Season Previews

Season Previews from around the world

Pittsburgh Opera in 2020/21

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Pittsburgh Opera announces 2021/2022 season

Pittsburgh Opera will be returning to larger venues in its upcoming season, beginning with Mozart’s The Magic Flute in November. During the height of the COVID pandemic, Pittsburgh Opera was able to combine live performances with limited, socially-distanced audiences and live-streams of each production. For the 2021/2022 season, the company will be returning to the Benedum Center and August Wilson African American Cultural Center, while also staging operas at its headquarters.

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City of Birmingham Symphony links up with marquee.tv to show unseen and existing performances

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CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PARTNERS WITH MARQUEE TV

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is delighted to announce it has agreed a two-year partnership with the leading arts streaming service, Marquee TV.

Launching on Saturday 5 June, six broadcasts of previously unseen and existing CBSO performances will be released throughout June and July on marquee.tv. Featuring repertoire ranging from Nielsen to Gilbert and Sullivan, the broadcasts will enable global audiences to experience the CBSO, building on the orchestra’s work throughout the pandemic to connect digitally with music-lovers worldwide.

The six-concert series will premiere five previously unseen performances including music by Clyne, Coleridge-Taylor, Dvořák, Glinka, Glazunov, Shaw, Mendelssohn, Nielsen, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius, Takemitsu and Tchaikovsky conducted by Ryan Bancroft, Jonathan Bloxham, Ben Gernon, John Wilson and Kazuki Yamada. Stephen Hough performs Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto with Alpesh Chauhan and in a special programme of British light music, John Wilson joins the orchestra to shine a spotlight on Coates, Delius, Elgar, Gilbert and Sullivan and Haydn Wood.

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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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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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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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