Name: Iestyn Davies & Oliver Wass
Start: 2026-01-11T17:30:00
Location: Wormsley

Iestyn Davies

Oliver Wass

Garsington Opera

Much-loved tenor Allan Clayton appears at Garsington Opera for the first time as part of our new partnership with Wigmore Hall" class="css-u850">Wigmore Hall. Known for his magnetic performances world-wide including Metropolitan Opera, BBC Proms and Teatro Real Madrid, his work at Royal Ballet & Opera includes definitive performances of Peter Grimes and his Olivier Award winning Christian Festen in February 2025. He frequently features at Wigmore Hall and comes together with a truly great Schubertian, Paul Lewis for Schubert’s incomparable and highly emotional setting of two dozen songs by Wilhelm Müller, Winterreise.

Allan Clayton & Paul Lewis

Wormsley

Pianist Imogen Cooper is a peerless Schubertian and is highly regarded as both a soloist and chamber musician. A regular performer at Wigmore Hall, this recital follows her recital of Schubert’s Impromptus with the addition of two arrangements of Bach, by Kempff and Busoni, and Beethoven’s Bagatelles. The Daily Telegraph remarked, when reviewing her noble artistry: “Go, listen, and wonder how many better pianists there are alive in this country, or anywhere”.

If you would like to stay for dinner afterwards, the Studios Café will be serving a hot main course followed by dessert, with a glass of house wine for £35 per person. Spaces for dinner are limited and tend to sell out so early booking is advised.

Imogen Cooper

After the success of last year’s concert featuring past Garsington Opera award winners, we are delighted to welcome back pianist Anna Tilbrook to curate a programme of highlights from the Garsington season and operatic favourites. To sing, we welcome back countertenor Hugh Cutting after his memorable performance in Handel’s Rodelinda as well as former Alvarez Emerging Artists, soprano Jessica Cale and tenor James Micklethwaite.

Award Winners' Concert

Ahead of your visit in the summer, discover more about La traviata in this insight talk combining historical context from Sophie Rashbrook with musical excerpts performed by singers from our Emerging Artists’ Programme.

Sophie Rashbrook is a writer, librettist and opera dramaturg. Formerly the Nicholas John Dramaturg at Welsh National Opera, she holds an MPhil in Russian Studies from Cambridge University, an MA in Opera-Making from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and spent a year playing the cello at the St Petersburg Conservatoire.

Insight Talk: La traviata

Guildhall School of Music & Drama

Ahead of your visit this summer, discover more about Der Rosenkavalier in this insight talk inc conversation with classical music critic Fiona Maddocks and director Bruno Ravella with musical excerpts performed by singers from our Emerging Artists’ Programme.

Fiona Maddocks is a music critic who specialises in classical music. She has worked in radio, TV, magazines and newspapers, including as founder editor of BBC Music Magazine. Maddocks is also The Observer’s classical music critic. Bruno Ravella is an international opera director and made his debut at Garsington in 2015 with Strauss’ Intermezzo, and is returning this year to direct Der Rosenkavalier" class="css-u850">Der Rosenkavalier which first debuted at Garsington in 2021. Together they will discuss the historical context behind Der Rosenkavalier and tell us more about Strauss and his musical world.

Insight Talk: Der Rosenkavalier

Garsington Studios

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

Ahead of your visit in the summer, discover more about Il ritorno d’Ulisse in this insight talk combining historical context from Katy Hamilton with musical excerpts performed by singers from our Emerging Artists’ Programme.

Presenter, musician and researcher Katy Hamilton is one of the most sought-after speakers on music and opera and provides programme notes for many leading arts organisations and festivals. Katy will give historical context to the piece and will tell us about Monteverdi and his musical world.

Insight Talk: Il ritorno d'Ulisse

One of opera’s most enduring masterpieces, with music of exquisite tenderness and lyricism, Verdi’s La traviata is a tragic story that is both powerful and deeply touching. Returning after their sparkling production of Platée (2024) and RPS Awardwinning The Turn of the Screw (2019/22) are director Louisa Muller and designer Christopher Oram. We also welcome back Madison Leonard and Oleksiy Palchycov as Violetta and Alfredo, whose partnership delighted us all in L’elisir d’amore last year. The Philharmonia Orchestra will perform under the baton of Douglas Boyd, and Tess Jackson will make her conducting debut with Garsington Opera for two performances.

La traviata

Der Rosenkavalier weaves opulent, bittersweet waltzes with lush late-Romantic orchestration, evoking both nostalgic elegance and the ache of time passing. Strauss’s co-creator, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, wrote of a world of ceremony and lavish ritual, in which the characters are helplessly entangled.

This is the much-anticipated return of Bruno Ravella and Gary McCann’s stylish and opulent 2021 production, which had to be performed to a limited audience after lockdown. Making their Garsington debuts are conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, Matilda Sterby, Andreas Bauer Kanabas and Niamh O’Sullivan, whose Octavian at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées received great acclaim. We are also delighted to welcome back Soraya Mafi as Sophie and Robert Murray as Valzacchi.

Der Rosenkavalier

Following their acclaimed production of Orfeo in 2022, we welcome back the same creative team to perform the second of Monteverdi’s opera trilogy. John Caird will direct and Laurence Cummings will conduct The English Concert on the stage, with a stellar cast lead by Cecelia Hall and Ed Lyon.

In the last five fruitful years of his life, Monteverdi wrote this opera for the carnival season of 1640, a time for music, dance and masquerading. His musical style, so astonishingly bold and innovative when he wrote Orfeo more than thirty years earlier, has developed yet further, with arias and duets that give full life and humanity to his characters.

Il ritorno d'Ulisse

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

Countertenor Iestyn Davies and harpist Oliver Wass come together to perform their journey through the ages with a programme spanning 400 years of music. Oliver Wass is a renowned soloist on the concert stage and was the first ever harpist to win the Guildhall Gold Medal. He joins together with internationally renowned countertenor Iestyn Davies who last appeared on the Garsington stage as Oberon A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2024) which featured in the 2024 BBC Proms to great critical acclaim.