BAMPTON Classical Opera will be at The Orangery Theatre at Westonbirt School near Tetbury on Monday, August 29 as part of its summer double-bill of two one act works.

The company will be performing the UK premiere and first staging in modern times of Gluck’s Philemon and Baucis, and Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris, which they performed in 2010-11.

The operas will be staged by the same creative team as the highly-successful 2015 production of Salieri’s Trofonio’s Cave. The director will be Jeremy Gray, with an English translation by Gilly French, and the conductor will be Paul Wingfield who is currently a member of the music staff at the Royal Opera House.

The cast for both operas features Canadian soprano Barbara Cole Walton, making her company début, mezzo-soprano Catherine Backhouse, who sang in the London performance of Salieri’s Trofonio’s Cave in 2015, and two other cast members from the same production: soprano Aoife O’Sullivan and tenor Christopher Turner.

They are joined by tenor Robert Anthony Gardiner and baritone Robert Gildon.

Bampton Classical Opera was founded in 1993 by its artistic directors, Jeremy Gray and Gilly French.

The company stages productions in rural venues in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire as well as regularly in London at St John’s Smith Square.

  •  See Bampton Classical Opera at The Orangery Theatre, Westonbirt School, near Tetbury, Glos GL8 8QG on Monday, August 29 at 5pm.
  • Tickets: £35 (under 18: half-price). Telephone 01993 851142 or go to bamptonopera.org. By post: Bampton Classical Opera, 1 Deanery Court, Broad Street, Bampton, OX18 2LY.