THIRTY YEARS OF BAMPTON CLASSICAL OPERA
“O ruddier than the cherry!” Handel, Acis and Galatea
“What a brilliant idea. ‘Bring a chair’, said the ticket. That way you couldn’t complain of a sore backside. Mind you, there were the surroundings to distract from any discomfort: the Deanery Garden in Bampton is a really beautiful place for outdoor music. A courtly hedge makes a natural set and behind the audience the house seems to hold the sound in – the acoustics were amazingly good.” Giles Woodforde, writing the first press review (Oxford Times, 23 July 1993) for what was then called Bampton Summer Opera, opened with a flourish, picking out several crucial aspects of our first opera which remain true thirty years later. When preparing a simplystaged opera at the Deanery in 1993, we decided to save the expense of providing seating and so create a more relaxed and welcoming event (“accessible” would be current jargon, not a term
much used in the 1990s). A lovely lawn, a sunny evening, the swifts swooping overhead and glorious baroque music: surely just the right ambience for sprawling on a homely garden chair rather than on a hard plastic one from the village hall.
The beautiful Deanery and garden
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Besides, there was little purpose investing in infrastructure for what was intended as a one-off event. Handel’s glorious pastoral ‘serenata’, Acis and Galatea, composed in 1718 for Cannons, the opulent seat