Garsington Opera reveals 2024 season
Florence Lockheart
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
Running from 29 May to 31 July next year, the upcoming season will see the festival present five operas
Garsington Opera has today announced details of its upcoming 2024 season. Running from 29 May to 31 July next year, the new season will see the Buckingham-based opera festival present five operas, including production revivals and brand new projects.
The season will open with the organisation’s first ever performance of Platée by French baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. Directed by Louisa Muller, the creative mind behind Garsington’s 2019 performance of The Turn of the Screw, and with a cast including tenor Samuel Boden in the title role, the production features The English Concert under the baton of Baroque specialist Paul Agnew.
Following a £14.5m building project, the festival’s brand new multipurpose facility Garsington Studios, will be in use from April 2024. An official Gala Concert will open the festival’s new addition with a programme of opera arias by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rossini, Dvořák and Verdi performed by artists including Roderick Williams, Natalya Romaniw, Christine Rice and Henry Waddington.
The Philharmonia Orchestra will return to Garsington’s Wormsley Estate in the 2024 season for a revival of John Cox’s production of Le nozze di Figaro which will see conductor Tabita Berglund make her Garsington debut. Audiences will be encouraged to get into the spirit of celebration by dressing as wedding guests. The Philharmonia will again join forces with the company for Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This co-production with Santa Fe Opera will star Iestyn Davies (pictured) as Oberon and Lucy Crowe as Tytania alongside a children’s chorus from members of Garsington’s Youth Company.
Having had its original run cancelled due to the pandemic, Verdi’s comedic opera Un giorno di regno finally appears on the Garsington stage this season. Director Christopher Alden makes his Garsington debut leading a cast and chorus including members of Garsington’s Young Artists initiative. The festival’s engagement initiatives are also highlighted in a new community opera, A Trip to the Moon by Andrew Norman, which will see local school children perform alongside the Garsington Opera Youth and Adult Companies with soloists Robert Murray and Jennifer France.
