UPCOMING EVENTS
The Importance of Being Earnest
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.
Living Light: Visions of an Abbess
Waterperry Opera Festival
Rebecca Meltzer Director
Staged in the intimate church at Waterperry, this immersive performance weaves Hildegard von Bingen’s music and words, inviting audiences into a luminous world of sound, spirituality, and visionary imagination.
Living Light: Visions of an Abbess explores the inner world of Hildegard von Bingen through the visions that shaped her life and art. She experienced these revelations as intense, multi-sensory spiritual encounters, moments of colour, sound, and presence from which her extraordinary creativity flowed. At the heart of these visions was a radiant divine force she named Lux Vivens, the Living Light, inspiring music born directly from illumination.
Dido and Aeneas
English Touring Opera
Rebecca Meltzer Director
Alex Robinson Musical Director
Alex Berry Designer
Queen Dido of Carthage prepares to wed the Trojan hero, Aeneas. But the rejected King Iarbas has planned his revenge with a devastating intervention that threatens to drive the lovers apart.
Based on Virgil’s epic poem TheAeneid, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas recalls the tragedy of the Queen of Carthage in a masterpiece of Baroque music, theatricality and despair.
Così fan tutte
Scottish Opera / Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
Rebecca Meltzer Director
John Butt Conductor
Kat Heath Designer
Presented in collaboration with the new Advanced Artist Diploma in Opera programme at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, this is a prime chance to experience the future of opera first-hand. A group of hand-picked, international singers in the final stages of their training take on Mozart and Da Ponte’s sizzling social satire. Alongside The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, and conducted by celebrated period specialist John Butt, they bring fresh eyes and fresh voices to this finely honed story and score.
Two high society men engaged to two high society women should spell a straightforward happily ever after. But the men cannot resist a bet laid by their cynical friend, setting in motion one hectic day of disguises, hijinks, and mischief-making. As the couples’ games of deception unfold upstairs, the servants downstairs find opportunities to puppeteer the rich and mighty, and this playful, privileged world soon reveals far headier truths of the heart.
Così fan tutte is a journey of discovery set to the most exquisite soundtrack. Rebecca Meltzer directs this new production with designs by Kat Heath, creating a colourful, stylised, and stylish world where not all is as it seems...
The Flying Dutchman
Welsh National Opera
Tomáš Hanus Conductor
Jack Furness Director
Rebecca Meltzer Movement Director
A ghostly ship roams the endless sea, vast, lonely and unrelenting. Its captain cursed to sail for eternity until redeemed by true love.
Senta, captivated by the story of the mysterious Flying Dutchman condemned to sail forever, becomes the only hope for his salvation. Her longing for escape entwines her fate with his in ways neither could foresee.
This gripping reimagining of The Flying Dutchman explores the deep ache of loneliness and the fragile hope of human connection. Inspired by the sublime beauty of the Welsh coast, the sea is the opera’s canvas, and both a compulsion and prison for its characters. Wagner's orchestrations from the thunderous overture to its haunting arias, become the heartbeat of the story, evoking the power of the ocean and leaving you adrift in its spell.
Orphée aux enfers
Paul Wingfield conductor
Rebecca Meltzer director
Scandalous, sparkling and downright silly! Experience the topsy-turvy world of Offenbach’s enduring masterpiece (featuring the popular ‘Can-Can’) as ill-fitting couple Orpheus and Euridice traverse heaven and hell in the company of gods with very earthly desires. High japes and high kicks...a romp of an evening awaits.
Sung in French with English dialogue.
THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA | English Touring Opera
Robin Norton-Hale - Director
Gerry Cornelius - Conductor
Rebecca Meltzer - Movement Director
Eleanor Bull - Designer
Jamie Platt - Lighting Designer
SEMELE | WATERPERRY OPERA FESTIVAL
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL
8, 12, 14 August 2025
Conductor Bertie Baigent
Director Rebecca Meltzer
Designer Jennifer Gregory
Lighting Designer Catja Hamilton
Follow a story of love, ambition and mythology in Handel’s Semele, staged in the intimacy of the Waterperry Amphitheatre. Set in both the mortal and divine realms, this Baroque opera-oratorio tells the story of a mortal woman Semele who, seduced by Jupiter, aspires to immortality.
OPERA SHORTS | BUXTON INTERNATIONAL OPERA FESTIVAL
Rebecca directs four new 20 minute operas developed for the Buxton International Festival.
RODELINDA | GARSINGTON OPERA
Rebecca is the Choreographer & Assistant Director for this production of Handel’s Rodelinda at Garsington Opera.
MANSFIELD PARK | NEW ZEALAND OPERA
Rebecca directs this production of Dove’s Mansfield Park at New Zealand Opera.
ALBERT HERRING | ROYAL BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE
Rebecca directs this production of Britten’s Albert Herring at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
OPERA HIGHLIGHTS | SCOTTISH OPERA
Rebecca directs this snappy, playful show which explores and celebrates Scotland’s rich landscape.