Page 386 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

Gaëlle Arquez as Carmen in Andreas Homoki’s production
© Opéra Comique | Stefan Brion (2023)
Edinburgh Festival, BBC Proms & Aldeburgh Festival

You can also find opera featured in three of the UK’s most important classical music
festivals. Edinburgh International Festival welcomes productions by Paris’ Opéra Comique
(Andreas Homoki’s meta-staging of Carmen) and Berlin’s Komische Oper (Kirill
Serebrennikov’s new Figaro) as well as Roxana Haines’ new production of
Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex for Scottish Opera. There are also concert performances of Così
fan tutte and Capriccio.

As well as visits by Glyndebourne and Garsington, the BBC Proms has a semi-staged
Purcell Fairy Queen from Les Arts Florissants. Another – unrelated – Fairy Queen concert
performance (Vox Luminis) takes place at the Aldeburgh Festival, where the big operatic
project is Robin Norton-Hale’s new staging of Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert, “a haunting tale
of isolation and enigma”... which could well be a description of me lugging my picnic
hamper around the damp British countryside this summer.