Cumbria is set for ten days of operatic entertainment, as the region’s opera festival returns for its latest instalment.
The Cumbria Opera Festival 2025 kicked off on Thursday night (August 21) in Penrith, with a performance of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, but the festival continues with shows across the region until August 30.
Festival organisers describe the festival as “ten days of Operas, Concerts, and Education Workshops throughout the most beautiful area of Britain.
“Following our Opera Festivals in 2021 and 2023, both critically acclaimed by international publications, the 2025 Festival will be even more exciting, engaging, and accessible: we will show that Opera is for everyone, and for everywhere.”
The festival has performances arranged throughout Cumbria, with shows in Grange-over-Sands, Kendal, Barrow, Appleby, Keswick, Penrith, and Carlisle.
Taking place in venues such as Grange’s Victoria Hall, Kendal Town Hall, as well as Penrith Town Hall.
Productions of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Britten’s Turn of the Screw are, perhaps, the most notable in the schedule.
Nevertheless, a production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, but reimagined, with only two singers featuring in the performance, is set for dates in Kendal and Carlisle respectively.
Organisers describe the production as a “a stripped-back version” that “will explore the racial complications of the opera with an all-BAME cast and creative team".
Read more
Furthermore, they said that all three productions, The Marriage of Figaro, Turn of the Screw, and Porgy and Bess, will be focused on “the issues we face today".
Elsewhere in the festival programme, however, there is the Opera by Candlelight series that will criss-cross the area, with the series being “designed to appeal to the opera-lover and the opera-newbie alike".
Lastly, a masterclass led by Joan Rodgers CBE, who is hailed by organisers as “one of the greatest singers of her generation”, and is the festival’s artistic patron, will take place at Victoria Hall at Grange on the August 30.
Readers can visit the Cumbria Opera Group’s website for more information and tickets.
Share