Opera jewels to look forward to in 2025
Opera festivals promise to flourish as never before in the coming year.
Snow’s up! Glitter’s gone. Rancid turkey leftovers binned. Not the mince pies, though. Still, we need cheering up.
Petroc Trelawny’s BBC Radio 3 “Breakfast” back announcements have not moved on from season appropriate Schubert Winterreise scheduling. (Come on, Petroc, treat shivering listeners to occasional sun-basking winter relief. The glow of Richard Strauss’s bracing Alpine Symphony would counterbalance amber weather alerts nicely).
This week, spare the shivers, think summer. Think opera festivals. They flourish as never before and as the 2025 season jewel box opens, here is sparkle from those that immediately catch the eye. Some – Garsington – familiar. Others – Ireland’s Blackwater Valley Opera Festival – perhaps not so much.
The following selection is far from exhaustive. Just those blipping on my radar. An appetite-whetter.
Aldeburgh Festival, 13 -29 June
Never content with being Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears’ coastal Snape Maltings Mecca, this year the festival premieres a work by composer Colin Matthews, A Visit to Friends, an opera about love’s frustrations, based on the Chekhov same name short story.
Intriguingly, the libretto is by acclaimed author, William Boyd. His first foot in that pond. I know Boyd from his Glasgow University days and have delighted in his eclectic output over the years. Unlike many authors who plough the same furrow with diminishing success, Boyd’s inexhaustible interest in the human condition sees him constantly striking deep into fresh territory.
Boyd’s Chekhovian play Longing, influenced by his long fascination with the Chekhov Visit story is a basis of the Matthews/Boyd collaboration. He wrote of it as long ago as 2013. Available here.
Beguilingly, this will be an opera within an opera, the music strongly influenced by Scriabin. “Four main characters are rehearsing for the first performance of a recently discovered opera, with a libretto written by Chekhov. Two women are both in love with a man who cannot commit himself, and during rehearsals their relationships begin to mirror the characters they are playing…” (Aurora Orchestra).
Advance booking is imminent, and my finger will be hovering on the button. Last year’s Blonde Eckbert made a 2025 Aldeburgh outing unmissable.
Longborough Festival Opera, May to August:
Declaration of interest. Yours truly recently has been appointed Longborough’s ‘American Ambassador’. My brief will be more realistic than Peter Mandelson’s in Washington. I don’t have to persuade the 47th President or Elon Musk to come to the Cotswolds.
I shall attempt objectivity. Last year’s Amy Lane directed Wagner Ring Cycle was a triumph! This year enjoy the UK premiere of Avner Dorman’s Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult. It’s about who controls the narrative of the great composer’s work after his death.
A sort of Succession story, I bet the brutal family infighting that followed Wagner’s death will make the Roy family look like inferior emoji wimps.
Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Pelléas et Mélisande are also scheduled. Friendly Longborough is Glyndebourne pre-commercialisation. The pink-colonnaded ex chicken shed, a.k.a. the opera house, defines the festival’s ability to overcome all obstacles.
Blackwater Valley Opera Festival, 26 May – 2 June:
Ireland’s “summer” opera festival (Summer? Ireland? May? Are you nuts? Ed.) is held in the grounds of Lismore Castle.
Framed by a series of artistic events, concerts, and student performances in venues across the Blackwater Valley this year’s mainstage opera is Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, will be performed at St Carthage’s Cathedral.
Swiss director Dieter Kaegi came to Blackwater in 2010 and morphed the Lismore Festival into Blackwater. His sustained commitment has steadily enhanced the festival’s reputation as “Ireland’s other opera festival”. That “other” is, of course, Wexford, held in that Irish seasonal euphemism, “autumn”.
Garsington, 28 May – 22 July:
Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore; Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades; Handel’s Rodelinda; and Beethoven’s Fidelio.
The Oxfordshire festival chocolate box offers no dud centres this year. I single out John Cox’s Fidelio for special mention. The revival director, Jamie Manton will, I am sure, make use of Garsington’s open space stage to showcase the emergence of the prisoners into the light. Act I, O welche Lust. One of the high points of the operatic canon.
Last year featured a memorable A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And it’s all only an hour up the M40 from London.
Grange Park, West Horsley, June – July:
An ambitious schedule. Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa; Nishat Khan’s Taj Mahal; Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Mazeppa? Me neither. It’s hardly ever performed. Topically, the scene is set against a background of aspiring Ukrainian independence. Mazeppa, a demanding role performed by baritone David Stout, must face conflicting loyalties between duty and the love interest, Mariya.
Director, David Pountney, will, I bet, find it hard to stay aloof from current events. I anticipate Pountney fireworks.
Taj Mahal is a premiere, a bold stroke, even for the indomitable Wasfi Kani, Grange Park’s “Queen of Everything”. Khan is a sitar player, best known for his Bollywood scores.
The Grange Park programme: “Taj Mahal is a love story which explores the extraordinary romance between Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. We begin in the Octagonal Tower at the Agra Fort, in 1665, where Shah Jahan is held in captivity by his son Aurangzeb; Shah Jahan is old and dying, but from his prison he has a view of the Taj Mahal, which is a constant reminder of the enduring love of his wife Mumtaz.”
Halle - Handel Festspielle, June – July:
From a Handel greeting ceremony at his statue in the town square, through bus tours of “Halle the Beautiful” – presumably short – this delightful German town hosts a cornucopia of concerts, recitals, lectures, oratorios, and operas for their favourite son, who eventually abandoned them for Brook Street, London.
This year’s opera house performances are Agrippina and a revival of last year’s fabulous Amadigi di Gaula. Handel on steroids.
One of the joys of the festival is its eclecticism. The only drawback is the language barrier. But if you can cope with a lecture, Peeping at Mr Pepys in German, Halle will be right up your Strasse.
Savonlinna Opera Festival, July – August:
“Best Opera Festival of the Year”, International Opera Awards 2025. I should know. I announced the win at the October ceremony in Munich and handed over the trophy.
The festival in a lake-bound medieval castle is a true wonder. How they survive iffy Finnish weather with a temporary roof over a 15th century courtyard is a mystery. Olavinlinna Castle, where the operas are staged is a 1475 Swedish construct aimed at keeping Russians out. What’s new?
This year sees five main stage operas; Verdi’s Macbeth, Puccini’s Turandot, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Joonas Kokkonen’s The Last Temptations and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. So, a protracted stay 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle is a worthwhile investment.
Temptations tells the life story of the lay preacher Paavo Ruotsalainen and his wife Rita. He was an 18th century Revivalist leader. The opera tells his story from his deathbed. If running low on firebrand Scottish Wee Free sermons, get your booster in Finland this summer.
I shall go for the Simon Boccanegra.
The Glimmerglass Festival, July – August:
Stateside, the enchanted Alice Busch theater by Otsego Lake stages Stravinsky’s The Rakes Progress, Odyssey, composer Ben Moore and librettist Kelley Rourke, Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and Bermel’s The House on Mango Street.
The works are chosen to involve as many of the Glimmerglass resident students a role as possible. The atmosphere is “holiday camp” and the immersive programme of pre-performance lectures entertaining, as well as instructive.
Odyssey is Homer’s tale brought to life by two members of Glimmerglass’ Young Artists Program. It will be a one-hour spectacular of choruses and ballads. Librettist, Rourke also works with New York’s On Site Opera.
Glimmerglass sensibly packages performances so that a four-day trip encompasses most of what’s going on. Artistic and General Director, Robert Ainsley and Music Director, Joseph Colaneri deliver wonders in up-state New York.
It is another wonder of the medium that mostly unsubsidised opera festivals prosper, while their “big house” city counterparts who rely on the public purse, or in America big spender donations, struggle. Last year New York’s Met clocked up a $40m deficit. London’s English National Opera exists under a perma-cosh. Of course, independent festivals do not offer – with a few exceptions like Glyndebourne - opera set on a hugely costly scale.
I think a festival outing is a good bet for a neophyte uncertain about diving into opera for the first time. To all those readers finding themselves in that slot, time to treat yourselves to a day out in the country.
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