BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA 2025
Antonio Salieri La locandiera (‘The Landlady’) (1773)
Performances:
The Deanery Garden, Bampton, Oxfordshire: Friday 18, Saturday 19 July
Westonbirt School, Gloucestershire: Monday 25 August
The Barn at Old Walland, Wadhurst, Sussex: Saturday 6 September
London performance to be announced
For more information CLICK HERE.
Bampton Classical Opera is delighted to announce their 2025 summer production will be Antonio Salieri’s comic opera La locandiera, marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death. It will be sung in a new English translation by Gilly French as ‘The Landlady’ and will be the fifth opera by Salieri that the company has staged.
Antonio Salieri’s La locandiera (‘The Landlady’) with a libretto by Domenico Poggi was first performed in Vienna in 1773 when the press commented ‘Both words and music received loud and deserved applause’. The plot is based closely on what is considered to be one of Carlo Goldoni’s finest-crafted plays, in which the feisty innkeeper Mirandolina determines to ‘educate’ a committed misogynist Cavalier, whilst also playing off the ardent affections of a foolish Count and a timid Marquis.
Bampton Classical Opera, twice a finalist in the International Opera Awards, marks the 200th anniversary of Salieri’s death with a new sparkling production of this witty and tuneful comedy of manners, sung in English. Andrew Griffiths conducts and Jeremy Gray directs, with a lively cast of some of the UK’s finest young singers.
Bampton has previously performed four great Salieri operas, including the UK premieres of Falstaff and La fiera di Venezia, which was shortlisted for the 2023 International Opera Awards, also the UK modern times premieres of La grotta di Trofonio and La scuola de’gelosi. Bampton’s production of Salieri’s La locandiera will again demonstrate how skilled the composer was at creating melodious and exciting comic opera, revealing the genius of this somewhat maligned composer.
Further details of Bampton Classical Opera’s production including casting will be announced in due course. Booking will open on February 14.
Bampton Classical Opera stages productions in rural venues in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire as well as regularly in London at St John’s Smith Square. Other significant venues and festivals have included Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room, Buxton Festival, Cheltenham Festival and Theatre Royal Bath. Eschewing familiar repertoire, Bampton concentrates instead on rarities from the late eighteenth century, sung in lively new English translations, and has given many enterprising performances of forgotten operas. Amongst these have been UK premieres of Bertoni Orfeo, Marcos Portugal The Marriage of Figaro, Paer Leonora, Benda Romeo and Juliet, Gluck Il Parnaso confuso, Philemon and Baucis and Salieri Falstaff and La fiera di Venezia.
Bampton Classical Opera was a finalist in the Rediscovered Opera category of the 2020 International Opera Awards for Stephen Storace Gli sposi malcontenti (Bride and Gloom), and its recent production of Salieri La fiera di Venezia (At the Venice Fair) was shortlisted for the 2023 Awards.