A Summer of Opera: England’s 2026 Festival Season

Last Updated on May 19, 2026

Pimms and Puccini

The English countryside comes alive each summer with some of the world’s finest opera, performed in settings ranging from intimate country houses to grand classical estates. The 2026 season promises an exceptional selection of productions, from Monteverdi’s Orfeo, considered the first great opera, to Puccini crowd-pleasers, an operatic take on The Importance of Being Earnest, to the world premiere of John Tavener’s “mystic pantomime” Krishna. So, why not book a ticket, give your dinner jacket or posh summer frock a brush, pack a picnic or book a meal, and enjoy!

Glyndebourne Festival

21 May – 30 August

The Glyndebourne Festival is the grande dame of the summer opera season. There are few things finer in life than picnicking around the lake, admiring the house and then enjoying some great music. The 2026 season is a balance between the classics and some unexpected firsts. The festival opens with its first-ever production of Puccini’s Tosca (21 May – 30 Aug), directed by Ted Huffman, with Robin Ticciati conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra for his debut Puccini opera. Rising star American soprano Caitlin Gotimer makes her UK debut as the doomed diva.

Two days later, Mariame Clément’s acclaimed production of Rossini’s Il turco in Italia (23 May – 09 Jul) returns. a sparkling comedy of romantic entanglements featuring Elena Villalón as the flirtatious Fiorilla and Rodion Pogossov as Don Geronio. This is the ‘feel-good’ production of the season.

The festival’s most anticipated premiere arrives on 14 June with Monteverdi’s 1607 masterpiece L’Orfeo (14 Jun – 25 Jul). South African artist and Olivier Award-winning director William Kentridge brings his distinctive visual imagination to this staging, with Polish tenor Krystian Adam in the title role. It marks both Kentridge’s Glyndebourne debut and the house’s first Monteverdi production. With the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the pit, this is an opera for fans of early music.

Laurent Pelly, fresh from his acclaimed Poulenc double bill in 2022, reunites with Ticciati for a new Ariadne auf Naxos (19 Jul – 29 Aug). Strauss’s opera-within-an-opera stars Rachel Willis-Sørensen as the abandoned princess and David Butt Philip as Bacchus in what promises to be a visually inventive take on theatrical illusion and emotional truth.

Michael Grandage returns to revive his award-winning 2010 production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd (28 Jun – 30 Jul) with Allan Clayton, fresh from his triumphant revival of Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera (see our review), as Captain Vere, and rising baritone Thomas Mole in the title role.
The season closes with David McVicar’s elegant staging of Mozart’s DieEntführung aus dem Serail (31 Jul – 28 Aug), with soprano Liv Redpath playing Konstanze and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Book for Glyndebourne here

Garsington Opera

27 May – 25 July
Garsington’s stylish modern opera house sits in the stunning grounds of Wormsley Estate in the Chilterns. With its glass, steel and wooden framework, the building melts into the surroundings, creating a dreamlike setting. White tents around the lake, cricket pitch and flaming torches guiding you back to your vehicle all add to the atmosphere, and the opera is always top-notch.

This summer’s productions feature works by Monteverdi and Gerald Barry, alongside favourites by Verdi and Strauss. If you’re not someone who likes to picnic, Garsington are working with new caterers Payne & Gunter this year, with Michelin Green Starred chef Will Devlin in charge of a new menu.

The Garsington season opens with Verdi’s La traviata (27 May – 24 Jul). The opera follows the relationship of a beautiful courtesan called Violetta with a naïve, bourgeois young man of good family, called Alfredo, who has admired her from afar. Director Louisa Muller and designer Christopher Oram return to Garsington after their successful productions of Platée and RPS award-winning The Turn of the Screw, with Madison Leonard and Oleksiy Palchycov, who starred in last year’s charming L’elisir d’amore, also coming back to Wormsley as Violetta and Alfredo.

Bruno Ravella and Gary McCann’s 2021 lockdown production of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (28 May – 29 Jun) makes a welcome revival. The opera blends a comic plot with a late-Romantic sensibility and is a clear audience favourite. The production features several Garsington debuts, including from conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, Matilda Sterby, Andreas Bauer Kanabas and Niamh O’Sullivan.

The creative team of director John Caird and conductor Laurence Cummings behind Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo from 2022 are back with the composer’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse (12 Jun – 25 Jul) as part of Garsington’s Monteverdi trilogy. A starry cast featuring Cecelia Hall and Ed Lyon combine with The English Concert for this new production of one of Monteverdi’s greatest works.

Conducted by Douglas Boyd and directed by Jack Furness, the Garsington season comes to an end with a revival of Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest (10 Jul – 23 Jul). Starring Jennifer France, Henry Waddington and Seán Boylan with the Philharmonia Orchestra, this is an opera that is finding its way into the repertory on a regular basis and is a lot of fun.

Book for Garsington here

The Grange Festival

2 June – 12 July

Set amid the sweeping Candover valley in Hampshire, with ancient cedars and a shimmering lake, The Grange Festival continues its commitment to accessibility with a progressive ticketing policy that encourages young people.

Puccini’s La bohème opens proceedings (2 Jun – 11 Jul), with Isabela Díaz as the fragile Mimì in a new production. Handel’s Giulio Cesare (7 – 25 Jun) follows on in a staging by David Alden, featuring countertenor Tim Mead in the title role and Hugh Cutting as the scheming Tolomeo, with Christian Curnyn leading the Early Opera Company. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (26 Jun – 12 Jul) rounds out the staged operatic offerings, starring Ruzan Mantashyan as Tatyana with Lidiya Yankovskaya conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. A concert performance of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (9–10 Jun) features Les Talens Lyriques under Christophe Rousset.

Beyond opera, John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London present Celebrating Sinatra (3–6 June), while The Soul of Opera (2–3 Jul) explores connections between operatic and soul traditions.

Book for The Grange Festival here

Grange Park Opera

4 June – 12 July
Grange Park Opera’s productions are presented in a five-tier opera house modelled on La Scala in the Surrey Hills, offering intimate performances and historic rose-filled formal gardens. Under-35s can secure seats for £45. The headline event is a world premiere of John Tavener’s Krishna (Jun 4 -Jul 2), which the late composer described as “a mystic pantomime.” Ross Ramgobin serves as Celestial Narrator alongside Brett Polegato and Sara Fulgoni in what promises to be an atmospheric meditation on divine love.
Wagner devotees should put June 14th in their diaries.

Das Rheingold (Jun 14 -Jul 10) launches Grange Park’s five-year Ring cycle (2026–2030). James Rutherford sings Wotan, with Christine Rice and Fricka, Rachel Nicholls as Freia and David Stout as Alberich. Harry Sever conducts the Orchestra of English National Opera in what will become an annual pilgrimage for Ring enthusiasts.

Verdi’s grand Don Carlo (6 Jun–7 Jul) features Matthew Rose as the tormented King Philip II and Elin Pritchard as Elisabeth de Valois. The season lightens with Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (25 June–12 Jul). Ginger Costa-Jackson stars as Rosina opposite James Newby’s Figaro in Bruno Ravella’s production, which promises both subtlety and comic sparkle.

Book for Grange Park Opera here

Holland Park Opera

26 May – 20 August
Holland Park’s open-air theatre sits beneath the trees of this central London park, offering opera at accessible prices in an informal setting. The 2026 programme celebrates Holland Park Opera’s 30th anniversary and features the company’s trademark mix of popular favourites and adventurous rediscoveries.
Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West (26 May – 12 Jun) opens West London’s opera season. With Amanda Echalaz as the “pistol-packing, poker-playing heroine”, Minnie Falconer, who falls for a mysterious stranger and conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren controlling proceedings, this should be a lot of fun. La fanciulla is followed by Mozart’s Così fan tutte (28 May – 13 Jun), sure to be a hot ticket. Charlotte Corderoy conducts.

First seen in 2012, Will Todd and Maggie Gottlieb’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s “surreal classic” for Opera Holland Park, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (19 – 27 Jun), features the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, and a terrifying Queen of Hearts in a production that is perfect for kids of all ages. Dominic Ellis-Peckham conducts a cast led by Madeline Robinson as Alice.

Puccini’s operas have been part of Opera Holland Park’s core repertoire. This year, there is a concert staging of Puccini’s final opera, Turandot (23 – 27 Jun), directed by Eleanor Burke and with Anne Sophie Duprels as the tricksy Princess Turandot. Rodula Gaitanou’s impressive 2019 production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (25 Jul – 7 Aug) is receiving its first revival this year in this “grand tragedy of illicit love and political turmoil”. Gustavo “must renounce his passion or his throne in Verdi’s 1859 tragedy of illicit love, political unrest and regicide.” Michael Papadopoulos conducts, Takis is the designer, Elin Pritchard plays Amelia, Matteo Desole is Gustavo, King of Sweden and Rosalind Plowright OBE plays Madame Arvidson.

There’s a new production from director Liam Steel of Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus (29 Jul – 8 Aug), the composer’s crowd-pleasing comedy of flirtations and machinations among Vienna’s high society, with Thomas Atkins as Gabriel von Eisenstein and Alison Langer as Rosalinde.

From the team that brought you Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven, which we loved, comes Tchaikovsky: Child of Glass (13 – 15 Aug), a new music-drama about the life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Written and performed by Tama Matheson, with music re-imagined and performed by Jayson Gillham, and featuring actors Suzy Kohane and Oliver Holland alongside the Royal Ballet’s Téo Dubreuil.

Bernstein’s critique of the American Dream, Trouble in Tahiti (20 Aug), is a strikingly modern chamber opera that depicts a failing marriage set to a jazzy score. Here it is presented in a double bill with Kurt Weill’s 7 Deadly Sins, a critique of materialist values starring Alison Langer as Anna.

Book for Holland Park Opera here

Buxton Festival

10 – 25 July
The Buxton Festival, held in the Peak District’s magnificent Opera House, specialises in rediscovering neglected works alongside familiar repertoire. The intimate Victorian theatre provides ideal acoustics for bel canto and baroque opera, with performances also taking place in the Pavilion Arts Centre.

Buxton Opera House

G&S specialist John Savournin directs Franz Lehár’s deliciously comic The Merry Widow (10 – 24 Jul) with “lavish designs” by Takis “that evoke all the glamour of 1950s Manhattan”. There is a new translation by Savournin and David Eaton, with Iwan Davies conducting the Buxton International Festival Orchestra. The cast is led by Paula Sides as Hanna Glawari and Dominic Sedgwick as Danilo, with Richard Burkhard as the powerful Don Zeta.

The festival has a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata (11 – 25 Jul) with soprano Alexandra Nowakowski as Violetta and is presenting Handel’s fifth opera, Amadigi di Gaula (12-20 Jul) featuring The English Concert, Erin Helyard conducting, and a cast that includes Jake Ingbar as Amadigi, Rowan Pierce as Oriana, Hilary Cronin as Melissa and James Hall as Dardano. Mozart’s opera seria La clemenza di Tito (19-23 Jul) set against the backdrop of ancient Rome stars Xavier Más as Tito with Adrian Kelly conducting and Corina Würsch directing.

Pavilion Arts Centre
Pauline García Viardot created the two-act salon opera Le dernier sorcier (The Last Sorcerer) (13-25 Jul) in a collaboration with Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev. It tells the story of Krakamiche, “a once-powerful sorcerer whose presence in the great woods has upset the fairies… and disturbed the harmony of the land”. Erika Gundesen conducts, and Lysanne van Overbeek directs.
Francesca Caccini’s 1625La liberazione di Ruggiero is the first known opera by a female composer. Based on the famous Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso, the music features “sparkling choral madrigals and plaintive arias, peppered with virtuosic ornaments for the singers to tackle”.

Book for the Buxton Festival here

Wild Arts’ touring production of Mozart’s comic masterpiece The Marriage of Figaro visits over twenty locations across England from 5 June – 27 September, in an exciting new production by soprano Danielle de Niese, who is making her directorial debut. With Jack Sandison as Figaro, Ellie Neate as Susanna, Timothy Nelson as Count Almaviva and Elinor Rolfe Johnson as the Countess and Orlando Jopling as musical director, you can catch the production in London on 22 August at the Holland Park Opera.

Book for Wild Arts’ The Marriage of Figaro here

Planning Your Summer

The sheer variety of opera this season is striking: Monteverdi to Britten, Handel to Wagner, world premieres to revivals. For newcomers, Rossini’s comic operas at Glyndebourne or Grange Park offer ideal entry points—short, tuneful and supremely entertaining. Those seeking something weightier might choose Das Rheingold’s mythic grandeur or Billy Budd’s psychological intensity. Whatever you choose, have a great time, and if you see us, come and say hello!

Check out our London Opera Preview Winter/Spring/Summer 2026