Longborough Festival Opera

Longborough Festival Opera is a summer opera festival in the English Cotswolds village of Longborough in north Gloucestershire. It can trace its routes back to 1991 as a series of concerts in the home of founders property developer Martin Graham and his wife Elizabeth.[1][2] Although Martin Graham died in 2025, the organisation is still run by the family, with Elizabeth as director and trustee, her son Leo also a trustee, and her daughter Polly as artistic director.[3]

Beginnings

Longborough Festival Opera began as Banks Fee Opera, named after the Graham's family home. It soon moved from the main house to a temporary stage in the courtyard of the stable block, with productions supplied by Travelling Opera, a small touring opera company.[1]

The Grahams sold Banks Fee in the mid-1990s and moved to a house they'd built nearby.[2] In 1998 they started started their own productions, ending their relationship with the touring company and moving to a converted barn in the grounds of their new home.[4][5]

Longborough and Wagner

The Festival has cultivated a reputation for performing the works of Richard Wagner, mainly due to the interests of its founder, Martin Graham.[3][6] It has been suggested that the Longborough venue is modelled to look like Wagner's own opera house at Bayreuth[6] although Graham himself described it as 'just a big shed'.[7] The festival staged Wagner's Ring Cycle in 2013[8] and again in 2024.[9]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Only in England: Der Ring des Nibelungen in a Barn. Seigfried 2011, Longborough Festival Opera". The Wagnerian. Archived from the original on 2 May 2017. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  2. ^ a b Obituaries, Telegraph (24 April 2025). "Martin Graham, former builder whose Longborough opera house brought Wagner to the Cotswolds". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 8 August 2025.
  3. ^ a b OperaWire (26 April 2025). "Obituary: Martin Graham Founder of Longborough Festival Opera Opera Dies at 83". OperaWire. Retrieved 8 August 2025.
  4. ^ "Longborough Festival Opera". Theatres Trust. Archived from the original on 29 August 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  5. ^ "The hills are alive..." Worcester NMews. 19 June 2006. Archived from the original on 29 August 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  6. ^ a b Downes, Michael (15 May 2025). "From the sacred to the profane: the Wagners, Bayreuth and Parsifal". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 August 2025.
  7. ^ Obituaries, Telegraph (24 April 2025). "Martin Graham, former builder whose Longborough opera house brought Wagner to the Cotswolds". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 8 August 2025.
  8. ^ "Longborough Festival Opera announces 2020 season". Rhinegold. Archived from the original on 29 August 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  9. ^ "Past productions". Cotswolds. Archived from the original on 25 July 2024. Retrieved 28 January 2025.
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