Grange Park Opera

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]

  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