We are determined to bring you a wonderful and unforgettable season in 2021. Next year will look a little different to normal, as we find ways to bring you world-class opera in what we expect to be unusual circumstances.
Our aim is to keep you as safe as possible. Opera takes a long time to plan, and with so much uncertainty we are assuming that social distancing will be with us for a while longer, though we remain ever hopeful that these restrictions will have relaxed by summer.
The interior of The Big Top
For three of our productions in 2021 – Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses, and Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen – we’ll be introducing a new venue to the festival: The Big Top.
This indoor/outdoor space offers different and exciting theatrical possibilities for our creative teams. We can’t wait to see what they come up with to draw you into the worlds of these operas. The Big Top gives us excellent seating flexibility, allowing for a larger socially distanced audience than our theatre can offer.
Die Walküre will be taking place in our beloved theatre. We want to give you the biggest and best Wagnerian sound possible, which means expanding beyond the orchestra pit. This work will be presented in a new concert production, allowing for additional musicians on stage alongside our wonderful cast.
The director of our Ring cycle, Amy Lane, says: "I am thrilled to be able to continue the journey in 2021 with Die Walküre and to create a light installation for the performance, transforming the theatre into a space where we will focus intently on sound and text, using light as a portal to all the worlds we will visit."
To welcome the largest audience we can, we are pleased to announce additional dates for this Wagnerian masterpiece, with a total of seven performances.
New Walküre performance dates: 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14 June.
Our concert production of Die Walküre does mean that we need additional time to prepare for the full Ring cycle, originally planned for 2023. Siegfried and Götterdämmerung will now be seen in order, fully staged, with the full cycle to be performed in 2024. The new schedule is as follows:
2021: Die Walküre (concert production)
2022: Siegfried
2023: Götterdämmerung
2024: Der Ring des Nibelungen
"By setting the Ring back to 2024 we can now give Siegfried the proper attention it deserves in 2022. When rehearsing the full Ring, we will be better prepared to fully stage Die Walküre for the first time, having paved the way in 2021." - Anthony Negus, Longborough's Music Director
Your magnificent support in these challenging times is heart-warming and humbling. We are all touched and truly grateful; and we look forward to welcoming you to Longborough next summer.
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