Barely a moment to recover from Le pescatrici before we were into rehearsals with the Bampton Classical Players for our Wigmore Hall debut on Friday. Serena Kay and Lina Markeby cast off their alter egos as Nerina and Eurilda and became Tangia and Lisinga in Gluck's Le cinesi, joined by Tom Raskin and Martene Grimson as Silango and Sivene. Given the tiny stage at the Wigmore we were unable to stage this delightful ironic comedy, but nevertheless its humour and vitality came across superbly in Murray Hipkin's translation, and the gestures and poses of the singers made this a model of operatic communication. I doubt that the Wigmore Hall has often echoed to so many laughs and chuckles. Preceding Le cinesi was what we believe was the UK première of Gluck's La danza, a mellifluous cantata-like opera, sung with immense beauty by Martene and Nicholas Sharratt. The Classical Players were on superb form under the inspired direction of Christian Curnyn, and the evening was a very special one for Bampton Classical Opera. It is a privilege to 'discover' music of this quality, and we hope to present further Gluck operas in the future.

The following day several of the players, with Steve Cutting (natural trumpet) re-convened in Warwickshire, along with Tom Raskin, Vojtech Safarik (Lindoro in Pescatrici) and Joana Seara for a concert of Handel and Bach to celebrate the 70th birthday of one of our most longstanding supporters and Patrons, Lady Goodhart. With a guest list of over 250, this was a sumptuous lunch and afternoon concert party in a vast marquee in the grounds of Compton Verney, the superb country-house art gallery in south Warwickshire. We were delighted to honour Celia Goodhart in this way, whose hospitality and generosity is legendary.

And so to two very successful performances, despite the unfortunate weather which certainly didn't provide the requisite balmy mediterranean sunshine required by the production and the set. Ah, the joys of open-air performances in England! Nevertheless the audiences were enraptured, and many have deemed it the 'best ever Bampton opera yet'. The performances had great energy, musicianship and fantastic comic timing, and once again we feel that we have successfully breathed new life into a forgotten opera of quality and merit.

With our opening performances this weekend we've been too busy to attend to the blog, but now we're in the process of washing costumes and crating up props, ready for our next performances of Pescatrici (30 August: Westonbirt, Glos/ 17 September: St John's Smith Square London).  Unfortunately we were unlucky with the weather which has been so changeable this week - consequently our dress rehearsal on Thursday evening could not take place on our open-air stage, and so had to be (without set) in St Mary's Church adjacent to the Deanery Garden.  Nevertheless we maintained cheerful spirits and it proved an outstandingly productive rehearsal - as director, I felt that it really leapt off the page with every singer making their role and character entirely their own.  The pacing and comedy were excellent, and we all felt confident that we had reached a very healthy stage of expertise.  Photographs by Anthony Hall capture something of the immense fun of this production, set in 1950s Taranto.

Inevitably a very busy week. Today, whilst final technical and painting work was taking place on stage, we had a morning "recit call" for singers with our superb repetiteur Kelvin Lim, the Sitzprobe with orchestra in St Mary's in the afternoon (as in the photograph, with our conductor Alice Farnham), and the Act 2 Stage and Orchestra rehearsal in the (very beautiful) evening in the Deanery Garden. Meanwhile, Gilly has been manning the telephones constantly (we have a challenging Wigmore Hall concert (Gluck: Le cinesi and La danza) and a Bach/Handel concert for our Patron Lady Goodhart's landmark birthday on consecutive days in a week's time) as well as cooking superbly for the cast and players. All in a day's work....

Final day of London rehearsals today, with a non-stopping run - always a critical moment for the psychology of the production and the team. Fortunately the chest infections which have caused worry over the past few days are in remission, and voices will be in good form for Bampton next weekend. The photos may be a little blurry, but performances weren't: not in full costume, they show Andrew Friedhoff (Burlotto) and Mark Chaundey (Frisellino); and Robert Winslade Anderson (Mastricco) and Lina Markeby (Eurilda).

We're nearly at the end of our London rehearsals, and move to Bampton for the final days of work on the stage and set. It's been a pretty intense and tiring schedule for us all, especially coming on the back of our Cheltenham production (in which Lina Markeby and Serena Kay were also singing). All seems to be on schedule, however, and we're gathering the final props and costume details. Not surprisingly there need to be quite a few fish, one of which has been caught here by Mike Wareham.

The last week has involved complicated logistics as we have been simultaneously rehearsing Haydn as well as Gluck's Le cinesi and Mozart's Apollo and Hyacinth, reviving our 2008 double-bill production for our debut appearance at the Cheltenham Festival. The charming Pittville Pump Room was the venue, and the extremely efficient management and helpful Festival student volunteers enabled us to get-in our sets and lights and do a 3 hour rehearsal (with the Bampton Classical Players) between the end of the lunchtime recital at 1pm and our performance at 6.30. The photograph of the end of the overture of Le cinesi shows Serena Kay as Tangia (she's also performing Nerina in Le pescatrici), Martene Grimson as Sivene, and Lina Markeby as Lisinga (also Eurilda in Pescatrici). Anthony Hall, also hard at work as co-builder of the Haydn set, has become the company's photographer and captured this somnolent moment during last night's performance, under the atmospheric lighting of Ian Chandler.

We're now well into Haydn rehearsals - with a very happy cast who work extremely well together. There's an appealing range of vocal colour and types, but an excellent blended ensemble as well. It's always a great delight when the shape of the opera begins to emerge for the first time and although there's a long process of refinement and polish to go, the structure and character of the work is becoming clear. The directorial concept seems to be holding up, and we're finding surprises and subtleties in what is proving a very accomplished operatic score. The photo shows Lina Markeby (Eurilda), Robert Winslade Anderson (Mastricco) and Vojtech Safarik (Lindoro) in the rehearsal studio earlier today.

Thanks to Caroline Kennedy (pictured here during the interval) we attended the dress rehearsal of an excellent Cunning Little Vixen at Grange Park Opera on a delightfully sunny evening. Caroline is something of a Bampton protegée, as she sang the Countess and Celidora (L'oca del Cairo) as an outstandingly talented teenager in two of our early education projects at Queen's College, Harley Street, London. A few years on, she is on and off the stage in Vixen in a breathtaking variety of extraordinary costumes and characters, and thoroughly enjoying the experience of singing with a major company. Soon she'll be sunning herself in Pescatrici as one of our bellezze al bagno - Italian bathing beauties.

The Bampton Scenic Workshops are now in full swing with Le pescatrici set - it's sometimes a matter of dodging the showers as, like the opera itself, the workshop is mostly open-air.  It's amazing what can be built in an Oxfordshire cottage garden: last year passers-by became somewhat perturbed as a full size guillotine (for Paer's Leonora) began to appear over the Cotswold stone wall, although perhaps even more dramatic had been Mount Vesuvius (for Martin y Soler's L capricciosa corretta)  a couple of years earlier.  The prop list is ever growing as well, and it's is going to be quite a challenge to get the correct period look.  Meanwhile elsewhere in Bampton, costumes are being stitched and altered: Bampton Classical Opera has acquired something of a wardrobe over the years, and we have recently surprised ourselves with what we have discovered in its inner recesses.  For all this work, we thank Mike Wareham, Anthony Hall and Pauline Smith, who continue to create marvels for us.

Like any opera company, Bampton Classical Opera is very dependent on those who support it financially (our vital "Friends") and by offering volunteer help, and we always do our best to show our warm appreciation. We took the opportunity of today's Haydn's 200th anniversary by presenting a most enjoyable soiree yesterday evening in one of the lovely large houses in Bampton where the delightful new owners have taken over the tradition of warm hospitality set up by the previous equally delightful owners.  With one of our most popular and regular singers, Amanda Pitt, we presented an informal drawing-room concert of Haydn canzonettas, arias and piano sonatas, including the most entertaining (shades of Mozart in the long C minor piano introduction) dramatic cantata in honour of Nelson, and first sung at Esterhazy by Lady Hamilton, Lines from the Battle of the Nile - to echo Cornelia Knight's response to that first performance: "The effect was grand"!  

A musical event of a somewhat different nature in Bampton on bank holiday Monday, 25 May.... Bampton is one of the most ancient homes of morris dancing in England, and throughout the day the three local teams dance in the streets and gardens of the town.  Starting at about 8.30am, it's quite a feat of stamina for the dancers who continue until the early evening, when they are joined by invited guest teams from elsewhere.  It's always a delightful occasion - a chance to nose around neighbours' gardens, meeting many friends expected and unexpected, and of course to eat and drink!  We find it a useful occasion to nurture advance interest for our July opera, and a chance for informal discussion along the way with the many local people involved in our own project.  An excellent day was had, with only the lightest of rain showers and bright sun most of the time. Let's hope the sun is getting in practice for mid-July....

A few days' rest in a Spanish house on the coast between Alicante and Valencia, belonging to one of our singers, has enabled us to make a little more progress with the Haydn translation, a job which really should have been finished well before now.  Translation is a fascinating but very, very slow business, involving a multitude of advanced crossword solving skills!  Act 1 is complete and is being sent out to the singers, but Acts 2 and 3 are only partially done. So many more hours lie ahead in the company of the score, libretto, rhyming dictionary, thesaurus and other essential tools.  Unfortunately there were no beach-huts on our local patch of utterly lovely Spanish beach, but plenty of fish to eat for inspiration....  The second photograph shows Gilly, post-paella, and niece Rosa, who will be helping back-stage at the production of Pescatrici and whom I am trying to persuade into a walk-on part.

We've just had a design meeting: Mike Wareham, Anthony Hall, Gilly French and myself.  Mike has built an initial set model based on my first ideas and we were thrashing out a number of issues to do with the size of stage (we have a stage built for us at Bampton and Westonbirt, so shape and scale are flexible) and  sightlines (in open-air venues audience tend to fan out and can't always see the whole stage if they choose to sit on the periphery).  As we are correctly setting this at the quayside at Taranto in Southern Italy, albeit updated to the 1950s, we were bouncing around a number of ideas relating to the style of Italian beach-huts, and fish-stalls.  Mike has an intriguing project in hand to create flapping seagulls.... 

Our publicity flyer for Le pescatrici is now printed and we hope will attract suitable attention when it's distributed shortly.  Possibly the fish 'n chips image is a little British for an opera set in Taranto on the south coast of Italy, but we have carefully posed them on an Italian newspaper. Anthony Hall, our truly wonderful friend in Bampton who, along with equally marvellous Mike Wareham, builds scenery and drives vans, is an excellent photographer and was certainly intrigued by the challenge.  Local chippy in nearby Carterton provided a more photogenic model than upmarket Waitrose in Witney - as Anthony said, "probably something to do with the greasy sheen".  The Italian newspaper unfolded an appropriate surprise when Anthony later came across an article about what Italian visitors to London might expect to eat - complete with a photograph of fish and chips!

The past weeks have been manically busy with the final stages of rehearsals for Schubert's Singspiel Die Verschworenen, 

The Conspirators, which we presented on 19-20 March as an education project in association with Queen's College, London.   This was our fifth and most ambitious project at Queen's (a quite remarkable central London girls' school), and enabled a group of talented girls, aged 13 - 18, to participate as the major female roles, working alongside professionals Tom Raskin and Edmund Connolly, and a professional band conducted by Bampton Artistic Director, Gilly French.  Some teachers were able to take part as well.  It was one of the most delightful productions I've ever directed, with some really sound singing from the girls both in solos and ensembles, and the highest standard of acting. Everyone from the youngest to the oldest (me, unfortunately!) was thrilled by the process of working together to present a marvellous piece of music - anyone tempted to dismiss Schubert as an opera composer should encounter this totally endearing and very well constructed Singspiel.  Thanks to listings in The Times and Opera Now we attracted some audience from the general public eager to hear such a rarity - our longest-distance visitor flying in from Chicago!  Once again we demonstrated that opera can be relevant and life-changing even for city teenagers.  

Following the performance at the Kammeroper, we trudged through the snow to what was once an outer suburb of the city, where Haydn bought a house in Gumpendorf (now Haydngasse).  Adding a second storey to a fairly modest dwelling, he lived here from 1797 until his death, composing both The Creation and The Seasons.  The house is run as a branch of Wien Museum, which operates a portfolio of composer-houses across the city.  A new and helpfully bilingual exhibition across the two floors has been created for this bicentenary year.  His highly successful sojourns in London are effectively evoked,  as are the minutiae of his daily life, finances, servants and visitors.  Visit www.wienmuseum.at/english/75.asp

How best to market an opera?  Wiener Kammeroper advertises Le pescatrici with a strikingly posed image (photograph by Holger Bleck) of two gymnastic women wearing, well, not a great deal: perhaps more Rhinemaidens or Rusalka than the fishwives of Goldoni's farce.  It makes for effective publicity but in actuality the production, set up by credit-crunch video projections during the overture, adopts a less seductively enticing approach. The choice for our own publicity, to be launched soon, should appear less marginal. Expect edible succulence!

We've just taken two days off from rehearsals - we have a forthcoming education production of Schubert's utterly engaging Die Verschworenen at Queen's College, London - to attend the lively preview performance of Le pescatrici at the Vienna Kammeroper.  As unaccountably there is no available recording of this opera, this was our first opportunity to hear the whole piece through.  It certainly reinforced our conviction that this is an opera which both delights the ear and relates an entertaining story with deft wit and charm.  Like us, the Wiener Kammeroper specialize in small-scale rarities - in the past they have also performed L'infedeltà delusa, a work which we toured a couple of years ago.  Thursday's Pescatrici, in Kammeroper's attractive 250-seater theatre in the heart of old (and very cold!) Vienna, was given as an education preview.  With its vivacity and good humour, it was an ideal operatic introduction for schoolchildren - everyone especially loved the moment in Act 3 when shiny new iPhones were presented to the overjoyed 'fisherwomen' by their disguised lovers.  You can read Wienner Kammeroper's own blog of this fresh and appealing production at http://wienerkammeroper.blogspot.com/.

I (that's Jeremy, one of the Artistic Directors) have just been finishing the copy for our season's flyer - as usual a little late, but undoubtedly our designer Cath will get it all designed and ship-shape at lightning speed. But should the text really be as fishy as this?

"The chips are down for the fishing folk of Taranto: their love lives have become – well - a little vinegary, and Lesbina and Nerina would like to hook a bigger catch than their current boyfriends. When the Prince of Sorrento surfaces, seeking the lost heiress to his kingdom, the ambitious girls swim hard to escape the enclosing net of their soured relationships. But all that glitters is not a goldfish, and when the unassuming Eurilda is selected by the Prince, it’s time for the guts to fly and Lesbina and Nerina receive a grilling from their men. Happily no-one gets too battered - but perhaps when all is finally wrapped up the taste of tartare sauce lingers on….."

Well, yes - I think we can get away with this - the libretto for Le pescatrici is a farce by Carlo Goldoni, and Haydn is of course the wittiest of composers . And besides, this is going to be one of those gloriously funny productions which have won us many friends from the public and press in the past - "There isn’t a company in England with as sharp a sense of fun as Bampton" was how Opera Now described us a few years ago.

(The photo shows our 2005 production of The Barber of Seville - not the famous one by Rossini, but its precursor by Paisiello - we set it in a wonderfully ghastly caravan park - a really successful production which appeared at Bampton and also at the Buxton Festival).

We're delighted to be posting our first Bampton Classical Opera blog.  In this we hope to give you an insight into some of the delightfully complex processes leading up to an operatic production, in this case Haydn's wonderful setting of a Goldoni farce, Le pescatrici.  We are presenting performances of this to mark Haydn's 200th anniversary in 2009 - it's our third Haydn production, after L'infedeltà delusa and La vera costanza and adds to our long list of rarities from the eighteenth century on which our strong reputation is built.