SUMMER OPERA REVIEWS

RODERIC DUNNETT looks back at a
thumping good summer for opera festivals in Britain and Ireland

Part 3 - Bampton, White Horse and Dorset

<< Continued from Part 2

Even more of a rarity is Gli Equivoci, or The Comedy of Errors, by the late Georgian English composer Stephen Storace, which takes its libretto from Shakespeare's comedy, brilliantly scissored and reworked by Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, in the very same year -- 1786 -- that Figaro was first staged in Vienna. Bampton Classical Opera, which shares its time between the enchanting Deanery Garden in a west Oxfordshire village and an intimate new outdoor venue at Westonbirt School, Gloucestershire, making good acoustic use of a Cotswold stone backdrop, has shown itself increasingly adept at delivering attractive homespun productions to new local audiences.

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