The Grange Festival 2023: What To Expect

2 years ago

World class opera in the heart of Hampshire

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Running from 8 June to 2 July 2023, The Grange Festival is an idyllic Hampshire event celebrating world class opera and dance. Here’s everything you can expect from the 2023 line up.

The Grange Festival 2023: What To Expect

World class opera singers, conductors and audiences come together every year at The Grange Festival, which launched in 2017 at The Grange – an English Heritage national monument in Hampshire – with the hopes of bringing high-quality opera to a wide audience in a unique and beautiful setting. The Festival’s resident orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, will be joined by three exceptional conductors – Kirill Karabits, Harry Christophers and Paul Daniel – as well as The Sixteen Choir and Orchestra.

What’s On At The Grange Festival 2023?

A breadth of audience and repertoire is at the heart of The Grange Festival: in 2023, the Festival will present four new productions created by daring teams, blending young talent with established names like Dame Josephine Barstow. These four new productions, all performing throughout June, are:

Così fan tutte (8–24 June)
Orfeo ed Euridice/Dido and Aeneas double bill (9–28 June)
The Queen of Spades (23 June–2 July)

The season will conclude with two jazz evenings, following 2022’s first successful foray into jazz. On 30 June and 1 July, Ellington: From Stride To Strings will celebrate the life of one of the jazz world’s most groundbreaking composers, Duke Ellington, reimagined by a sextet of virtuoso musicians led by renowned trumpeter Dominick Farinacci. Then, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra will take centre stage to focus on Ellington’s later work, before Ethan Iverson, a composer and pianist known for boldly re-imagining familiar works, will perform two pieces specially commissioned for The Grange Festival by the 23Arts Initiative.

‘Our 2023 festival is full of memorable music,’ says Michael Chance, The Grange’s artistic director. ‘Whether it is Orpheus singing of his deep loss, or Dido lamenting before her death, or the two unsuspecting young women wishing their fiancées a calm voyage away from Naples, or Prince Yeletsky’s powerful aria, these are all much anticipated operatic moments. And then we give you Duke Ellington. My expectations are high.’