Waterperry Opera Festival launches 2024 programme

Florence Lockheart
Tuesday, April 9, 2024

The festival returns to Oxfordshire this year with a programme of opera productions and concerts across 10 days

(Image courtesy of WOF)
(Image courtesy of WOF)

Waterperry Opera Festival (WOF) is set to return to Oxfordshire’s Waterperry House this summer for ten days of performance from 9 to 18 August. This year’s festival presents three operas, with productions aimed at newcomers, opera lovers and families presented against the backdrop of Waterperry House and in the festival’s 300-seater amphitheatre.

Tickets are available from 11 April for the festival, which kicks off on 9 August with Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw presented against the Oxfordshire sunset with a full orchestra. The programme also includes an interpretation of Rossini's The Barber of Seville and a family-friendly production of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf combining classical music, storytelling, dance, and puppetry with accompaniment from a wind quintet.

WOF artistic director and CEO Guy Verrall-Withers said: ‘For 2024, we have created an ambitious season of productions. With returning favourites and exciting new ventures, our broad programme has something for everyone. We are taking artistic risks to create exciting operatic experiences that will captivate the next generation of audiences, as well as delight our loyal followers. Waterperry Opera Festival is a place where all are welcome, and we want to make sure there are no barriers to any young person enjoying or engaging with classical music and opera.’

The 2024 festival will also present the first dramatic staging of Jonathan Dove's song cycle Nights Not Spent Alone in the Waterperry House Ballroom as well as a series of accessible daytime concerts presenting Mozart and Mendelssohn Serenades in Waterperry's  Garden Glade. The festival will close with a Last Night of the Opera Gala featuring the Waterperry Opera Festival Orchestra and four soloists.

Founded in 2017, Waterperry Opera Festival focuses on bridging the gap between artists and audiences, welcoming families young and old, children, and classical music newcomers. Over the course of six years, the festival has produced 32 productions for more than 17,500 attendees.