Nevill Holt Festival has announced the excellent casts for their 2023 opera season. This year marks a decade of outstanding work for Nevill Holt in opera, education and community, and this season will see an expanded Festival with their most ambitious projects yet. The 10th anniversary programme will showcase everything Nevill Holt Festival embodies: excellence in music, and an array of remarkable established and rising British operatic talent, as well as children from Malcolm Arnold Academy in Northampton. This summer will see this renowned country house opera present a double bill of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, followed by Rossini’s La Cenerentola, both with casts of remarkable rising and established opera talents.
The exciting double bill of Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi will share a cast consisting of Charlie Drummond (Scottish Opera Emerging Artist 2019/20; Iris, Scottish Opera; Le Nozze di Figaro, Opera Bohemia) as Nedda and Nella, Adriano Graziani (Il tabarro, ROH; Lucia di Lammermoor, Buxton Festival; Un ballo un Maschera, Opera Zuid) as Canio and Gherardo, Michel de Souza (La boheme and Carmen, ROH; Cunning Little Vixen, Scottish Opera) as Tonio and Gianni Schicci, Egor Zhuravski (Jette Parker Young Artist 2020-22; Macbeth and Rigoletto, Royal Opera House; The Seven Deadly Sins, Teatro Colon) as Beppe and Rinuccio, and Jolyon Loy (Glyndebourne New Generation Young Artist 2020/21; Akhnaten, ENO; The Rape of Lucretia, ROH) as Silvio and Marco. The double bill will also see Nevill Holt Associate Artists Lorena Paz Nieto (Maria de Buenos Aries, Theater Lübeck; Le Nozze di Figaro, West Green Opera; The Barber of Seville, Ulster Touring Opera) as Lauretta, and Nancy Holt (Dead Man Walking, Guildhall School of Music and Drama; Sir John in Love, British Youth Opera) as La Ciesca. Other Associate Artists include William Kyle as Ser Amantio di Nicolalo, Thomas Chenhall as Maestro Spinnelloccio, Geoff Clapham as Pinellino and Fraser Robinson as Guccio.
Joining them, for Gianni Schicchi only, will be Rhonda Brown (Das Rheingold and Siegfried, Longborough Festival Opera; Eugene Onegin, West Green House Opera) as Zita, Ronald Nairne (Paul Bunyan, Fidelio and Salome, ENO) as Simone, and John Christie Award-winner Patrick Keefe (Jerwood Young Artist, Glyndebourne; Le Nozze di Figaro and The Notary, Glyndebourne) as Betto di Signa. The children’s chorus in Pagliacci will come from the Malcolm Arnold Academy in Northampton.
Singing in La Cenerentola are Grace Durham (Rusalka, Garsington Opera; Rigoletto, Zurich Opera; Carmen, Théâtre du Capitole) as Angelina, Aaron Godfrey-Mayes (Mascarade Emerging Opera Artist, Mascarade Opera Studio; Alvarez Young Artist, Garsington Opera; Adina, Rossini in Wildbad) who returns to Nevill Holt here as Don Ramiro, Malachy Frame (Alvarez Young Artist, Garsington Opera; NHO Young Artist; A Night At The Opera, Ulster Touring Opera) as Dandini, Grant Doyle (Don Giovanni, Garsington Opera; Barber of Seville, English Touring Opera; Lakme, Opera Holland Park) Don Magnifico and Trevor Eliot Bowes (La boheme, English Touring Opera; The Pirates of Penzance, Opera Holland Park; Paul Bunyan, ENO) as Alidoro. Returning for La Cenerentola are Lorena Paz Nieto and Nancy Holt as Clorinda and Tisbe.
Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi will be performed with Manchester Camerata, under the baton of Nevill Holt Festival’s Artistic Director Nicholas Chalmers. Dionysis Grammenos will conduct the Royal Northern Sinfonia in La Cenerentola, which transfers to Sage Gateshead after Nevill Holt.
Nevill Holt Festival Artistic Director Nicholas Chalmers comments, In our 10th anniversary year, we continue our mission to showcase the best operatic talent and, in addition to welcoming a host of new performers to our stage, we welcome back former young artists in principal roles: Aaron Godfrey-Mayes as Don Ramiro and Malachy Frame as Dandini in La Cenerentola. We also have six of our Associate Artists performing named roles in Gianni Schicchi. This season promises to be a celebration of the Festival’s decade of supporting young performers in our beautiful setting in Leicestershire. We cannot wait to welcome you all to our award-winning theatre.
