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| IFORD FESTIVAL OPERA |
"This was something special"
Robert Thicknesse
"shone with gentle charm"
Rupert Christiansen
"an unparalleled pleasure"
Anna Britten
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The internationally renowned Iford Arts Festival takes place every summer in the award-winning Peto Garden of Iford Manor near Bath in the South West of England.
In this magical, intimate setting, opera performances in English are staged in-the-round for an audience of 90 in the miniature Italianate cloister.
2011 is CHROMA's third season at Iford (Barber of Seville 2009, producing La Cenerentola 2010). CHROMA also delivered Iford's first schools programme last year, which continues, expanded this season, with another first - a dedicated schools performance of Hansel & Gretel on 29 June in Bath. We also give a concert while we are in residence - last year it was a tango theme with two world premieres by David Bruce and Dom Shovelton, this year a lightly sparkling programme of summer music dubbed "chablis chic".
18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 28 June 2011 7.30pm
"Hansel & Gretel" by Humperdinck
Conductor: Oliver Gooch, Director: Will Tuckett, Designer: Tim Meacock
Orchestra: CHROMA
Cast: Sarah Barnes, Susan Boyd, Lise Christiansen, Ciara Hendrick, Aoife O'Sullivan, Adrian Powter, Alun Rhys-Jenkins.
19 June 2011 7.30pm
"Chablis Chic" cloister concert
Benjamin Britten - Pan
Claude Debussy - Sonate
Gabriel Jackson - In the Mendips (CHROMA commission)
Maurice Ravel - Introduction and Allegro
Claude Debussy - Syrinx
Benjamin Britten - Phantasy Quartet
Gian Carlo Menotti - Cantilena and Scherzo
Arnold Bax - Nonet
www.ifordarts.co.uk
Previous productions at Iford:
La Cenerentola by Rossini 19 June - 3 July 2010
Conductor: Andrew Griffiths, Director: Bill Bankes-Jones, Designer: Tim Meacock
Orchestra: CHROMA
Cast: Alex Ashworth, John Llewelyn Evans, Christina Haldane, Caryl Hughes, Carlos Nogueira, Sigridur Osk and Richard Suart.
www.ifordarts.co.uk
CHROMA also went to two local primary schools withan associated opera-based composition and performance programme for La Cenerentola.
La Cenerentola, 2010
"Happier times in Iford’s enchanted Somerset cloister, where Rossini’s Cinderella, directed by Bill Bankes-Jones, turns out to be more than summer fluff. The score is reduced to eleven instruments, sounds rather Schubertian, and comes across with great verve, clarity and elegance in Andrew Griffiths’s conducting of the Chroma ensemble, every one a virtuoso. Griffiths paces things brilliantly, not afraid to draw out a yearning strain that is often lost in the welter of Rossinian ebullience, but equally driving the ensembles along with scary speed.
The cast of seven is up to it, taking its cue from Richard Suart’s Don Magnifico, teetering on the brink of insanity and bringing a lifetime of G&S patter and general buffodom to the party. But there is more than cuddly slapstick here; Magnifico and his daughters, utterly vile, meet their match in Cinders and her prince (Carlos Nogueira, a tenor with an attractive husky timbre and beautifully musical phrasing). Caryl Hughes as the heroine gives a scorching all-round performance of forceful, pinpoint singing and brilliantly centred acting: the contempt with which she spits words at her appalling family made me fear she would murder them all when the tables turned. But no: she forgave them, as usual, and a Mozartian beam of reconciliation shone through Rossini’s music in one of those musical moments where the world shifts on its axis. The cavorting roulades of Hughes’s final rondo were pure adrenaline and joy; this was something special." Robert Thicknesse, The Tablet
"Supported by vivacious playing from the ensemble Chroma under Andrew Griffiths, Caryl Hughes sang warmly as an endearing Cenerentola ... in Iford’s Italianate cloister, it shone with gentle charm." Rupert Christiansen, Telegraph
Barber of Seville, 2009
**** "Productions such as this could single-handedly reverse opera’s dwindling fortunes if performed in a city square. Rather than any rarefied high-art ideal, it is the upfront, street-theatre feel of this 1960s-set production of Rossini’s opera buffa that imbues it with knee-weakening charm... this is a cast that oozes youthful charisma. Add the zingy playing of chamber ensemble Chroma and the stunning setting, and you have an unparalleled pleasure from start to finish." Anna Britten, MetroLife
"Iford Festival, in a breathtakingly beautiful pastoral setting just outside Bath, has become one of the unsung glories of the British operatic Summer" Opera Now
"Opera at Iford has now established an international reputation for staging some of the best open-air opera in the country" Bath Chronicle
"The intimacy of the setting puts everything into dangerously sharp focus, but Iford Festival Opera bring it all off with their hallmark panache and ingenuity" The Guardian
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 Iford cloister
 Iford gardens
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