SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Longborough Festival Opera 2009: Waiting for Wagner – A preview by Roger Jones (RJ)

What has been described as the Glyndebourne of the Cotswolds is getting ready for its new season which starts on Wednesday June 10th. A converted barn overlooking the Evenlode Valley may seem an unlikely place for high culture, but the venue has grown and expanded over the years. It can now accommodate an audience of 480 seated in comfort on seats which originally graced Covent Garden.

Longborough Festival Opera is the brainchild of Martin and Lizzie Graham, who since the 1990s have hosted plenty of fine opera productions here. Originally, they brought in productions from companies, such as Travelling Opera and The Opera Project, but increasingly the operas are being realised in-house.

One of their most remarkable achievements to date has been a complete Wagner Ring Cycle, albeit in an abbreviated form. Small-scale the productions may have been, but imaginative staging and fine performances from singers, including the impressive Donald MacIntyre as Wotan, made the project a notable artistic success.

There is no Wagner this year. Instead interest will focus especially on a production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The conductor Jonathan Lyness and director/designer Richard Studer have worked at Longborough on previous productions. There are four performances starting July 1st.

The season starts with a revival of its 2006 production of Carmen with the vivacious Maria Soulis in the title role. Alan Privett, the opera's director has enjoyed a long association with Longborough Opera, as has conductor Jeremy Silver. The opera will be sung in French with surtitles, and if it retains the liveliness and colour of the original production it should be well worth seeing.

The Marriage of Figaro also features. Past productions at Longborough have been in English, but this one will be in Italian - again with surtitles. The conductor is Gianluca Marciano and director is Jenny Miller, who has sung Brünnhilde in past productions of The Ring.

It is encouraging and good to see that Longborough is also giving opportunities to young singers. Last year saw a performance of Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea performed by a group known as Young Artists' Production. This time the Young Artists return to perform La Bohème under the direction of former opera diva Maria Jagusz.

Mention was made earlier of Wagner's Ring. Martin Graham is a devoted Wagnerian hand and having put on an abridged version of The Ring he now has loftier ambitions: full length versions of all four operas at Longborough, an achievement that no private opera house has yet managed to bring off.

With this in mind he has launched a fundraising project, appropriately entitled "Pot of Gold". Raising £500,000 in a time of austerity may sound an impossible task, but one senses that Mr Graham is not the kind of man to throw in the towel, and one day Wotan, Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens will return to Longborough.

There will be some Wagner during the Festival, but this will feature in a concert of German Romantic music by the Longborough Festival Orchestra conducted by Anthony Negus. If you prefer something lighter, try the Italian Serenade by Gianluca Marciano and the Orchestra on the afternoon of Sunday 12th July.

Opera performances take place most weekends and on some weekdays as well between June 10th and July 22nd. For further information see the website www.lfo.org.uk or telephone 01451 830292.  Longborough is a few miles from Stow on the Wold and Moreton in Marsh.

Roger Jones

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