Gerald Barry’s witty and highly original adaptation of this much-loved masterpiece will be conducted by Douglas Boyd and directed by Jack Furness, following his celebrated Garsington productions of The Queen of Spades and Rusalka. The visually striking, colourful and bombastic production features the return of Jennifer France, Henry Waddington and Seán Boylan, with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

If you have any preconceptions about an opera based on Oscar Wilde’s brilliant 1894 comedy of manners and misapprehensions, be prepared to abandon them. The composer Gerald Barry adores the play and has taken inspiration from Wilde’s statement “That we should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things in life with a sincere and studied triviality”, turning the play inside out and upside down with reckless effrontery. As Barry has said, “The play’s bones are unshatterable. My version is an X-ray of it.” Any shattering that occurs during the course of the entertainment is more likely to be of plates than of dramatic structure.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Wormsley

Ahead of your visit this summer, discover more about The Importance of Being Earnest in this insight talk in conversation with composer Gerald Barry and conductor and Artistic Director Douglas Boyd with musical excerpts performed by singers from our Emerging Artists’ Programme.

Boyd and Barry will discuss how the opera relates to Wilde’s original story and will delve into Gerald Barry’s musical world.

Insight Talk: The Importance of Being Earnest

Garsington Studios

The LA Phil premiered Gerald Barry’s operas The Importance of Being Earnest and Alice’s Adventures Underground, and now Thomas Adès leads the US premiere of Barry’s Oscar Wilde-inspired Salome.

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Gerald Barry’s Salome

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Pianist, Cédric Tiberghien, and violinist, Alina Ibragimova, first met in 2005 as members of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists. Creating a unique partnership shortly after, the duo has gone on to perform throughout Europe and in North America, appearing at major venues including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall, and the San Francisco Performance Series.

Alina Ibragimova & Cédric Tiberghien

Irvine Barclay Theatre

‘Both of these players have the potential to conquer the world’ wrote The Times soon after Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien – then both BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists – first played together in 2007.

Today they are described as the ‘partnership of choice’ for violin and piano repertoire. This concert will provide a rare opportunity to hear these virtuosic musicians perform a varied programme including Czech and Romanian masterpieces as well as Barry’s exciting Triorchic Blues written in 1990. The programme concludes with Beethoven’s brilliant, emotionally rich and romantic ‘Kreutzer’ sonata.

The Queen's Hall

The BBC Concert Orchestra join Nouvel Opéra Fribourg to perfom two operas - 'La Plus Forte' by Gerald Barry and Richard Harvey's 'Céline' - at Podium in Düdingen, Switzerland.

BBC Concert Orchestra in Switzerland

Podium

Two outstanding musicians resume their fruitful collaboration with a programme including Enescu’s 1926 sonata, subtitled as being ‘in the Romanian folk style’. The Gerald Barry work was originally written for piano in 1990; there’s also a solo violin version (1992), but here the duo will play the two together; ‘triorchic’, incidentally, means possessing three testicles.

Alina Ibragimova violin; Cédric Tiberghien piano

Wigmore Hall

The BBC Philharmonic and Chief Conductor John Storgårds present Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 – a thrilling glimpse of a composer emerging from the shadow of Tchaikovsky and his fellow Romantics. Canadian violinist James Ehnes is the soloist in Walton’s fiercely direct Violin Concerto – a work full of song, dance and drama. The concert opens with a world premiere from heartily irreverent Irish composer Gerald Barry, focusing on Franz Kafka’s obsession with wearing earplugs to silence the noise around him. ‘In the music,’ Barry says, ‘you are Kafka, hearing the world’s sounds as he heard them. You are inside his head.’

Gerald Barry

Events

Past events

10 - 23 Jul, 2026

The Importance of Being Earnest · Garsington Opera

Apr 27, 2026

Insight Talk: The Importance of Being Earnest · Garsington Opera

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