BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA 2022 A new production of Haydn's little-heard comic opera Il mondo della luna (‘Fool Moon’ ) Performances: The Deanery Garden, Bampton, Oxfordshire: Friday 22, Saturday 23 July Westonbirt School, Glos: Monday 29 August St John’s Smith Square, London: Friday 16 September Libretto: Carlo Goldoni English Translation: Gilly French Director/Designer: Jeremy Gray Conductor: Thomas Blunt Orchestra of Bampton Classical Opera (Bampton, Westonbirt) CHROMA (St John’s Smith Square)
Bampton Classical Opera’s summer 2022 production will be Haydn’s Il mondo della luna. This three-act dramma giocosa from 1777 is the best-known of several operatic settings during the second half of the century of a delightfully crazy libretto by Carlo Goldoni. As Mozart was to do later with Così fan tutte, Haydn was inspired by a bizarre plot of disguise and deception to create a score of ravishing beauty and wit. How better to persuade an over-protective but gullible father to allow the marriages of his daughters than to persuade him that he has been transported to the moon?
Bampton Classical Opera has taken particular delight in presenting Haydn opera along with that of Gluck and Salieri, to new audiences, and Il mondo della luna will be the third of his Goldoni settings to be performed. It will be sung in a new English translation by Gilly French under the title Fool Moon. Performances will be conducted by Thomas Blunt and directed by Jeremy Gray.
The delightful Deanery Garden at Bampton provides a charming and picturesque venue for open-air opera, with an excellent natural acoustic. Westonbirt School is a spectacular Victorian mansion, with extensive Grade I listed gardens: the performances take place in the Orangery Theatre. Audiences are encouraged to bring their own garden chairs to Bampton and enjoy a pre-performance or interval picnic.
St John’s Smith Square is the most historic of London’s concert halls and provides an outstanding and appropriately eighteenth-century setting for this performance.
Fool Moon performances, with free pre-performance talks:
The Deanery Garden, Bampton OX18 2LL
7.00 pm Friday 22 and Saturday 23 July
The Orangery Theatre, Westonbirt School, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire GL8 8QG
5.00 pm Monday 29 August
St John’s Smith Square, London SW1P 3HA
7.00 pm Friday 16 September
Booking Information, Bampton and Westonbirt
Tickets: £40 (under 18: half-price)
By Telephone: 01993 851142
Online: www.bamptonopera.org
Booking information, St John’s Smith Square
Details will be available later in the year
