English Touring Opera Will Host Shakespeare Themed season for Spring 2025

English Touring Opera has announced its Spring 2025 season, exploring music inspired by the works of William Shakespeare. Featuring a new production of Bellini’s The Capulets and the Montagues, the tour also includes new studio piece What Dreams May Come, which mixes puppetry with music spanning hundreds of years inspired by the words and characters of Shakespeare. The company’s new opera for children, The Vanishing Forest, also tours theatres, schools and libraries across the country. The tour begins at London’s New Diorama Theatre on 15 February (What Dreams May Come) and Hackney Empire on 22 February (The Capulets & the Montagues), before visiting York, Truro, Norwich, Durham, Crawley, Snape, Sheffield, Buxton, Exeter, Canterbury and Poole, continuing the company’s mission of bringing outstanding live productions and impactful education and community projects to more towns and cities than any other UK opera company.

The new production of Bellini’s The Capulets and The Montagues - a gritty re-working of Romeo and Juliet which remains a fresh, vital take on a well-loved story - brings the warring families’ emotional and political struggle to life with devastating power. Remarkably, the work was composed by Bellini in just six weeks. Soprano Jessica Cale – a First Prize winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards and audience prize winner at the London Handel Festival International Singing Competition – sings the role of Giulietta opposite mezzo-soprano Samantha Price, a regular performer with The Royal Opera and English National Opera, who sings the role of Romeo. Brenton Spiteri, who last performed with ETO in its productions of Manon Lescaut and The Rake’s Progress in Spring 2024, stars as Tebaldo, with Timothy Nelson as Capello and Masimba Ushe as Lorenzo. Eloise Lally, who directed ETO’s 2023 production of Lucrezia Borgia, returns to direct this production, while conductor, pianist and founder member of the ensemble Le Balcon Alphonse Cemin conducts in his debut season with ETO. This production will be sung in the original Italian with English surtitles.

ETO also present What Dreams May Come, a new studio piece drawing on hundreds of years of music inspired by and adapted from Shakespeare’s plays and poetry to depict the joys and sorrows of a long life, well-lived. Mixing puppetry with music by composers including Purcell, Finzi, Amy Beach and Britten performed by a chamber ensemble, this new production explores the timeless appeal of Shakespeare’s words and characters for composers and audiences throughout history. Singers include soprano Alys Mererid Roberts, mezzo-soprano Emily Hodkinson, tenor Tamsanqa Tylor Lemani and baritone Samuel Pantcheff. The piece is devised and directed by Valentina Ceschi – whose past work for ETO includes the acclaimed 2023 production of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, children’s opera The Great Stink and film for families The Firebird – with Erika Gundesen conducting from the piano.

Reaching over 10,000 people each year through productions in theatres, schools, museums and libraries, ETO’s Learning & Participation programme is central to the company’s mission. Its latest opera for children, The Vanishing Forest, is the third and final instalment in ETO’s trilogy of operas on environmental issues, following the award-winning The Wish Gatherer and The Great Stink. Written as a continuation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the opera follows Puck and the children of Theseus and Hippolyta, Cassie and Mylas, in their quest to find Oberon and Titania and to stop the felling of the Forest of Arden. Using spells, puppetry and mystical flowers, the production aims to educate and inspire children on the issue of deforestation. Written by Jonathan Ainscough and composed by Michael Betteridge, the production is directed by Victoria Briggs. In addition to performances in schools across the country, the opera will also be staged in theatres and libraries in Acomb, Norwich, London, Exeter and Canterbury.

Robin Norton-Hale, General Director of English Touring Opera, said: “This spring ETO celebrates the enduring power and relevance of the works of William Shakespeare with a season featuring one of the landmark operas of the 19th century alongside two new works that draw inspiration from his themes and characters to create something entirely fresh and original. Bellini's The Capulets and the Montagues puts a new spin on one of Shakespeare's best-loved stories and is a classic of Bel Canto repertoire, with a dramatic contrast of sumptuous music and destructive violence, while What Dreams May Come combines puppetry and song in an intimate exploration of life, love and death, set to new orchestrations of music inspired by the works of Shakespeare. Finally, we round off our trilogy of operas for children focusing on environmental issues with The Vanishing Forest, a new commission based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is a season that will showcase the best of ETO - wonderful storytelling and exceptional musicality at your local theatre."

ETO’s Spring 2025 tour begins on Saturday 15 February with What Dreams May Come at the New Diorama Theatre in London, followed by The Capulets and The Montagues at Hackney Empire on Saturday 22 February. More information and tickets can be found on the English Touring Opera website.

To post a comment, you must register and login.