Garsington Opera’s 2018 production of Verdi’s Falstaff, directed by Bruno Ravella, has been nominated for the highly coveted forthcoming Sky Arts Awards in the Opera category.  This production, which was also captured and streamed to 9,000 people in over 20 countries via the digital platform OperaVision, stands beside Welsh National Opera and English National Opera for Rhondda Rips It Up! and Porgy and Bess respectively.

The South Bank Sky Arts Awards is now in its 23rd year and will take place on Sunday 7 July at the Savoy Hotel, aired on Wednesday 10 July at 8pm on Sky Arts, the UK’s only TV channel dedicated to arts, music and culture.  Hosted by Melvyn Bragg, the South Bank Sky Arts Awards is the only Awards ceremony in the world to celebrate every genre of the Arts, including Dance, Theatre, Pop, TV Drama, Film, Classical Music, Literature, Opera, Comedy and Visual Art.

Garsington Opera’s 30^th Anniversary Season is now well underway with four new productions – Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the first UK stage performance of Offenbach’s Fantasio and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.  The season culminates with three concert performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, celebrating the start of a partnership with The English Concert.

BRIGHTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL: METAMORPHOSIS – 25 OCTOBER–10 NOVEMBER 2019

The 2019 programme for Brighton Early Music Festival is all about change and changing times. With its theme of ‘Metamorphosis’, the Festival will present 27 events across Brighton & Hove this autumn, exploring transformation in many intriguing ways.

Deborah Roberts, Artistic Director, writes: “The idea of things undergoing transforming change has long fascinated the human race. Our 2019 Festival explores the 2,000-year-old stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well as musical and social transformation over the centuries. We end the Festival with a re-creation of the medieval Feast of Fools, which reversed all the social hierarchy for a few days and allowed a ‘letting off of steam’ for people living under the control of a feudal system. Our own times are certainly troubled, with society at war with itself, the threat of runaway climate change, and a political system with which many are disillusioned. Our message is musical, and all about bringing people together positively. What better reminder that many of these themes have resonated throughout history?”

Headline events include the first public performance in modern times of Antoine Brumel’s complete Lamentations for Good Friday, recently discovered in a Florentine manuscript and performed by Musica Secreta; a day devoted to J S Bach – from his Musical Offering, through dynamic re-colouring on synthesizers in The Art of Moog, and ending with a ground bass meets jazz clubnight. The culmination of the Festival is an immersive performance of The Feast of Fools, combining medieval music, street dance, community performers and children from Brighton & Hove schools.

The Festival has long been at the forefront of developing and mentoring young artists, and over half of this year’s events feature current or former members of the Festival’s BREMF Live! young artist scheme. Bringing a new and often dramatic take on early music, alumnae of the scheme are making illustrious names for themselves on the early music scene. Standout shows of 2019 include Ceruleo’s Burying the Dead – a music theatre piece capturing London transformed by cataclysmic events, as seen through the eyes of Henry Purcell; and Fieri Consort’s play with music exploring the life of celebrated Venetian composer Barbara Strozzi, the 400^th anniversary of whose birth falls this year.

Community events include a Highland Dance workshop and Ceilidh; and a wide range of family concerts for toddlers and older children from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Really Classical.

Tickets on sale from early September at bremf.org.uk or 01273 709709.  See full concert listing at bremf.org.uk or call 01273 833746 to join the mailing list.