The Conquests of Love: A story of love, passion and jealousy
Sundays 19 May and 16th June, 5:30pm

Join two young couples on their journey through temptation, friendship, love, and mistaken identity at a masked ball. This semi-staged operatic gala entwines celebrated arias and ensembles from The Barber of Seville, Cosi fan Tutte, Carmen, La Cenerentola, The Pearlfishers, La Bohème, Rigoletto and more, into a highly entertaining original narrative. With moments of sparkling comedy and emotionally charged drama and featuring a cast of stunning young professional artists, this is a musical event not to be missed!

This operatic gala has been written by Natasha Day and she takes the Soprano role. Vivien Conacher sings Mezzo-Soprano along with a Tenor and Baritone. The four singers are accompanied by a trio of Clarinet, Cello and Piano.

The evening will follow a familiar pattern with an interval of around 30 minutes to enjoy the finger food included in the ticket. Cash bar open also before and after the performance.

Read artist biographies.

Così Fan Tutte - W. A. Mozart
Sunday 7th July, 5:30pm

Sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella are happily betrothed to Guglielmo and Ferrando… but can they resist temptation? The cynical Don Alfonso is keen to prove a point and sets a wager with the boys to prove how fickle young love can be. Disguised as exotic foreign visitors, the boys set out to test the girls’ fidelity with an elaborate seduction routine. With cunning Despina on hand to stir the pot, chaos, confusion, hilarity and heartache ensues – will these young hearts survive their lesson in love?

Natasha Day is back singing Fiordiligi together with a great cast. In association with Devon Opera.

Read artist biographies.

Gala Night with the Singing Salon
Sunday 21st July

Pippa Dames Longworth runs an amazing singing group here in East Sussex called the Singing Salon. Pippa is a distinguished mezzo-soprano and surrounds herself with artists of great pedigree and has agreed to put a gala performance together for us in the summer. It will be a terrific show, more about it later in the month. Save the date!

More Gala performances in September
Sundays, 1st and 8th of September

Natasha Day and Vivien Conacher are working on a new Themed Gala performance and knowing how much in demand they are we have booked them for these two dates – where they will premiere a new Operetta Gala created specially for Court Garden!. So if you are planning a September holiday make sure you are in Sussex for one of these two Sundays for an evening of fun, fizz, frivolity, and glorious music!.

Behind the Scenes

That’s all you need to know, but some of our opera goers would like know what’s going on behind the scenes.

Firstly dear audience, thank you for all your support over the last 5 years when Pop-up Opera performed no less than 10 operas in 23 performances here at Court Garden, with such good and popular shows perhaps we could be forgiven for looking no further and in fact had booked them for 5 shows in 2019. When they announced in November that they would not tour in 2019 we needed to look around. In May and June 2017 Pop-up brought Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto to Court Garden, it was a great show and the part of Fidalma was sung by Vivien Conacher. Fidalma was the very naughty Aunt and Vivien’s portrayal was acclaimed by reviewers as “titillatingly sassy” “hysterical” and “a real comic grotesque”. We kept in touch with Vivien and were particularly impressed by her not-for-profit organisation Songhaven she founded to give people living with Dementia, their companions and carers the dignity of professional live music concerts. More information about Songhaven here, and more about Vivien here.

Vivien has been singing with Natasha Day in The Conquests of Love and so this was a ‘ready to go’ gala for Court Garden. Natasha is a very successful and busy Soprano and plenty more about Natasha here.

You can see we are pretty excited about all this. Make sure you come and join us. As always we are supporting Alzheimer’s Society, but we will also contribute to Songhaven.