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Grange Park Opera

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Not to be confused with The Grange Festival.

The Theatre in the Woods, Grange Park Opera
The Theatre in the Woods at Grange Park Opera photo: Richard Lewisohn
The 700-seat auditorium at Grange Park Opera
The 700-seat auditorium at Grange Park Opera photo: Richard Lewisohn

Grange Park Opera is a professional opera company and charity whose base is West Horsley Place in Surrey, England. Founded in 1998, the company staged an annual opera festival at The Grange, in Hampshire and in 2016–7, built a new opera house, the 'Theatre in the Woods', at West Horsley Place – the 350-acre estate inherited by author and broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne in 2014.[1]

With five tiers of seating in a horseshoe shape (modelled on La Scala, Milan[2]), the Theatre in the Woods is designed to target an optimum acoustic reverberation of 1.4 seconds.[citation needed]

Singers who have performed with Grange Park Opera include Bryn Terfel, Simon Keenlyside, Joseph Calleja, Claire Rutter, Rachel Nicholls, Bryan Register, Susan Gritton, Wynne Evans, Sally Matthews, Alfie Boe, Robert Poulton, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Sara Fulgoni, Clive Bayley and Alistair Miles. In recent years, the repertoire has included musicals: Fiddler on the Roof in 2015[3] and Oliver! in 2016.[4] Fiddler on the Roof was subsequently staged in the Royal Albert Hall as part of the 2015 BBC Proms.[5]

Grange Park Opera is a not-for-profit organisation. Its sister charity Pimlico Opera, founded in 1987, has staged co-productions with prisons since 1991 and taken more than 50,000 members of the public into prison.[6] The Primary Robins project gives singing classes to 2,000 KS2 children a week in schools in deprived areas.[7]

The 2020 season, including Puccini's La Bohème, Martin & Blane's Meet Me in St Louis, Ponchielli's La Gioconda, The Final Fling with The Royal Ballet and the world première of Anthony Bolton's The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko, was postponed because of the COVID-19 epidemic. Instead the company produced filmed versions of Maurice Ravel's L'heure espagnole and Benjamin Britten's Owen Wingrave. A new opera by Alex Woolf, The Feast in the Time of Plague, was created, and a number of other activities undertaken.[8] The 2021 season opened with productions of Giuseppe Verdi' Falstaff, La Bohème, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov (in its second, four-act version and presented as Ivan the Terrible), and the postponed premiere of Bolton's Litvinenko opera. Because of COVID restrictions these were given before restricted audiences, and for some productions with recorded, rather than live, orchestra.[9]

History

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Grange Park Opera was founded in 1998 by Wasfi Kani and Michael Moody. The newly created charity was party to a three-way lease with English Heritage, guardians of The Grange, Northington and the owners, the Baring family.[10] For the first four seasons, performances took place in the Orangery, into which had been fitted raked seating (the seats themselves came from Covent Garden), stage and orchestra pit. For the 2002 season, the charity made significant changes to the auditorium which was expanded.[11] Seating capacity was increased to 550 with two levels of seating.,[12][11][13]

The festival was expanded to a five-week season of three operas in 2000,[14] and to four operas in 2013.[12]

In 2003, Grange Park Opera Hampshire season was extended to Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, where a 300-seat theatre was built in the stable courtyard.[15][16][17][18] In 2012 Grange Park Opera handed the Leicestershire season to newly formed Nevill Holt Opera.

West Horsley Place in Surrey
West Horsley Place in Surrey, where Grange Park Opera perform during the summer season

In 2015, the Baring family exercised a break clause in the lease. They attempted to introduce a rent, and limit a future lease to 10 years. However, Grange Park Opera was offered the opportunity to build an opera house close to London at West Horsley Place near Guildford—a 350-acre Surrey estate inherited by author and broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne. Gascoigne placed his inheritance into a charity, the West Horsley Place Trust, which granted Grange Park Opera a 99-year lease at a peppercorn rent.[19][20][21][22] Planning permission for a five-storey opera house, modelled on La Scala by Tim Ronalds Architects, was granted in May 2016 and Phase 1 building work commenced immediately.[23] The opera house was ready in time for the long-scheduled production of Tosca starring Joseph Calleja which premiered on 8 June 2017.[24] Phase 2 continued after the 2017 festival and including the exterior brickwork and a free-standing toilet building, the "Lavatorium Rotundum".[25] Phase 3 included a colonnade whose columns are larch tree trunks.

Performance history

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The company has staged both traditional and unexpected repertoire including:

The 2024 Season will feature Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment, Janáček's Katya Kabanova, Bryn Terfel in a Double Bill of Rachmaninoff's Aleko and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and a new commission by Anthony Bolton, Island of Dreams based on The Tempest.

Under-36s schemes

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  • The Under 36 scheme is open to opera fans aged between 18 and 36. Those under 36 can apply for tickets on all dates at a flat rate of £36 per ticket.[26]
  • The "Musical Chairs" scheme is open to young people aged 14 to 18 who otherwise could not come to the opera.[27]

See also

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References

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Notes

  1. ^ "Bamber Gascoigne to save 500-year-old manor after 'accidental' inheritance". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  2. ^ Hutchison, David (12 November 2015). "Grange Park Opera plans 700-seat woodland La Scala". The Stage. Archived from the original on 16 November 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
  3. ^ Hall, George (5 June 2015). "Fiddler on the Roof review – Bryn Terfel outstanding in focused, vigorous production". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  4. ^ "Grange Park Opera's Oliver!: great show, shame about the audience – review". The Telegraph. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  5. ^ "Prom 11: Fiddler on the Roof – Prom 11: Fiddler on the Roof". BBC Music Events. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  6. ^ "Pimlico Opera | History of Pimlico Opera". pimlicoopera.co.uk. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  7. ^ "Pimlico Opera | Primary Schools". pimlicoopera.co.uk. 14 December 2013. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  8. ^ Grange Park (2021), pp.2, 12.
  9. ^ Grange Park (2021), pp. 42-102
  10. ^ Deitz, Paula. "Midsummer Night's Idyll: Opera in the Orangery", The New York Times 23 May 1999. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
  11. ^ a b Clements, Andrew. Anything Goes, The Guardian (London), 17 June 2002. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
  12. ^ a b Reynolds, Mike. Wasfi Kani in Conversation and Grange Park Opera's 2013 Season, MusicalCriticism.com 10 May 2013. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
  13. ^ Christiansen, Rupert. "The house that Wasfi built", The Daily Telegraph (London), 3 June 2002. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
  14. ^ Reynolds, Mike. "The irresistible rise of Grange Park Opera", MusicalCriticism.com, 11 May 2012. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
  15. ^ Vorasarun, Chaniga. "Opera Man", Forbes, 3 July 2008. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
  16. ^ Blackwell, Alex (14 June 2014). "Plans revealed for permanent Nevill Holt theatre". Harborough Mail. Retrieved 9 January 2014.
  17. ^ Opera at Nevill Holt Archived 12 August 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Grange Park Opera website
  18. ^ Kimberley, Nick. "Best garden operas in London", London Evening Standard, 19 May 2010. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
  19. ^ Addley, Esther (21 October 2015). "Clash of the tenors: dispute leaves Hampshire opera festival seeking new home". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  20. ^ "Music & Musicians". Private Eye. 1404. Pressdram Ltd: 35. 2015.
  21. ^ Furness, Hannah (21 October 2015). "New opera festival to launch after stately home row". The Telegraph. Retrieved 11 November 2015.
  22. ^ "Grange Park Opera lease to end in 2016 after dispute with landlords". The Stage. Retrieved 1 April 2016.
  23. ^ Edwards, Mark (20 January 2016). "Plea to raise £10 million for new West Horsley Place opera house". getsurrey. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  24. ^ "Grange Park Opera's new £10m plot". Financial Times. 30 March 2016. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  25. ^ "The Theatre in the Woods – GRANGE PARK OPERA". GRANGE PARK OPERA. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  26. ^ "Under 36 – GRANGE PARK OPERA". GRANGE PARK OPERA. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  27. ^ "Musical Chairs – GRANGE PARK OPERA". GRANGE PARK OPERA. Retrieved 20 December 2022.

Further reading

Sources

  • Grange Park: The Spaced Season 2021 (2021), Grange Park Programme book.
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