23-566: Grange Park Opera is a professional opera company and charity whose base is West Horsley Place in Surrey, England. Founded in 1998, the company staged an annual opera festival at The Grange , in Hampshire and in 2016–7, built a new opera house, the 'Theatre in the Woods', at West Horsley Place – the 350-acre estate inherited by author and broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne in 2014. With five tiers of seating in
46-617: A chance to launch their career. A new 400-seat opera house in the stable block by architects Witherford Watson Mann opened in June 2018. In July 2019, the new opera house made the shortlist for the Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture. The 2021 festival was held in the open air. The two operas performed were La Traviata and Don Giovanni . Nevill Holt Opera operates an education programme in partnership with music, design and drama teachers. It has worked with over 600 children in
69-562: A charity, the West Horsley Place Trust, which granted Grange Park Opera a 99-year lease at a peppercorn rent . Planning permission for a five-storey opera house, modelled on La Scala by Tim Ronalds Architects, was granted in May 2016 and Phase 1 building work commenced immediately. The opera house was ready in time for the long-scheduled production of Tosca starring Joseph Calleja which premiered on 8 June 2017. Phase 2 continued after
92-532: A horseshoe shape (modelled on La Scala , Milan), the Theatre in the Woods is designed to target an optimum acoustic reverberation of 1.4 seconds. Singers who have performed with Grange Park Opera include Bryn Terfel , Simon Keenlyside , Joseph Calleja , Claire Rutter , Rachel Nicholls , Bryan Register, Susan Gritton , Wynne Evans , Sally Matthews , Alfie Boe , Robert Poulton, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Sara Fulgoni , Clive Bayley and Alistair Miles . In recent years,
115-457: A new commission by Anthony Bolton, Island of Dreams based on The Tempest . Notes Further reading Sources West Horsley Place West Horsley Place is a Grade I listed building in West Horsley , to the east of Guildford in Surrey, England. There are eight further Grade II buildings on the estate, including two mid-19th-century dog kennels. The house dates back to
138-677: A week in schools in deprived areas. The 2020 season, including Puccini 's La Bohème , Martin & Blane's Meet Me in St Louis , Ponchielli 's La Gioconda , The Final Fling with The Royal Ballet and the world première of Anthony Bolton 's The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko , was postponed because of the COVID-19 epidemic. Instead the company produced filmed versions of Maurice Ravel 's L'heure espagnole and Benjamin Britten 's Owen Wingrave . A new opera by Alex Woolf, The Feast in
161-700: Is an arts festival at the end of June and beginning of July that is held at Nevill Holt Hall in Leicestershire , the home of Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross . Nevill Holt Opera launched its first independent season in 2013 with a staging of The Magic Flute . The venue previously hosted Grange Park Opera . The annual event features a headline opera production as well as an open-air exhibition of contemporary British sculpture featuring artists such as Marc Quinn , Allen Jones and Peter Randall-Page . The opera company aims to celebrate young British talent and tries to cast young singers, offering them
184-483: The 15th century, and is a timber-framed building. It has 50 rooms. In the 16th century, it was owned by John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners , who made the first English translation of Froissart's Chronicles , and later by the Earl of Lincoln . The house came into the possession of Henry VIII by the forfeiture of Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter in 1538. Edward VI granted the house to Anthony Browne , Master of
207-409: The 2002 season, the charity made significant changes to the auditorium which was expanded. Seating capacity was increased to 550 with two levels of seating., The festival was expanded to a five-week season of three operas in 2000, and to four operas in 2013. In 2003, Grange Park Opera Hampshire season was extended to Nevill Holt , near Market Harborough in Leicestershire , where a 300-seat theatre
230-516: The 2015 ITV television film Harry Price: Ghost Hunter , and the BBC sitcom Ghosts , where it was called Button House. Interior scenes of the 2020 film Enola Holmes were also shot there. Other productions using West Horsley Place as a location include My Cousin Rachel , Mothering Sunday , Cuckoo and The Crown . Grange Park Opera took up residence in a purpose-built 700-seat theatre in
253-529: The 2017 festival and including the exterior brickwork and a free-standing toilet building, the "Lavatorium Rotundum". Phase 3 included a colonnade whose columns are larch tree trunks. The company has staged both traditional and unexpected repertoire including: The 2024 Season will feature Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment , Janáček's Katya Kabanova , Bryn Terfel in a Double Bill of Rachmaninoff's Aleko and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and
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#1733085245729276-671: The Horse . Elizabeth I stayed at West Horsley in August 1559 and watched Robert Dudley , Master of the Horse, and other courtiers " running at the ring " from a window of the old house. The house, or the additions in the reign of Charles I, is given as a leading example by Sir John Summerson of what he calls " Artisan Mannerism ", a development of Jacobean architecture led by a group of mostly London-based craftsmen still active in their guilds (called livery companies in London). It features prominently
299-608: The Time of Plague , was created, and a number of other activities undertaken. The 2021 season opened with productions of Giuseppe Verdi ' Falstaff , La Bohème , Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov 's The Maid of Pskov (in its second, four-act version and presented as Ivan the Terrible ), and the postponed premiere of Bolton's Litvinenko opera. Because of COVID restrictions these were given before restricted audiences, and for some productions with recorded, rather than live, orchestra. Grange Park Opera
322-648: The fancy, quasi-classical gable ends that were a mark of the style. Another example, Swakeleys House in west London, shows "what a gulf there was between the taste of the Court and that of the City ." Other houses in the style are the Dutch House, the surviving remnant of Kew Palace , and Slyfield Manor, near Guildford . It was later rented by Henry Currie , the Conservative MP for Guildford , from 1847 to 1852. In 1868,
345-668: The grounds, with its inaugural production of Puccini's Tosca , led by the Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja , on 8 June 2017. The lease on the theatre is for 99 years. The planning application for the Theatre in the Woods met with some opposition due to its being in the Metropolitan Green Belt , but with the support of conductor Stephen Barlow and others, the project was approved by the Guildford Borough Council in May 2016. Nevill Holt Opera Nevill Holt Opera
368-460: The house and estate to the West Horsley Place Trust. The Trust holds regular guided tours and open days of the house and gardens. The grounds are regularly used for events, concerts, art workshops and filming, and the main house and converted Place Farm Barn are available for occasional hire. In 2021 the Trust hosted their first wedding ceremony. The house was the location for much of the filming of
391-460: The house, living in a five-room section. When the 99-year-old Duchess died in 2014, it was "accidentally" inherited by her (then) 80-year-old grand-nephew, broadcaster and author Bamber Gascoigne . The Duchess was childless, but had numerous grand-nieces and grand-nephews. Gascoigne had no idea she had picked him to solely inherit the property, and learned of it when a solicitor contacted him after his great-aunt's death. To raise money to restore
414-689: The local area, providing workshops and opportunities for children to see the dress rehearsals of the opera productions. Children of the Malcolm Arnold Academy in Northamptonshire were involved in helping to design the logo of the opera festival. The education programme is financed by the David Ross Foundation , the Garfield Weston Foundation and UBS Bank . This article about an opera company or opera festival
437-532: The place was used for fox hunting . When owner Laura Mary Fielder died in 1908, West Horsley Place was valued at £ 62,536 (equivalent to £8.25 million in 2023). In 1931, it was acquired by Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe , and his wife, the Marchioness of Crewe. The Marquess died in 1945 and, on her death in 1967, his widow, Peggy née Primrose, left it to their daughter, Mary Innes-Ker, Duchess of Roxburghe (1915–2014). The Duchess closed much of
460-598: The repertoire has included musicals: Fiddler on the Roof in 2015 and Oliver! in 2016. Fiddler on the Roof was subsequently staged in the Royal Albert Hall as part of the 2015 BBC Proms . Grange Park Opera is a not-for-profit organisation. Its sister charity Pimlico Opera , founded in 1987, has staged co-productions with prisons since 1991 and taken more than 50,000 members of the public into prison. The Primary Robins project gives singing classes to 2,000 KS2 children
483-529: The somewhat dilapidated 50-room house, Gascoigne arranged for the Duchess's possessions—some found under cobwebs in the closed-up sections of the house—to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London and Geneva. Originally expected to raise £2.2 million, the auction raised £8.8 million, with her Cartier diamond engagement ring selling for £167,000, 14 times its estimate. Gascoigne subsequently transferred ownership of
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#1733085245729506-633: Was built in the stable courtyard. In 2012 Grange Park Opera handed the Leicestershire season to newly formed Nevill Holt Opera . In 2015, the Baring family exercised a break clause in the lease. They attempted to introduce a rent, and limit a future lease to 10 years. However, Grange Park Opera was offered the opportunity to build an opera house close to London at West Horsley Place near Guildford —a 350-acre Surrey estate inherited by author and broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne . Gascoigne placed his inheritance into
529-500: Was founded in 1998 by Wasfi Kani and Michael Moody . The newly created charity was party to a three-way lease with English Heritage, guardians of The Grange, Northington and the owners, the Baring family . For the first four seasons, performances took place in the Orangery, into which had been fitted raked seating (the seats themselves came from Covent Garden), stage and orchestra pit . For
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