Nevill Holt Opera rebrands as Nevill Holt Festival

Nevill Holt Opera has announced a change of creative direction which will see it rebrand as Nevill Holt Festival. The reimagined event will be a multi-arts festival including opera, chamber concerts, ‘musical performances’, jazz and contemporary music and comedy.

In a press release published today Nevill Holt Festival has confirmed that the change is the result of ‘an extensive survey inviting audiences to share their thoughts on the organisation's future’ and is part of an effort to ‘make the festival accessible to more people and to enjoy a sustainable future’. The 2024 festival will include the organisation’s first ever guest festival director in the form of theatre director and producer James Dacre and a new executive chair of the board, former director of Sky Arts, James Hunt.

Hunt said: ‘Nevill Holt Festival 2024 will host an extraordinary programme of local, national and international talent. After a couple of difficult years in which the festival’s activities had to be partially curtailed, thanks to the generosity of our many supporters, one of the Midlands’ most spectacular and notable estates will once again welcome an ever-broader audience fulfilling the long-held dream of owner David Ross to create a truly inclusive Arts Festival and venue fit for the 21st century.’

Set to run from 1 to 26 June 2024 in the grounds of the Nevill Holt estate in Leicestershire, the festival will open with a new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute created in partnership with Britten Sinfonia before including chamber concerts by performers including Imogen Cooper, Sarah Connolly, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason and Benjamin Grosvenor as well as musical performances by Mary Bevan, Nicky Spence and Joseph Middleton. The full festival lineup will be announced in February 2024.

The programme will also include jazz and contemporary music and comedy as well as ‘conversations with leading novelists, historians, broadcasters and artists’ and a major retrospective of sculptures by Anthony Caro. The organisation’s education programme will also welcome primary schoolchildren to the estate to perform a 50-minute version of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, directed by Jonathan Ainscough and conducted by Simon Toyne, after the production has toured to theatres across the region.