Leicestershire-based opera house Nevill Holt Opera (NHO) will host a June Chamber Festival of music at its award-winning theatre next month. The event will mark NHO’s first indoor performances since the pandemic, after more than 2,000 people enjoyed outside performances at Nevill Holt last summer. The festival will take place with a socially distanced audience.

The five-day festival runs from 21-25 June and “will celebrate the return of music to NHO’s theatre,” the opera house said in a statement. All performances start at 7pm, with the grounds opening at 6pm.

The festival kicks off on Monday 21 June with Sun and Light, a programme of choral music to mark the summer solstice. Conducted by NHO’s Artistic Director Nicholas Chalmers, members of the BBC Singers will perform a selection of music based on the themes of sun and light. The evening will be hosted by BBC Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny, who will be joined ‘in conversation with’ Master of the Queen’s Music and past BBC Singers Composer in Association Judith Weir.

The following evening sees NHO partner with the Leicester International Music Festival (LIMF) for the first time. Celebrated oboist and artistic director of LIMF Nicholas Daniel is joined by musicians including violinists Jack Liebeck and Tetsuumi Nagata, cellist Ashok Klouda, flautist and pianist Danny Driver and Momentum Now Artist Meera Maharaj. The programme will include Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending for violin and piano and Fauré’s 1st Piano Quartet, alongside music by Clara Schumanna and Eleanor Alberga.

Bounder and Cad bring their musical-comedy double act to NHO’s theatre on 23 June. The duo have performed for three princesses, two prime ministers and one Tim Henman – and are now bringing their award-winning performance to Leicestershire.

On Thursday 24 June, exceptional brother-and-sister duo Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason visit Nevill Holt Opera for the first time. Still in their early 20s, these young instrumentalists have built a formidable reputation. In this intimate chamber programme, they reunite to perform a concert of beautiful music by Bridge, Britten and Rachmaninov.

The festival finale is A Night at the Opera, marking the return of opera to NHO’s theatre, as well as providing an introduction to some of the stars of the house’s 2021 season, taking place in August. Sopranos Susana Gaspar and Anna Patalong, tenor Luis Gomes and baritone Michel de Souza will be joined by four NHO Young Artists to perform a selection of arias, duets and ensembles from Carmen (1875, Bizet), La bohéme (The Bohemians, 1896, Puccini), Turandot (1926, Puccini) and La traviata (The Fallen Woman, 1853, Verdi).

The June event precedes what NHO is describing as its “largest-ever summer opera festival”. This is set to take place from 4-25 August, with La traviata and Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787) performed on a specially built outdoor stage.

Tickets for the June Chamber Festival cost from £35 and are available now. Go to NHO’s website for further details, including information on the social-distancing measures that will be in place throughout the event.

 

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Nevill Holt Opera will see the return of live performance to its award-winning theatre this summer with a five-day June Chamber Festival of music.