Mission Statement
Waterperry Opera Festival is a unique and innovative opera festival hosted at the beautiful Waterperry House & Gardens in Oxfordshire. The festival offers high-quality, accessible and socially relevant work, created and performed by a diverse company, which bridges the gap between artists and audiences.
We aim to:
We aim to:
- Make our work accessible and inclusive – by developing new diverse audiences for opera, producing work in English, where possible, and offering affordable tickets to our audiences.
- Create socially relevant work – by making it meaningful to today’s audiences through an exploration of contemporary social issues and timeless themes that touch the very nature of the human condition.
- Bridge the gap between artists and audiences – by offering innovative, immersive and site-responsive work, pushing the boundaries of the operatic form, and producing talks, masterclasses, and workshops to inform, encourage and inspire.
- Support a diverse community of artists – by offering equal opportunity for all, growing a company from a broad variety of backgrounds, and developing diverse emerging talent on our Young Artist Programme.
Value Statement
- Collaboration - We foster a real sense of teamwork and inclusion within the organisation; supporting one another to achieve our collective vision.
- Integrity - We aim to deliver on our promises and be open, respectful and honest in all we do.
- Imagination - We are imaginative in our approach to everything we do, and seek to make artistic work of the highest quality through creativity, innovation and curiosity.
- Communication - We value clear, transparent and sincere communication across our company to create an inclusive working environment and encourage our audience to share in our vision, where everyone’s voice is respected.
- Growth - We strive to grow as an organisation in all that we do and encourage feedback from our artists and audiences, to drive continuous improvement.
Our Story
Waterperry Opera Festival was founded in 2017 by Guy Withers, Bertie Baigent and Rebecca Meltzer. The Festival was developed to create innovative productions and engaging participatory events at the beautiful Waterperry House & Gardens. These wonderful spaces offer exciting opportunities to create extraordinary indoor and outdoor theatre.
Waterperry Opera Festival is committed to creating work that bridges the gap between performer and spectator by offering intimate and immersive productions and engaging participatory events. We want opera to be available and affordable to as many people as possible. As a charity, we will endeavour to inspire more to take part in art, music and theatre. We are also committed to supporting diverse emerging artists and have developed a Young Artist Programme at the very centre of our work. We are excited about nurturing a festival of events for opera-goers of all backgrounds and ages and we look to a future full of potential and enthusiasm for our growing community of artists and audiences.
Opera is a unique art form that can tell stories of significance and beauty like no other medium. One of our Festival’s aims is to explore contemporary social issues through our productions. In our 2018 inaugural season, our Don Giovanni, a timeless masterpiece, and A Hand of Bridge, a 20th century jazz operetta, both explored provocative themes relating to issues of gender. We also believe in championing women artists, and are very proud that both main operas in our first season were directed by women, and two other shows explored the works of two female authors – Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter.
Our second festival at Waterperry saw over 1,850 attendees and a number of sold-out performances across the 4-day festival. Headlining the festival were two large-scale amphitheatre shows; A bold production of Mozart's enchanting classic, The Magic Flute, and an innovative new imagining of Purcell's The Fairy Queen, inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Our 5-star sell out production of Jonathan Dove's Mansfield Park returned to the Waterperry Ballroom to again sell-out crowds.
In August 2020, we hosted the first opera festival in the UK since lockdown with sold-out productions of Cosi fan tutte and Jonathan Dove's Ariel. A film of Ariel was also made, and subsequently streamed for free into homes worldwide. 775 audience attendees joined us for 3 days of performances.
Waterperry Opera Festival is committed to creating work that bridges the gap between performer and spectator by offering intimate and immersive productions and engaging participatory events. We want opera to be available and affordable to as many people as possible. As a charity, we will endeavour to inspire more to take part in art, music and theatre. We are also committed to supporting diverse emerging artists and have developed a Young Artist Programme at the very centre of our work. We are excited about nurturing a festival of events for opera-goers of all backgrounds and ages and we look to a future full of potential and enthusiasm for our growing community of artists and audiences.
Opera is a unique art form that can tell stories of significance and beauty like no other medium. One of our Festival’s aims is to explore contemporary social issues through our productions. In our 2018 inaugural season, our Don Giovanni, a timeless masterpiece, and A Hand of Bridge, a 20th century jazz operetta, both explored provocative themes relating to issues of gender. We also believe in championing women artists, and are very proud that both main operas in our first season were directed by women, and two other shows explored the works of two female authors – Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter.
Our second festival at Waterperry saw over 1,850 attendees and a number of sold-out performances across the 4-day festival. Headlining the festival were two large-scale amphitheatre shows; A bold production of Mozart's enchanting classic, The Magic Flute, and an innovative new imagining of Purcell's The Fairy Queen, inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Our 5-star sell out production of Jonathan Dove's Mansfield Park returned to the Waterperry Ballroom to again sell-out crowds.
In August 2020, we hosted the first opera festival in the UK since lockdown with sold-out productions of Cosi fan tutte and Jonathan Dove's Ariel. A film of Ariel was also made, and subsequently streamed for free into homes worldwide. 775 audience attendees joined us for 3 days of performances.