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.