Page 295 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

There is no more talismanic and reassuring a tradition in the arts calendar than the

classical festival season. And this country’s leading lights are on fighting form,

drawing up programmes that thrum with inventiveness, daring and imagination,
alongside the comfort of familiarity: new productions, world premieres, old

favourites and the occasional curveball. What will certainly be different this year is

that the dependable accompaniments to a sun-dappled night at the opera — the

popping of champagne corks and the trilling of contented laughter — will be

joined by another: audible sighs of relief.

Glyndebourne

The pandemic really did for Glyndebourne’s 2020 programme, with one knock-on

effect being that there are no fewer than four new productions this year. Festival
first-timers are works by Ethel Smyth (The Wreckers) and a double bill of

Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias and La voix humaine, with stagings

of Alcina and La bohème the other premieres, and revivals of Michael Grandage’s

Franco-era Le nozze di Figaro from 2012 and Mariame Clément’s elegant

2011 Don Pasquale completing a covetable bill.
Don’t miss The Wreckers, May 21-Jun 24. Festival runs May 21-Aug 28; tickets

from £15 to £270. glyndebourne.com
Opera Holland Park

The pioneering and community-minded art-in-the-park festival returns with five
new productions: Julia Burbach and Cecilia Stinton direct Eugene

Onegin and Carmen respectively; there is a double bill of Delius (Margot la

Rouge) and Puccini (Le Villi); and David Eaton conducts HMS Pinafore. Perhaps

most intriguingly, there is a UK premiere of the American composer Mark

Adamo’s 1998 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women.
Actually being at an OHP performance is a delight, but so too is walking through

this west London park on a balmy afternoon, the sound of singers and orchestra in

rehearsal wafting on the breeze.