Articles & Interviews

The master list of news, features and interviews

The Grange Festival – 24 June to 24 July 2021

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The Grange Festival’s 2021 season (24 June – 24 July) 

Summer 2021 sees new productions of La Cenerentola and Manon Lescaut as well as a remake of Paul Curran’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream 

 The season also includes three staged concert performances of My Fair Lady and spoken theatre for the first time with a new production of Shakespeare’s King Lear 

  ‘The entire event was a credit to Chance for opting for something entirely unpredictable…’
– The Sunday Times review of Precipice, August 2020 

The Grange Festival’s 2021 season is set to start on Thursday 24 June 2021 with an exciting programme of opera, a concert staging of a musical and their first ever presentation of spoken theatre. Having had to postpone the 2020 programme, this summer’s festival will see the productions of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady that would have been performed last summer, as well as a new production of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The Festival’s residency partnership with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra continues with the orchestra accompanying nearly all productions during the 2021 season.

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Edinburgh International Festival – 7 to 29 August 2021

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Live performance is back with a bang – Simon Thompson on the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival

Anyone reading this south of Hadrian’s Wall might wonder why we Scots are so especially excited about the return of the Edinburgh International Festival. After all, hasn’t the national lockdown been over for several months now, and haven’t we had plenty of opportunities for live music since the pandemic?

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2021 English Music Festival – 28 to 31 May

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The English Music Festival future plans – imminent and heading into 2022

The English Music Festival (EMF) runs concerts, issues recordings and publishes books. The concert side has, along with other live events, inevitably taken the necessary restrictions on the chin. There has been the usual smattering of cancellations, streamed concerts, venue changes and social distancing but the Festival has done well in the circumstances.

When the history of EMF comes to be written the way that the Festival management has adapted, and more than survived, will make a chapter all of its own. The move to St Mary’s Church Horsham and to the historic 1920s Drill Hall, a short distance from the Church. resulted in a socially distanced festival during the depths of lockdown in December 2020.

The main 2021 Festival is scheduled for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend (28 to 31 May). It will be going ahead in a series of ‘live’ events in St Mary’s Church, Horsham and in the Drill Hall. The events will include ten concerts, talks about Percy Sherwood, Holst, Making the Way in a Media music career, and the official launch of the most recent release on the EM Records label, ‘Those Blue Remembered Hills’ (review).

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20th Oxford Lieder Festival – 8 to 23 October 2021

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The 20th Oxford Lieder Festival: Nature’s Songbook

The Oxford Lieder Festival (8 – 23 October 2021) will celebrate its 20th anniversary this autumn. Celebrating the magical art of song, an astonishing array of artists will appear in more than 80 events, encompassing the great song cycles of Schubert and Schumann, the riches of fin-de-siècle Paris, the epic landscapes of Scandinavia and the vibrant sphere of American song.

For more about Oxford Lieder click here

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First ever Cumbria Festival of Opera – 4 to 11 September 2021

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The 2021 Cumbria Festival of Opera is the first of its kind: a week of music, theatre, and education in one of the most beautiful areas in the world

The Cumbria Opera Group has existed since 2016, with the aim of bringing high-quality opera, classical music, and music education to Cumbria. Our productions of Dido and Aeneas, Venus and Adonis, and Acis and Galatea have demonstrated people’s passion for opera in this fantastic county, and we are thrilled to present Cumbria’s first ever Festival of Opera.

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Opera Philadelphia in 2021/22

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Opera Philadelphia announces ‘live and digital’ 2021-2022 season

Building on the success of its acclaimed 2020-2021 season, described by The New York Times as ‘laying claim to the mantle of making new material during the pandemic’, Opera Philadelphia has announced plans for an untraditional 2021-2022 season. Eliminating the time constraints of what constitutes an ‘opera season’, the Opera Philadelphia Channel will continue to stream original films, archival performances and new programming year-round.

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