The best opera to book now, according to our critic
The best opera to book now, according to our critic
Nicholas Kenyon Sat, July 25, 2026 at 5:30 PM UTC
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Glyndebourne’s production of Ariadne auf Naxos paints a vivid picture of the tortured process of creating an opera - Tristram Kenton
The country-house opera season, a relatively recent phenomenon in the UK, is upon us, and yet there is still a huge range of opera available, ancient and modern, to catch in London, too. Here is my pick of the highlights to book. See also our guide to affordable tickets for hints on avoiding the largest ticket prices.
This article is weekly.
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London operas
Best country house operas
Best operas in LondonGrimeborn Opera Festival
Grimeborn in east London is known for reinventing operas - Charlie Flint
For 19 years, this tiny festival based at the Arcola Theatre in east London has offered an extraordinary range of re-thought, reinvented music dramas, some classics and some new. This year their season includes Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte reimagined as an experiment on prototype humans, an unlikely electronic reworking of Schoenberg’s massive score Erwartung, and a new take on Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. My choice is Murder Games, a quirky, surreal, farcical double bill of pieces: Ned Rorem’s Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters, which is based on a Gertrude Stein play, plus Madeleine Dring’s whodunnit opera Cupboard Love.
Arcola Theatre (arcolatheatre.com), July 15- Sept 5
Weber: Oberon
Nicky Spence leads the cast as Oberon - Ki Price
The BBC Proms mount a concert performance under Mark Elder of Weber’s superbly inventive opera Oberon, a rarely performed retelling of the conflict between Oberon and Titania, first performed 200 years ago. Weber’s innovative orchestration will spring to life with the period instruments of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, with the singers of the peerless Monteverdi Choir. Nicky Spence leads the cast in the title role.
BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall (bbc.co.uk/proms) August 6
Mozart: Don Giovanni
The Royal Opera’s 2022 production of Don Giovanni - Bill Cooper
The Royal Opera kicks off the 2026/2027 season early with a revival of its highly praised if over-complicated production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Kasper Holten’s staging captures well the story of serial seducer Giovanni but it controversially cuts the final scene after his descent to hell. There’s plenty of action and Es Devlin’s extravagant designs are always worth watching. Gordon Bintner (who recently starred in the Royal Opera’s Eugene Onegin) leads the cast, while two superb singers of the moment, Rachel Willis-Sørensen (Glyndebourne’s Ariadne) and Aigul Akhmetshina (the go-to Carmen), are Anna and Elvira. Stefano Montanari conducts.
Royal Ballet and Opera Covent Garden WC2 (rbo.org.uk), Sept 10- Oct 15
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Handel: Alcina
Lisette Oropesa as Alcina in 2022 - Alastair Muir
Richard Jones’s award-winning staging of Handel’s masterpiece about the sorceress Alcina who turns all her lovers into decorative (and rather cuddly) animals on her enchanted island. The cast is a roll-call of today’s great baroque singers, led by the amazing Lisetta Oropesa (who recently shone in Bellini’s I Puritani) in the title role, Emily d’Angelo as the love-sick Ruggiero, the brilliant Mary Bevan as Alcina’s sister Morgana, and the commanding Beth Taylor (Longborough’s Orlando) as Ruggiero’s fiancée Bradamante. The conductor is rising star David Bates.
Royal Ballet and Opera Covent Garden WC2 (rbo.org.uk), Sept 15-Oct 3
Wagner: Parsifal
Wagner’s Parsifal is the Royal Opera’s first big new production of the season
Covent Garden’s big new production this autumn is Wagner’s Parsifal, conducted by music director Jakub Hrusa. It’s not hard to see this as a superior consolation prize for Hrusa because his predecessor Antonio Pappano is conducting the final instalment of Barrie Kosky’s new Wagner Ring cycle later in the year. This Parsifal promises a hallucinatory, dystopian set design by Etienne Pluss, while the cast is led by tenor Stanislas De Barbeyrac as the innocent “holy fool” who brings redemption to the oppressed Knights of the Grail. Ekaterina Gubanova plays Kundry; Christian Gerharer and Brindley Sherratt – two of the greatest male voices of our time – are Amfortas and Gurnemanz.
Royal Ballet and Opera Covent Garden WC2 (rbo.org.uk), Oct 1-17
Best country house operas and operas outside of LondonStrauss: Ariadne auf Naxos
Glyndebourne operas don’t get much madder than this flamboyant production of Ariadne auf Naxos - Tristram Kenton
If you want a way into the mad, mad world of opera you could do no better than to start with the Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos. Laurent Pelly’s penetrating new production for Glyndebourne of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s 1912 oddity paints a vivid picture of the tortured process of creating an opera, the rivalries between artists and the interference of patrons who have funded the show.
Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Lewes, East Sussex (Glyndebourne.com), until Aug 29
Puccini: Tosca
Glyndebourne’s staging of Tosca is unsettling and bold - Richard Hubert Smith
Glyndebourne’s relationship with Puccini’s popular operas has been distant and occasional, partly because of the large-scale demands they make on performers, but mainly due to the innate snobbery that has surrounded them for so long. Now Glyndebourne has embraced the most brazenly melodramatic of them all for the first time: the story of Floria Tosca and her lover Mario Cavaradossi, her attempted seduction by Baron Scarpia, and the grisly outcome for all three. It is an original and compelling staging, directed by Ted Huffman.
Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Lewes, East Sussex (Glyndebourne.com), Aug 4–30
Bartok: Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex
Welsh National Opera launch their reduced season with a bold double bill of powerful 20th-century works. The Bartok, telling the story of Duke Bluebeard’s relationship with his new wife Judith and the locked doors in his castle, is a striking, economical production that originated at English National Opera. Stravinsky’s ritualised, hypnotic Oedipus Rex, with a plague gripping the ancient city of Thebes, is a clever companion piece as the myths echo each other: it requires no elaborate staging. A fine group of singers, Nathan Berg, Christine Rice and Peter Hoare, overlap in the casts of the two operas, and there are great opportunities for the chorus to make a mark in the Stravinsky. Lidiya Yankovskaya conducts.
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff (wno.org.uk), Sept 20 – Nov 28
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