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.