The Leonard Ingrams Foundation is delighted to announce that the winners of the 2012 Awards are soprano Naomi O’Connell and conductor John Andrews.

John Andrews who was the Assistant Conductor on Don Giovanni said: “This exciting award will enable me to take part in a major conducting Masterclass, observe top conductors in one of the main European opera houses, improve my German and Italian, and to continue keyboard and singing lessons, all of which as a coach and conductor I feel will be intensively beneficial to me, and more importantly to those I work with.”

Naomi O’Connell who had such a success singing the title role in La Périchole after having graduated from The Juilliard School said: “I am both honoured and delighted to have received this award which will enable me not only to fund my singing lessons and the development of a new website this year but to take part in an extensive European audition tour next autumn.”

This marks the sixth Leonard Ingrams Foundation Awards which were launched in May 2006 to honour the memory of Garsington Opera’s founder, ensure the continuity of his vision and to support young artists involved in the creative process of bringing opera to the stage.

World premiere of Alec Roth’s Jubilate in celebration of Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee at the Musicians Benevolent Fund’s Annual Festival

The Musicians Benevolent Fund celebrates its annual Festival of Saint Cecilia on 21 November 2012 at St Paul’s Cathedral and Merchant Taylors’ Hall. Held since 1946 as a tribute to The Patron Saint of Music, this event continues a tradition in bringing together over 1,200 people to celebrate music and musicians, making it the Fund’s biggest event of the year.

This year’s Festival is dedicated to the Fund’s Patron, HM The Queen in her Diamond Jubilee year. The Fund is delighted that she has asked HRH The Duchess of Gloucester to attend the Service on her behalf and look forward to welcoming the Duchess to the Cathedral. The Service starts at 11am and includes guest readings from Sir Michael Parkinson and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. The Service is followed by a reception and lunch which this year, sold out months in advance, where the guest speaker will be Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.

The highlight of the Festival Service is the coming together of the choirs of St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral. This year they will sing together the world premiere of a new anthem commissioned by the Musicians Benevolent Fund with support from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust. Entitled Jubilate the anthem celebrates the Diamond Jubilee of Fund’s Patron, Her Majesty The Queen.

Jubilate was written by Alec Roth who is probably best known for his collaborations with the Indian writer Vikram Seth which include an opera Arion and the Dolphin, large scale choral works and numerous songs and song-cycles. He is currently composer-in-residence with the Birmingham-based choir Ex-Cathedra.

Although the lunch at Merchant Taylors’ Hall is sold out, tickets for the Festival Service are available from the Musicians Benevolent Fund. Please call 020 7239 9114 or order online at helpmusicians.org.uk

Next year, 2013, the Fund is going to collaborate with the Britten-Pears Foundation and Westminster Abbey to celebrate the centenary of Benjamin Britten who was born on St. Cecilia Day.

ENO’s joyous and iconic interpretation of The Mikado returns to the London Coliseum this Christmas, complete with high-kicking chorus lines, satirical touches and a wonderfully elegant score. Jonathan Miller’s widely-acclaimed production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s ‘Japanese’ satire takes the story out of the tiny oriental town of Titipu and sets it in the faintly seedy grandeur of a 1930s English hotel – the perfect place for lampooning targets much closer to home. This revival marks Richard Suart’s 25^th anniversary in the part of Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner.

David Parry conducts an outstanding British cast, led by Richard Suart as Ko-Ko. ENO favourite Robert Murray, who most recently played the role of Steersman in Jonathan Kent’s critically-acclaimed production of The Flying Dutchman, is Nanki-Poo. He is joined by ENO Harewood Artist Mary Bevan, singing the role of Yum-Yum and Richard Angas and Mark Richardson share the role of The Mikado of Japan. The cast also includes David Stout as Pish-Tush, Rachael Lloyd as Pitti-Sing and Yvonne Howard as Katisha.

Miller’s iconic vision of a 1930’s English, sea-side hotel was immaculately captured by the late, celebrated stage designer Stefanos Lazaridis, a frequent collaborator with ENO during the 1980s.The creative team includes costume designer Sue Blane, choreographer Antony van Laast (revival choreography by Steven Speed) and lighting designer Davy Cunningham.

The Mikado opens at the London Coliseum on 1 December for 12 performances – 1, 5, 7, 8 December and 21, 25, 26, 30 and 31 January at 7.30pm and 1, 8 December and 26 January at 2.30pm

The Orchestra and Chorus of Welsh National Opera will be performing under guest conductor Christoph Poppens’ baton as part of St David’s Hall International Concert Series, on Friday 16 November 2012 at 7.30pm .

The repertoire includes Mozart Masonic Funeral Music and Mozart’s Requiem which features Elizabeth Watts, Márie Flavin, Andrew Tortise and Neal Davies as soloists. Between these works, the Orchestra is joined by two soloists from WNO, pianist Simon Phillippo and Principal Trumpet Dean Wright, in three movements from the Requiem by Hans Werner Henze .

The music in the evenings’ programme reflects on humans complex responses to death, moving from grief to celebration of lives.

The Garsington Opera Pavilion has won the prestigious British Construction Industry Award for the best new building under £3 million, given at the 25^th anniversary BCIA dinner held at Grosvenor House on 10 October 2012.

This marks the sixth award to be received (others were the RIBA Award, for architectural excellence; the RIBA South Client of the Year Award; the RIBA South Building of the Year Award; the Galvanisers’ Design Engineering Award and the Structural Steel Design Commendation).

Anthony Whitworth-Jones, General Director of Garsington Opera, said:

“We are delighted that our new Opera Pavilion has been so widely recognized; Snell Associates, Unusual Rigging, Sound Space Design and all the team have done a superb job. The judges recognized that the concept and delivery of the structure achieved an inspiring building that pushes conventional boundaries of design, construction and procurement in so many ways.

In under a year, funds were raised, designs developed, planning permission granted and construction completed for the opening of Garsington Opera at Wormsley on 2 June 2011.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) after John Bunyan

Conductor, Martyn Brabbins      Director, Yoshi Oïda

ENO stages the first full professional performance of Vaughan Williams’ The Pilgrim’s Progress since its premiere at the 1951 Festival of Britain

English National Opera’s new production of Vaughan Williams’ The Pilgrim’s Progress highlights the company’s commitment to celebrating great 20^th century British opera. Yoshi Oïda’s directorial debut with ENO marks the first full professional staging of Vaughan William’s seminal work since its premiere at the 1951 Festival of Britain.

Vaughan Williams spent 40 years of his life perfecting The Pilgrim’s Progress – a sublime ‘morality’ that charts the trials, tribulations, temptations and revelations that Bunyan’s questing Pilgrim encounters on his physical and spiritual progress ‘from the world to that which is to come’.

The opera is based on the original two-part book of the same title, an extended Christian allegory by John Bunyan, published in the late 1600s. Although Vaughan Williams was a self-professed agnostic, he wrote in a letter in May 1951 that he wanted the music to “apply to anyone who aims at a spiritual life”.

Drawing on traditional Japanese Noh theatre, actor, film and theatre director Yoshi Oïda’s highly original technique bridges Eastern and Western theatrical methods. Oïda makes his ENO debut following a number of recent high profile European productions including stagings for the National Theatre Prague and Opéra National du Rhin. Oïda made his name as an innovative interpreter of English 20^th-century opera with his UK debut production of Death in Venice – “a superb performance” (Daily Telegraph) – for the Aldeburgh and Bregenz festivals (2007), on which he worked with conductor Martyn Brabbins.

Brabbins is well-known for his championing of British Music, including his previous appearance for ENO, in 2005, when he conducted a ‘grippingly urgent and muscular’ (The Guardian) account of Tippett’s A Child of Our Time. Brabbins is Chief Conductor of the Nagoya Philharmonic and Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. He was previously Artistic Director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music 2005-2007 and Associate Principal Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 1994-2005.

The Pilgrim’s Progress opens at the London Coliseum on 5 November for 7 performances – November 5, 9, 16, 20, 22 & 28 at 7.30pm and Nov 24 at 6.30pm

New production in association with The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust and supported by ENO’s English Opera Group and the Friends of ENO.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra will be at The Dome Brighton on

Saturday 3 November – with works by Nielsen, Dvorak & Rachmaninoff conducted by Osmo Vanska

Saturday 2 February – with works by Sibelius

Saturday 23 February – with works by Joan Tower, Copland, Gershwin & Dvorak

Saturday 16 March – with works by Beethoven, Schumann and Elgar

Full details from www.brightondome.org  01273 709709

Opening Wednesday 17 October, 7.00pm (9 performances)

Following from the success of Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee, multi award-winning director Rufus Norris teams up with ENO Music Director Edward Gardner in a revival of Mozart’s darkly seductive Don Giovanni. Norris’ production was described by Wall Street Journal as “A Don Giovanni for our times”.

Rufus Norris is one of the leading lights of British theatre and his relationship with ENO highlights the company’s commitment to working with creative talent from across the arts. Norris made his opera directorial debut at ENO in 2010 with Don Giovanni. In 2012, he returned to the company to direct Damon Albarn’s Elizabethan folk opera, Dr Dee – described as “dazzlingly fluid” (Daily Telegraph) and an “exquisite pageant” (Daily Mail).

Over recent years, Norris’ work has made an impact in London and New York – winning two Evening Standard Awards, two Critics’ Circle Awards, two Olivier nominations and ‘Show of the Year’ Time Out award for his revelatory production of London Road at the National Theatre. Rufus Norris’ film, Broken, opened Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix of the Odessa International Film Festival. Norris has been nominated for the Best British Newcomer award at the forthcoming BFI Film Festival and his production of Cabaret is currently touring the UK, arriving at the Savoy Theatre in early October.

Rufus Norris is joined by long-time collaborator and Tony Award-winning designer Ian MacNeil (Billy Elliot, David Alden’s Tristan and Isolde and Ariodante). The creative team is completed with costume designer Nicky Gillibrand, lighting designer Mimi Jordan Sherrin, projections designer Finn Ross and movement director Jonathan Lunn. James Burton conducts the final three performances in the run.

Mozart’s Don Giovanni was modelled on the legendary Spanish Libertine Don Juan and the real-life Venetian rake Giacomo Cassanova. The opera follows Don Giovanni, a young, arrogant, sexually prolific nobleman, whose abuse, and outrageous conduct, spirals out of control until he must pay the price for his depraved lifestyle. Rufus Norris sets the action in contemporary times and explores a theme of Don Giovanni’s magnetic and electrically charged character.

This first revival boasts many of the outstanding singers from its initial 2010 run, including Iain Paterson as the infamous lothario, with Katherine Broderick and Ben Johnson (both former Kathleen Ferrier Award-winners) as the defiled Donna Anna and her uptight fiancé Don Ottavio. Rebecca Evans and Sarah Redgwick share the role of the abandoned Donna Elvira, Darren Jeffrey is Leporello, the compulsive cataloguer of Giovanni’s sexual conquests, along with Sarah Tynan as Zerlina and Matthew Best as heaven’s ghostly avenger, theCommendatore.

Don Giovanni opens at the London Coliseum on 17 October for 9 performances – October 17, 25, 27 & November 6, 10, 15 (7.00pm) and October 20 & November 3, 17 (6.00pm)

Pre-performance talk, Saturday October 20, 4.15-5.00pm, £5/£2.50 concessions.

The end of an extraordinary summer

• · 93% average attendance for main evening concerts in Royal Albert Hall
• · 51 of 76 concerts in the Royal Albert Hall sold out
• · Over 300,000 attend the 88 concerts in the Royal Albert Hall and Cadogan Hall

After a packed two months the 118th season of the BBC Proms comes to a thrilling conclusion this evening with the world-renowned Last Night of the Proms, led by conductor Jiri Bêlohlávek and featuring tenor Joseph Calleja and violinist Nicola Benedetti, at the Royal Albert Hall, part of the final weekend of an extraordinary summer in Britain.

Average attendance for the main evening Proms in the Royal Albert Hall this year was 93%, just below last year’s record level of 94%. 51 of 76 concerts in the Royal Albert Hall sold out and over 300,000 people attended concerts at both the Royal Albert Hall and Cadogan Hall.

More than 35,000 people bought tickets for the first time and over 7,500 under 18s attended concerts across the season. Record numbers of tickets were sold on the first day of sales with over 100,000 tickets purchased.

Roger Wright, Director BBC Proms, says:

“I’m delighted that the 2012 BBC Proms have been so successful with audiences, particularly in such an unique summer in London. The high attendance figures are a reminder of the strength of the BBC Proms brand and the festival’s vision to bring classical music to the largest possible audience. There has been a demonstrable excitement in embracing a wide range of music throughout the festival. The great value for money which the Proms offers is thanks to the ongoing commitment of the BBC.”

Jasper Hope, Chief Operating Officer, Royal Albert Hall says:

“In an exceptional year for the capital, the BBC Proms stand out as the international cultural event of the summer; a truly representative and extremely successful celebration of the very best classical artists from around the globe. It has been a privilege to once again host the world’s greatest classical music festival on the world’s most famous stage”. 

From Beethoven to Boulez; tap dancers to organist Cameron Carpenter’s fancy-footwork; a dedicated John Cage evening to an animated dog playing the violin, this season has truly celebrated the vast range of music the Proms champions. With more new music than ever before the BBC Proms demonstrated its commitment to contemporary work with 31 world premieres, 26 of which were BBC commissions.

With Promming tickets remaining at £5 for the seventh year, the festival continues to offer great value for money, broad programming and creative use of interactive technology and social media with more than 16,000 Twitter followers. The Proms website built on new initiatives including streaming concerts in HD Sound which was made available outside the UK for the first time through a syndication agreement with American Public Media.

The Proms offers an extensive learning programme with a rich offering of daily pre-concert and participatory events to enrich the audience’s experience and reach new and young attenders. Sir Henry Wood, founder-conductor of the Proms, believed in making the best-quality classical music available to the widest possible audience and that ambition remains central to the BBC Proms today as shown in the John Cage centenary celebrations which included the first Proms Music Walk where audience members downloaded 10 new commissions to accompany pieces of performance art around South Kensington.

For the first time ever the Last Night of the Proms will be streamed in 3D in cinemas across the UK. Coverage on BBC television continued to grow with more than 11 million viewers tuning in to see the Proms on television, even before the final two broadcasts of the season, including the Last Night of the Proms. Both the Wallace & Gromit and Broadway Sound Proms had over 1.5 million viewers on BBC One and BBC Two respectively, contributing to a record peak in weekly online traffic, up 92% year on year. Katie Derham has been the face of the Proms on BBC Two for the third year running and the BBC Four Proms have been led on screen by Samira Ahmed, Charles Hazlewood, Suzy Klein and Petroc Trelawny. Concerts will have been broadcast across BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four, and for the first time in 3D on the BBC HD channel. All services are available to listen and watch again on bbc.co.uk/proms and via the BBC iPlayer.

BBC Radio 3 broadcasts every Proms programme live, with an ambitious range of contextual programming around the music, including many of the Proms Plus events as well as interviews, talks, essays and features.

Highlights in 2012 have included Daniel Barenboim’s complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies coupled with major works by Pierre Boulez performed by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, culminating in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to coincide with the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Requests on YouTube for one of the four television excerpts from the Beethoven Ninth stand at just under 14,000 and total requests for clips from the 2012 Proms season on YouTube are 190,000 and growing.

This year also saw the first ever Desert Island Discs Prom to celebrate the programme’s 70^th anniversary. The John Wilson Orchestra returned to the Proms with two star-studded performances in the Broadway Sound Prom and My Fair Lady, his first complete musical at the Proms.

Youth was a major focus at this year’s Proms with the first ever performance by the BBC Proms Youth Choir and a weekend celebrating UK youth ensembles. The Children’s Prom this year included the premiere of My Concerto in Ee, Lad from Wallace & Gromit, performed by the Aurora Orchestra with violinist Tasmin Little and conductor Nicholas Collon. Visiting orchestras included the Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and debut Proms performances from the St Louis Symphony and São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, the first ever Brazilian orchestra at the Proms.