The Cumbria Opera Festival 2025 – Opera for Everyone
The Cumbria Opera Festival 2025 (full details CLICK HERE) will be ten days of Operas, Concerts, and Education Workshops throughout the most beautiful area of Britain. Following our Opera Festivals in 2021 and 2023, both critically acclaimed by international publications, the 2025 Festival will be even more exciting, engaging, and accessible: we will show that Opera is for everyone, and for everywhere.
The Cumbria Opera Festival 2025 will be bookmarked by two large-scale opera productions: Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. Both radical in their own ways, these two disparate productions will ensure that variety is at the heart of the Festival. A new, English translation of The Marriage of Figaro will be created especially for the Festival, allowing Da Ponte’s text to be widely accessible to modern audiences.
Elsewhere, a new version of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess will tour the county. In a stripped-back version featuring just two singers, our production will explore the racial complications of the opera with an all-BAME cast and creative team. In a complicated world where opera is often separated from modern complexities, our productions of Figaro, The Turn of the Screw, and Porgy and Bess will relate Opera to the issues we face today.
Our ever-popular Night at the Opera series will also tour Cumbria: two soloists performing the best bits of opera, designed to appeal to the opera-lover and the opera-newbie alike. Joan Rodgers CBE, our Artistic Patron and one of the greatest singers of her generation, will lead a masterclass with young Cumbrian singers, inspiring the next generation of Opera performers.
Outreach is at the heart of everything we do. As in previous years, the 2025 Festival will be paired with a series of Education Workshops across Cumbria. Singers and Directors from the Cumbria Opera Group will lead Singing Workshops and ‘Play in a Day’ sessions at schools throughout the county. These workshops will teach young people about singing and drama, and will also use opera as a tool to teach languages, history, and – in view of The Turn of the Screw being in our diary – English Literature. Praise for our workshops has been unanimously positive, including:
Appleby Primary School: ‘Cumbria Opera Group’s workshops at Appleby Primary School have been amazing! The children really enjoy getting involved and it’s amazing to see those who are sometimes less confident come out of their shell when they are performing! We love having the Opera Group with us, the children are always engaged and enjoy the freedom of creating their own actions and joining in with the singing.‘
Our Young Composers’ Competition will return in 2025, after its successful debut at our 2023 Opera Festival. Cumbrian composers under the age of 21 will be invited to apply for this opportunity, with the winner receiving mentoring sessions from our Associate Composer Jen Hartley. They will also have their winning composition premiered as part of the touring Night at the Opera series.
As in previous years, the 2025 Festival will engage with the community and show that Opera can be made by anyone. At the 2023 Festival, we founded the Cumbria Community Opera Chorus: this group of talented Cumbrians made their debut in our production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. We are thrilled to continue this initiative into the 2025 Festival, with the Cumbria Community Opera Chorus at the core of The Marriage of Figaro. Additionally, the Cumbria Opera Youth Chorus will appear in Figaro.
Why It’s Needed: Prior to our Opera Festival in September 2021, there had never been an Opera Festival in Cumbria, and Cumbrians were having to travel long distances to witness high-quality opera. Moreover, Cumbria lacks a purpose-built Opera Theatre, making it very difficult to stage opera successfully in the county.
More generally, we want to address the large disadvantages Cumbrians have in accessing classical music. There is no professional choir, professional orchestra, or purpose-built concert hall in this large county. The geographical sparsity of Cumbria makes it difficult for people to witness any classical music events that do happen here. For young Cumbrians, there is only one weekly youth orchestra in Cumbria – the Westmorland Youth Orchestra in Kendal – meaning young people in Silloth face a four-hour round trip to attend their local orchestra.
Our Artistic Patron Joan Rodgers CBE, a born and bred Cumbrian and international opera star, writes that there is a ‘clear appetite for opera across Cumbria’. This ‘appetite’ was demonstrated by the large audiences we received at the Cumbria Opera Festivals 2021 and 2023 and the Outdoor Opera Weekend in 2022, where over 75% of the events sold out, with positive feedback from attendees: ‘I’m delighted opera is finally happening here’!’; ‘this was the first opera I attended, but I’ll definitely attend more!’. We hope to transform this evident passion into a county-wide engagement with numerous forms of opera.
Events (all 7.30pm unless stated):
August 21st: Marriage of Figaro Performance 1, Penrith Methodist Church
August 22nd: Marriage of Figaro Performance 2, Penrith Methodist Church
August 23rd: Marriage of Figaro Performance 3, Penrith Methodist Church
August 24th: A Night at the Opera Performance 1, Barrow Town Hall, Barrow-in-Furness
August 25th: A Night at the Opera Performance 2, Appleby Public Hall
August 26th: A Night at the Opera Performance 3, St John’s Church, Keswick
August 27th: Porgy and Bess Performance 1, Kendal Town Hall
August 28th: Porgy and Bess Performance 2, Tithe Barn, Carlisle
August 29th: The Turn of the Screw Performance 1, Victoria Hall, Grange-over-Sands
August 30th (2pm): Masterclass with Joan Rodgers CBE: Masterclass with Joan Rodgers CBE, Victoria Hall, Grange-over-Sands
August 30th: The Turn of the Screw Performance 2, Victoria Hall, Grange-over-Sands