Summer at Grange Park Opera – 4 June – 12 July 2026
A quartet of opera’s grandest and greatest composers lead the bill for Grange Park Opera’s summer season, while the Royal Ballet’s Principal Dancer presents an exclusive evening of breathtaking choreography. It really is ‘all killer no filler’ at the stunning Surrey opera house in 2026…
Let Sir John Taverner, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi and Gioachino Rossini transport you into the mystic and ethereal, a world of Gods, the dark loneliness of royalty and how bribery, deception and disguise can help true love win the day.
Meanwhile Melissa Hamilton, performs and curates for Grange Park Opera an exhilarating, unmissable evening, showcasing the transcendent magic of dance.
Krishna (Taverner) – 4 June – 2 July 2026 – The summer season begins with the world premiere of Krishna, a delightful, mystic pantomime from the pen of the late Sir John Tavener, the visionary and hugely popular composer. Tavener mixes dance, ritualised tableaux and an ethereal sound world – featuring aerial eight flutes (four of them alto flutes) to form a mellifluous sonic halo around the Hindu god.
Opera lovers will be able to enjoy this world-first before the renowned opera empresario Sir David Pountney and celebrated choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh take the work to Houston Grand Opera in Autumn 2027.
Das Rheingold (Wagner) – 14 June – 10 July 2026 – The staging of Das Rheingold marks the beginning of Grange Park Opera’s four-year journey through Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle. This thrilling new production from Director Charles Edwards comes exactly 150 years after the first Bayreuth performance. Adding to the onstage drama will be Edwards’s staggering recreation of the visual effects that Wagner himself specified for the orchestra interludes. Expect to see a visual feast of smoke, lighting and special effects.
In the first part of the cycle, we will meet many of the Ring’s main characters: Wotan, ruler of the Gods, and his wife Fricka; the slippery Loge, god of Fire; two lumbering giants, Fasolt and Fafner; and the three Rhinemaidens, playing in the river with the golden ring that will cause a whole world of trouble when the cunning dwarf Alberich steals it.
With a cast of outstanding British singers, Das Rheingold marks an important landmark in Grange Park Opera’s evolution.
The acoustic quality and intimacy of the five-storey opera house are ideal for creating Wagner’s soundworld and emboldened by the success of previous performances of Tristan, Die Walküre and The Flying Dutchman, Grange Park Opera’s founder Wasfi Kani CBE and her team decided the time was ripe to stage the whole cycle.
Don Carlo (Verdi) – 6 June – 7 July – Arguably Verdi’s most glorious music in his grandest opera, Don Carlo is also packed with gripping drama, with the grim burning of heretics in front of the Cathedral of Valladolid just one of the spectacular elements in this historical tragedy with its roots in the bloody Spanish Renaissance. The public, personal and political are all intermingled, drawing from Verdi some of his most glorious music, replete with full-throated choruses and introspective arias.
The plot revolves around the turbulent relationship between the eponymous Don Carlos (or Carlo), the Spanish Prince, and his father, King Philip II, which is complicated by their mutual love for Elisabeth of Valois, the Princess of France. Following an arranged marriage, Elisabeth, once betrothed to Don Carlos, becomes Philip’s queen, igniting a web of passion, jealousy, and rebellion. What could possibly go wrong…?
Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini) – 25 June – 12 July – What could be better or more appropriate on a sultry evening than the Barber of Seville? It is the perfect summer opera, full of wit, sparkle and romance.
Our beautiful heroine Rosina must escape from the lecherous Dr Bartolo, who has imprisoned her. In a bid to deliver her from his lascivious clutches, her brigade of dishy admirers pool their ingenuity to prise Rosina away. Of course, it falls to the central character of Figaro to use all his wiles to help Count Almaviva outwit Dr Bartolo and ensure that true love triumphs.
From the first notes of Rossini’s famous Overture you know you are in safe hands, as each musical number builds the comic momentum with twists, turns, duets and ensembles of mad-cap humour. Written in just three weeks, The Barber of Seville changed the course of operatic history. Rossini picked up the baton from Mozart, to put musical wit front and centre on the operatic stage and, in so doing, established the genius of his own comic timing.
Melissa Hamilton curates a night of Ballet – 9 July – Last season’s inaugural Gala of British Ballet sold out, leaving fans of dance crying out for more.
For the 2026 season, Melissa Hamilton, a Principal of the Royal Ballet, is performing in and curating an exhilarating, unmissable evening of performances that will showcase the transcendent magic of dance. A superb line-up of the brightest UK artists and international ballet stars will come together to present excerpts from some of the most famous titles in the ballet repertoire, combined with exhilarating contemporary choreography.
‘Immerse yourself…lose yourself…in an evening of joy and awe-inspiring beauty,’ Wasfi Kani says, inviting fellow ballet fans to her luxurious, five-storey opera house set in elegant formal gardens.
‘Our 2026 season will take you on a series of magical, spectacular and phantasmagorical journeys, and in the long interval you can dine where Henry VIII banqueted and Elizabeth I sojourned for a week. Step on the very flagstones they trod upon as you process through the ancient orchard, past the 300-year-old mulberry tree. You’ll then be cossetted in the opera house that was inspired by Milan’s world famous La Scala, before being entertained by truly luxury casts performing this incredible programme of absolute classics.’
Grange Park Opera was founded in 1998 by Wasfi Kani, CBE. Since then, it has performed to over 350,000 people with more nearly 100 productions and 450 performances. Since 2017, productions take place in the newly built five-tiered, 650-seat opera house on the estate of the 14th-century West Horsley Place, which was inherited by Bamber Gascoigne from his aunt, the Duchess of Roxburghe. The £11.5m cost of the building – was raised by Kani herself from private donations in just one year.
For more information about the 2025 season, performance dates and tickets, click here and follow the social media channels for regular news updates on X (formally Twitter) / Facebook / Instagram.