, the Two Moors Festival has evolved into one of the most distinctive classical music festivals in the UK. It usually welcomes over 4,000 people to its rural venues. The Festival also nurtures young artists through its Young Musicians’ Competition and its Residency programme.

Tamsin Waley-Cohen became the festival’s artistic director in 2020 [see my 2024 interview with her]. When she leaves after the festival in 2027, she will have programmed the festival for eight years. In that time, the festival has gone from strength to strength with a wide variety of concerts and events, including new commissions, poetry, family events and talks. 

James Baillieu has played a significant role in recent festivals and created and worked with Tamsin Waley-Cohen in running the Residency programme in 2025 which will take place again in 2026. James Baillieu's appointment presages a very exciting future for the festival.

James Baillieu said, "It is a tremendous privilege to be taking on the artistic direction of the Two Moors Festival. Tamsin has created something remarkable during her tenure, bringing a wonderful family of artists to these beautiful landscapes with imagination, generosity and ambition. 

I first came to the festival in 2016 to give a recital in Ashburton Church. Ten years on, my partner and I have made our home on Dartmoor, and I feel a deep connection to its landscape and communities. I am delighted that Tamsin and I will work alongside one another next year, giving me the opportunity to build thoughtfully on everything she has achieved. I am enormously excited about the festival’s future and about shaping the next chapter of this very special organisation."

Further information from the festival website.

National Youth Orchestra: 43% of musicians in 2027 come from its free access programme NYO Inspire, demand for which is increasing

National Youth Orchestra (Photo: Tom Morley)

The National Youth Orchestra will be presenting its 2027 season with an Orchestra of 160 musicians who hail from every corner of the UK from Banchory to Bicester and Sleaford to Sevenoaks. Half the musicians are new to the Orchestra this year, with the other half re-auditioning and securing their seat for another year. 

43% of the 2027 musicians are coming through its free access programme, NYO Inspire. This is designed for teenage musicians from state schools and those who face systemic challenges accessing musical opportunities. NYO Inspire 2027 has seen record-breaking numbers apply, with 1,000 teenagers set to take part, nearly a 10% increase on last year.

Half the musicians in the Orchestra attend state school or are home educated. 34% are from minority ethnic backgrounds, while 53% of leadership positions are held by teenagers who are state-educated. These stats demonstrate the long-term impact that NYO Inspire is having on ensuring that orchestral music-making is available to as many teenagers across the UK as possible.

Every musician in the Orchestra of 2027 will introduce pupils to orchestral music through a workshop at their local primary school as part of NYO Local, reaching an estimated 24,000 children. Across national tours and secondary school concerts [see YouTube], they will perform for an estimated 10,000 teenagers. They will lead the way as musical role models for musicians on the NYO Inspire programme, through side-by-side rehearsals with local musicians in the cities they visit, and in youth centres through NYO’s partnership with Onside YouthZone.

Beginning this week (from 25 October to 1 November) is NYO Unite, where every musician in the NYO community will join together for a day of music-making at locations across the UK. The Orchestra of 2027 will then embark on the Voyage tour, which takes place from 5 to 8 January 2027 in Manchester, Warwick and London, plus a Schools Concert and side-by-side rehearsals with local musicians at all venues. The programme for Voyage features music by Hans Zimmer, Julia Wolfe and Tchaikovsky.

As always, Free for Teens tickets are available, to ensure that any teenager can experience the power of orchestral music for free.

Full details from the National Youth Orchestra's website.

The Tale Continues: Azerbaijan celebrates the return of the Baku International Arts Festival

Historic Baku Opera Theatre

The second Baku International Arts Festival (BIAF) will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 28 October to 8 November 2026 with more than 20 events spanning dance, drama, music, and film, bringing together performers from Azerbaijan, the UK, Israel, Canada, Monaco, Russia, the USA, France, and other nations. This year's programme places special emphasis on collaboration between internationally renowned artists and Azerbaijani performers and institutions.

Baku is the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region, and is the lowest lying national capital in the world. It sits on the Absheron peninsula, at the narrowest point of the corridor between the Caspian and the Caucasus range — the pinch through which caravans, armies, ideas and, latterly, pipelines have had to pass. The walled Old City, Icherisheher, still contains the caravanserais where merchants stabled their animals; the Shirvanshahs' Palace and the Maiden Tower stand within a few minutes' walk of one another, and of the Zoroastrian fire that gave the country its name. The roads out of these gates ran to Multan and Bukhara, to Tabriz, Baghdad and Damascus, to Istanbul and on to Venice — and medieval Baku was a centre of Sufi learning on that network, a station of the Khalwati order whose scholar Seyid Yahya Bakuvi lies buried inside the palace grounds, a few steps from the shahs' own.

Baku-Icherisheher (the Old City)

The oil boom of the 1870s turned a fortress town into one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Russian Empire — by 1900 Baku was producing roughly half the world's oil, and its wealth built mansions in every European style along the seafront. The opera house came out of the same money and a better story: the Mailov brothers, caviar magnates with fisheries on the Kura, put it up in under a year after a visiting soprano — the name attached to the story is always Antonina Nezhdanova — remarked that she could hardly return to a city with no proper opera house. It opened in February 1911 with Boris Godunov.

BIAF opens on 28 October at the Philharmonic Hall with a concert marking the 120th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose life and legacy remain closely tied to Azerbaijan and directly shaped its national school of composition. His Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Orchestra, premiered on this same stage by the composer in 1934, will be performed by Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniušas and Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, with the Baku State Chamber Orchestra and the BIAF Festival Orchestra under Baku-born violinist and conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky.

South African artist William Kentridge’s multimedia work Oh To Believe in Another World brings a live visual interpretation to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, a work whose musical themes encode the composer’s secret declaration of affection for his Baku student, pianist and composer Elmira Nazirova. Sitkovetsky conducts the Festival Orchestra, and the programme continues with Fikret Amirov and Nazirova’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra on Arabian Themes, performed by Farhad Badalbeyli, Rector of the Baku Music Academy and a personal acquaintance of both composers.

The Heydar Aliyev Center hosts violinist David Garrett, the Juilliard-trained “Paganini of pop,” presenting his Baku premiere of Millennium Symphony, a symphonic reimagining of the past 25 years’ biggest hits. The festival closes on 8 November at the Philharmonic with two-time Grammy winner Maxim Vengerov, one of the world’s most sought-after violinists.

The theatre programme includes Lev Dodin’s acclaimed staging of Chekhov’s The Seagull from the Maly Drama Theatre; Dmitry Krymov’s Bloody Mary, a free, image-driven response to Schiller's Mary Stuart; and the Rezo Gabriadze Marionette Theatre’s Alfred and Violetta, a reworking of La Dame aux Camélias relocated to 1990s Tbilisi, completed by director Leo Gabriadze after his father’s death in 2021.

The dance programme includes Thikra: Night of Remembering at the National Drama Theatre, choreographed by Akram Khan, and New Earth and Bolero from choreographer Shahar Binyamini and as part of the festival’s mentorship strand, Binyamini is also training and integrating dancers from the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre and the Baku Choreography Academy into the production.

English National Ballet makes its Baku debut with Masters in Motion: Forsythe/Pite, pairing Crystal Pite’s Body and Soul (Part 1) with William Forsythe’s Playlist (EP).

The full BIAF 2026 programme and tickets are available at festival web site 

Only love can bear the burden of truth: Ben Parry & Garth Bardsley on their new opera that premieres at Snape this Saturday

Ben Parry and Garth Bardsley's My Father Cannot Speak in rehearsals with Roderick Williams at Snape [Photo: Angus Cooke / Britten Pears Arts]

On 24 October, composer Ben Parry and writer Garth Bardsley's new opera, My Father Cannot Speak will be premiered at the Britten Studio, Snape Maltings with baritone Roderick Williams and an instrumental ensemble conducted by Ben Parry in a production directed by Garth Bardsley. The evening will also include Parry and Bardsley's song cycle, Songs For Girls Of A Certain Age performed by Sarah Connolly and Malcolm Martineau.

Whilst Ben Parry and Garth Bardsley have a long history of collaborating, My Father Cannot Speak is their largest work to date. A 70-minute one-act opera, My Father Cannot Speak features a single sung role, taken by Roderick Williams. I chatted to Ben and Garth during rehearsals at the Britten Studio and they were confident that they had created something listenable and watchable, that fits small venues and festivals.

The piece is a voyage into the relationship between a man and his father, as the man realises how little he knows about his father. With the birth of the man's son, he wants to find out more but his father is reticent and does not want to engage. Then the father has a stroke and cannot speak. By the end, the son puts words into his father's mouth as to why he cannot speak. At the beginning of the opera the man has an aria which is only completed at the end of the opera, as the man realises that we cannot know who we are if we don't know where were come from using an analogy of a closed museum.

The work is about the parent/child relationships, and the man undergoes a rite of passage as a middle aged man. His journey during the opera means that we see him maturing, he learns to grow up. He comes to regret that he cannot know his father, and comes to understand that only love can bear the burden of truth.

Ben Parry and Garth Bardsley's My Father Cannot Speak in rehearsals with Roderick Williams at Snape [Photo: Angus Cooke / Britten Pears Arts]

Having collaborated on Songs For Girls Of A Certain Age, Ben and Garth were looking to write a new song-cycle. Garth had started writing poems intended for songs for a male voice. One of them, My Father Cannot Speak resonated with both men. Garth's father was adopted and thanks to a fire all information about his past has been lost, so Garth feels a gap, that something is missing. Ben's father had a stroke and was only able to say 'yes' or 'no', any other response had to be written down.

So in many ways, the new opera is inspired by real events in the two men's lives.

Sisters are doing it for themselves: Wexford Festival Opera's focus in 2027 will be women as creators with operas by Carolina Uccelli, Smetana & Saint-Saëns'

Wexford Festival Opera has announced its 2027 programme. Artistic director Rosetta Cucchi's theme for next year is a tribute to the extraordinary courage, resilience and creative power of women. The three main stage operas will be Carolina Uccelli's Anna di Resburgo, Smetana's Tajemství (The Secret) and Saint-Saëns' Déjanire. An Italian, a Czech and a French composer; a woman composer, a woman librettist and a powerful woman protagonist. Three leading female roles will all be performed by Wexford Factory alumni.

Lucien Muratore as Hercule in
Déjanire by Camille Saint-Saëns

Saint-Saëns' Déjanire had a rather intriguing history, linking to a play by a distinguished French opera librettist. Louis Gallet (1835-1898) was a French writer whose librettos included Djamileh for Bizet, La princesse jaune and several others for Saint-Saens, Le roi de Lahore, Le Cid and Thais for Massenet. In 1898, his play Déjanire was performed in a new outdoor arena in Béziers (used primarily for staging bullfights), with incidental music by Saint-Saens. The composer had been dubious about the venue, but the prospect of conducting huge musical ensemble consisting of a choir of hundreds, massed military bands and an orchestra that included 18 harps and an array of 25 trumpets tempted him. The reception was ecstatic.

Twelve years later, Saint-Saens transformed Gallet's play into an opera (by this time Gallet himself was dead) for the Opéra de Monte-Carlo where it was directed by Raoul Gunsbourg. It was the last of Saint-Saëns' twelve operas, was written for Monaco, coming over 30 years after his best-known opera Samson et Dalila.

Subsequently the work appeared at the Paris Opera, and in 1915 in the USA. Rarely performed today, its last outing might have been the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier in 1985 conducted by Serge Baudo. The plot is based on Sophocles The Trachiniae and follows a similar tragic arc to Handel's Hercules. In Wexford, the conductor and director will be George Petrou who was responsible for Wexford's 2025 production of Handel's Deidamia [see my review].

Portrait of Eliška Krásnohorská
by Jan Vilímek

We tend to forget that Smetana wrote nine operas, seven of them coming after The Bartered Bride (1866-1870). Smetana's Tajemství (The Secret) dates from 1878, it is the second of his four collaborations with librettist Eliška Krásnohorská. Krásnohorská (1847-1926) was a Czech feminist author who wrote lyric poetry and literary criticism, along with children's literature and translations of Pushkin and Byron.

Krásnohorská and Smetana's first, and best-known, opera being The Kiss. The plot idea for The Secret was Krásnohorská's and based on several sources, including Les femmes et le secret by La Fontaine. In the opera, Smetana reverted to a somewhat old-fashioned structure of choruses, duets, arias and ensemble pieces (with a pot-pourri overture). After Smetana's death the work languished but returned to Prague in 1922 and has remained in the repertory there ever since. Jack Westrup conducted the work's UK premiered in Oxford in 1958, and it was performed at the Camden Festival in 1972. At Wexford the work will be directed by Polly Graham and conducted by Sasha Scolnik Browe.

The least-known of Wexford's three operas is Carolina Uccelli's Anna di Resburgo (1835). Carolina Uccelli (1801-1858) was born to a minor Florentine noble family and married a prominent surgeon from Pisa. Her debut was the sacred opera, Saul at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence in 1830 (she wrote both libretto and music). This was followed by Anna di Resburgo in Naples in 1832 with a libretto by Gaetano Rossi which had already been set by Meyerbeer (as Emma di Resburgo) in 1819. Uccelli's version lasted only two performance, and the failure was partly attributed to the similarity of the plot to Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor which had had great success in Naples a month before!

Carolina Uccelli (c. 1843)

Uccelli's husband was supportive of her compositional career and there is a third opera, Eufemio da Messina (1833) though no score survives, but she certainly did not have the career that her talent deserved. After Anna di Resburgo she seems to have returned to her aristocratic social circle, composing small-scale pieces and vocal chamber music in Italian and French, published mostly in Paris, where she spent a good deal of time including giving recitals with her daughter, a soprano. But biographical information is rather scarce, and we are lucky that a score of Anna di Resburgo survives in the conservatoire in Naples and the work had its modern premiere in the USA, staged by Teatro Nuovo in 2024. In Wexford the opera will be directed by Rodula Gaitanou and conducted by Sieva Borzak.

In addition the Pocket Operas will be a triple bill consisting of Barber's A Hand of Bridge and Menotti's The Telephone (both with librettos by Menotti), plus Gallantry by Douglas Moore to a libretto by Arnold Shurgard. All three operas date from the late 1940s and 1950s, though the one by Douglas Moore is perhaps the least well-known in Europe. Moore studied with Vincent D'Indy and Ernst Bloch and wrote some 17 stage works including his best known opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe (from 1956). Gallantry, which came two years later, has proved popular with American and Canadian university opera theatre programmes. The librettist of Gallantry, Arnold Shurgard had worked with Kurt Weill on Down in the Valley.

Wexford's Factory Opera and the Community Opera will be joining forces for a production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro directed by Rosetta Cucchi and conducted by Karen Ní Bhroin, from Ferns in Co Wexford, who last year became the first Irish woman on the podium of the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Full details from Wexford Festival Opera's website.