Garsington Opera

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Garsington Opera in Wormsley Park

Garsington Opera is an English opera festival , founded in 1989, which takes place annually in June and July in Wormsley Park in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire . Originally launched as a benefit event for the Bodleian Library in nearby Oxford , Garsington Opera has become known far beyond the borders of England over the years. In the open-air performances, the operas are usually played by young artists at the beginning of their careers. The festival is a popular attraction for opera fans in the summer and the long breaks are often used to have a picnic in the park.

history

Panoramic photo of Garsington Manor, 2011

The founder and long-time director of the festival was the banker Leonard Victor Ingrams (1941–2005). The first production, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in 1989, was a production of Opera 80 , which still exists and has been called English Touring Opera since 1992 . The following year began in-house productions, for which Ingrams signed the Guildhall Strings as an orchestra. Three new productions have been presented every year since 1992 and this tradition continued until 2016. For 22 years the festival was held at Ingrams 'country estate Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire , organized by the widow and daughter after Ingrams' death. In 2008 the family announced that they could only make the property available until 2010. In 2012 the country estate was sold.

In 2011 the festival moved to Wormsley Park , the Getty family estate near Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire , fifteen miles southeast of Garsington Manor, but kept its traditional name.

The oboist and conductor Douglas Boyd has been the festival's artistic director since 2013 .

Characteristic

The festival belongs to the elite genre of Country House Opera , which is based on the example of the Glyndebourne Festival, founded in 1934 and established throughout England from the 1970s. Well-heeled social classes meet in a picturesque country estate with well-tended gardens and enjoy an evening with an excellent opera performance, preferably a rarity that has not yet been heard in London, drink champagne and picnic in evening attire.

The performances of the Garsington Opera take place in an Opera Pavilion specially designed for the festival, which was designed by the architect Robin Snell so that it can be dismantled every year after the festival has ended. The owner of Wormsley Park, Mark Getty , liked the construction so much that he decided not to dismantle it every year, so that the pavilion is now permanently in the park of the property. Due to the glass construction, the picturesque landscape is, so to speak, included in the performance. The opera house has 600 seats. The performances start in the early evening, still in daylight. Before the performance begins, opera-goers can choose to have either traditional tea or champagne and during the long breaks of around 85 minutes, as at the Glyndebourne Festival, there is the possibility of a dinner - either as a picnic on the lawn in front of the opera house or in the festival restaurant. Appropriate evening wear is recommended. Visitors can also explore the property by vintage bus or on foot and tour the historic 18th-century Walled Garden , which includes a rose garden , croquet lawn, pergola, two historic fountains, and a miniature open-air theater. The garden design was done by Penelope Hobhouse .

repertoire

Rossini
Haydn
Mozart

The selection of programs for the festival has also been based heavily on the concept of the Glyndebourne Festival . The central axis is the main works of Mozart , the three Da Ponte operas , the Magic Flute , the Abduction from the Seraglio and Idomeneo . Less frequently performed works by the Salzburg composer were also included in the program, such as La finta giardiniera , Der Schauspieldirektor and Lucio Silla .

Every year Garsington Opera strives for a repertoire that consists of well-known and traditional works on the one hand, and unknown operas that have not yet been presented in England on the other. For example, the festival presented seven largely unknown operas by Joseph Haydn between 1990 and 2000 , including the British premiere of Orlando paladino . Other typical Garsington composers are Gioachino Rossini and Richard Strauss , who composed several cheerful and comical works. A total of twelve works by Rossini were presented by 2013, including the British premieres of La gazzetta (2001) and L'equivoco stravagante (2004). In addition to Arabella (2005) and Ariadne auf Naxos (1993 and 2007), Strauss also presented bulky and rarely performed operas, including Daphne (1995), Die ägyptische Helena (1997, British premiere), Die Liebe der Danae (1999) and Die Schweigsame Frau (2003). The festival's repertoire goes back to Antonio Vivaldi - three of his operas were performed between 2008 and 2012, including the British premieres of L'incoronazione di Dario (2008) and La verità in cimento (2011) - and well into the 20th century . Four operas by Benjamin Britten , three by Leoš Janáček and one by Bohuslav Martinů , the British premiere of Mirandolina in 2009, belong to the field of contemporary musical drama.

Four productions were shown for the first time in 2016, five have been announced for 2017, including the first commissioned work and the first world premiere of the festival - Silver Birch by Roxanna Panufnik .

The operas are usually sung in the original language with English surtitles .

Contributors

Garsington mainly hires young, promising singers at the beginning of their careers, on the one hand for cost reasons, on the other hand to promote the next generation. Many a career has received a strong boost thanks to the media attention for the festival. Well-known performers at Garsington Opera include the singers Susanna Andersson , Melanie Diener (Ilia in Idomeneo , 1996), Susan Bullock (title role in Ägyptische Helena , 1997) and Yvonne Kenny (Christine in Intermezzo , 2001), Norman Reinhardt (Belmonte in der Abduction from the Seraglio , 2013), Lesley Garrett (Despina in Così fan tutte ) and Toby Spence (title role in Idomeneo , 2016).

Experienced specialists in their field are chosen as conductors of the festival. Martin André , Ivor Bolton , Jane Glover , David Parry and the founder of the Grange Park Opera , Wasfi Kani, conducted the festival . From 1993 to 1998 Kani was also Assistant Director of the festival.

Productions

Garsington Manor

Wormsley Park

Rehearsal of Jacques Offenbach's La Périchole , 2012

Management of the festival

Awards

Promotion of young singers

The project regularly awards prizes and scholarships for younger singers and conductors:

Leonard Ingrams Foundation Awards

  • 2011: Ruth Jenkins-Róbertsson
  • 2012: Naomi O'Connell, John Andrews
  • 2013: Rhiannon Llewellyn, Susanna Stranders
  • 2014: Jennifer France, Alice Rose Privett, Anna Harvey
  • 2015: Bradley Travis, Llio Evans
  

Helen Clarke Award

  • 2012: Robyn Allegra Parton
  • 2013: Alice Rose Privett
  • 2014: Bradley Travis
  • 2015: Oliver Johnston
  

Simon Sandbach Award

  • 2012: Joshua Owen Mills
  • 2013: Jan Capiński
  • 2014: Richard Dowling
  • 2015: Daniel Rudge

From August 1st to 5th, 2016, the festival hosted the Garsington Youth Opera workshop , during which sixty young musicians worked on two works by contemporary composers - the twelve-minute mini-opera Mighty Oaks Academy by John Barber and the opening chorus from the opera Silver Brich by Roxanna Panufnik , who will be presented at the festival in 2017.

Trivia

Garsington Manor , 1865 photograph by Henry Taunt

In the 1990s there were violent protests by residents of Garsington Manor, who perceived Mozart's, Haydn's and Rossini's operas as noise nuisance and who in 1996 fought for damages of 1,000 British pounds in court. Neighbor Peter Rodger expressed his discomfort with the New York Times as follows: "You can hear the words [that are sung], but since I don't understand Italian or German, they don't make sense to me." And further: "The opera, where it stands, is simply too close to the neighboring properties." However, after the £ 1,000 judgment was overturned on appeal, Monica Waud, a resident of the area, committed an outrageous act of civil disobedience : Together with a number of other neighbors, she organized a noise production for the neighbors during a performance of Haydn's Le pescatrici in 1997. During the performance, protesters began mowing lawns, loudly trimming their hedges, operating diesel tractors, irrigation systems and car alarms. All in all, the opponents of the opera caused a hell of a racket, which - as the grand finale - was crowned by the noise of a private plane, piloted by the hematologist Paul Giangrande.

"The audience was very English," said the festival spokeswoman. "It was a bit like the lightning. They all rallied together. "

Although the festival organizers erected their own noise protection walls around the opera house, this did not dampen the anger of the residents. In 2001 the protesters tried - again unsuccessfully - through the Human Rights Act to prevent further performances by the Garsington Opera, claiming that the opera performances would deprive them of "the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions". In the seasons 2000 to 2005, the Environmental Health Service of South Oxfordshire carried out annual noise measurements by Sally Coxell (Head of Environmental Health) and came to the conclusion every year: "no statutory noise nuisance", no statutory noise pollution.

Even after the death of the owner of Garsington Manor and director of the festival, Leonard Victor Ingrams , on July 27, 2005 due to a heart attack, the protests did not end. In 2010 the last opera performances took place in Garsington Manor, the festival moved to Wormsley Park.

See also

Web links

Commons : Garsington Opera  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Die Zeit (Hamburg): Great Opera in the Garden , June 17, 2016, accessed on August 2, 2016.
  2. ↑ Classic examples of country house operas are - besides Glyndebourne and Garsington - the Dorset Opera Festival (founded 1974), the Longborough Festival Opera (1991), the Bampton Classical Opera (1993), the Grange Park Opera (1998), the Bury Court Opera (2006), the Nevill Holt Opera (2013) and the Opéra de Baugé (2003) in the French Loire Valley, also established by an English family. Another example of the genre exists in Sweden, the Stålboga sommaropera (since 2013). There are also touring troops who move from country estate to country estate every year. The classic season for this form of musical theater is from May to August. As a rule, covered venues are chosen for the performances, because of the English weather.
  3. ^ Hugh Pearman: Arcadia regained. In: RIBA Journal. September 9, 2014 ( online ).
  4. ^ Glyndebourne Festival Opera Visitors' Information ; Garsington Opera Visitors' Information , both accessed July 13, 2016.
  5. ↑ Michael Church: Preview: L'incoronazione di Dario , Garsington Manor, Oxford - A royal opera to Garsington manor is born , The Independent (London), June 2, 2008, accessed July 13, 2016.
  6. ↑ Guy Dammann: The Cunning Little Vixen review - fabulous cast, ravishing production; Claire Booth exceeds even high expectations as a knockout Vixen in this superb rendering of Janáček's opera , The Guardian (London), June 23, 2014, accessed on July 13, 2016.
  7. ↑ Garsington Opera: 2017 Season Announced , accessed August 3, 2016.
  8. ↑ Jenny Gilbert: How we met: Sir Stephen Tuman and Wasfi Kani , in: The Independent (London), August 16, 1998. Retrieved July 13, 2016.
  9. ^ Garsington Opera at Wormsley: Garsingston Youth Opera Company Residency , August 1, 2016, accessed August 3, 2016.
  10. ↑ a b Sarah Lall: From the Opera's Neighbors, a Reply (Fortissimo) , in: The New York Times , July 7, 1997, accessed August 3, 2016.
  11. ↑ Chris Walker, Garsington Opera must move , The Oxford Mail , May 2, 2008, accessed August 3, 2016.
  12. ^ Alastair Darling: Licensing Panel Report , accessed August 3, 2016.