Countryhouse festival is cut to one opera
OperaNevill Holt Festival, which appeared to have gone dormant, is now promising a Magic Flute next summer, along with a handful of small-scale concerts.
Here’s the PR-crafted announcement:
Nevill Holt is proud to announce an exciting new chapter in its award-winning history as it becomes Nevill Holt Festival, welcoming a lineup of internationally renowned artists to Leicestershire next June.
In order to make the festival accessible to more people and to enjoy a sustainable future, Nevill Holt Opera’s Board commissioned an extensive survey inviting audiences to share their thoughts on the organisation’s future. Drawing upon its findings, they developed a new broader festival concept for 2024 and invited Olivier and UK Theatre award-winning director and producer James Dacre and his production company, Living Productions, to curate its inaugural lineup.
Today they announce that Nevill Holt Festival 2024 will open with a new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute created in partnership with Britten Sinfonia. The Festival programme will then include chamber concerts (Imogen Cooper & Sarah Connolly, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, Benjamin Grosvenor, Max Richter’s Four Seasons, Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy) musical performances (Mary Bevan, Nicky Spence and Joseph Middleton in A Most Marvellous Party, Michael Morpurgo in a concert version of War Horse), jazz and contemporary music (Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra, Cécile McLorin Salvant & Dan Tepfer, Liane Carroll & The Ronnie Scott’s All Stars) and comedy (Mark Watson, Austentatious). Alongside, there will be a programme of conversations with leading novelists, historians, broadcasters and artists.
Actually, far from being PR spin I think this sounds like an excellent revamping of the NH brand, and will help to attract new audiences by actually thinking outside the very narrow opera box and doing something that other festivals, while claiming to be ‘accessible’ wouldn’t dare. Big up the NH massive, brrrap.
just shows the track record of one Annie Lydford. all smoke and actually the year that was hers to plan and run she fully messed up… Left a great legacy there..