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Epiphany carol service

Puccini     La Rondine
a live performance of the opera relayed in high-definition direct from one of the world's greatest opera houses.

Gluck     Orfeo ed Euridice
a live performance of the opera relayed in high-definition direct from one of the world's greatest opera houses.

The Lamb in winter
Songs and Chants for St Agnes
A sequence of choral music for female voices for the feast of St Agnes, including works by Palestrina, de Rore and the nun composer Lucrezia Vizzana.

Mendelssohn      Elijah

Guys and dolls
in 1950s New York City a small time hustler Nathan Detroit is still dodging the moment when he has to say "I do" to his long suffering fiancée Miss Adelaide. Includes the number Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat.

Verdi      Aïda
lavish Egyptian scenery and ballet sequences are the setting for Verdi's opera of love, jealousy and revenge, at whose heart is the dommed love of the beautiful slave girl Aïda and the Egyptian hero Radames.

Puccini      Turandot
set in ancient China this is the story of a cold-hearted princess beset by suitors.  But any suitor must face death if he fails to solve the riddle she sets him.  Ravishing music includes the aria Nessun dorma.

Voces8
international award-winning a capella octet, founded by ex-choristers of Westminster Abbey.  The concert ranges from early classical Palestruina and Monteverdi to modern - John Tavener and Gustav Holst, and in the second half includes jazz and popular arrangements, from Cole Porter to Kurt Weill.

A Choral Masterclass with
            Stephen Cleobury
concentrating on Handel's Dixit Dominus.

Donizetti     Lucia di Lammermoor
a live performance of the opera relayed in high-definition direct from one of the world's greatest opera houses.

Opera gala evening
a showcase for New Sussex Opera
The concert includes music from The Barber of Seville, Candide, Carmen, L’Étoile, Die Fledermaus, Der Freischütz, The Magic Flute, Mireille, Norma, The Pearl Fishers, The Tales of Hoffmann, Tannhäuser and La Traviata, and closes with a complete performance of the Windsor Forest scene from Verdi’s Falstaff.

* Katherine Broderick was winner of the 2007 Kathleen Ferrier awards.

Jazz evening

The love of singing
a workshop led by Amy Bebbington to inspire singers and help improve singing skills, focusing in this session on music from the shows, along with other songs, rounds and canons.

Saturday 28 February, 10.30 am to 5 pm Big School, Christ's Hospital, near Horsham

information and registration: 01403 256203
or by e-mail to Mike Roberts,
CHCS Workshop Organiser

the incidental music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream includes two songs for soloists and chorus.

This is the première of two new and exciting pieces of Choral Theatre by and for young people.

Puccini     Madama Butterfly
a live performance of the opera relayed in high-definition direct from one of the world's greatest opera houses.

Orlandus Lassus - a great cosmopolitan!
a progamme of highly varied music of the most influential and prolific composer from the end of the 16th century. Based around his highly popular 8 voice Missa Bell' Amfitrit’ altera this concert will also feature some of his passionate songs to the Virgin Mary and include secular French songs and a selection from his final great work, the Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St Peter).

Verdi     Aïda
a spectacular production sung in the original Italian with English surtitles.

Puccini     Turandot
a fully-staged production sung in the original Italian with English surtitles.

A Stage Kindly
a revue of new musical theatre writing, featuring music from over twenty new musicals from around the world.  It is a chance for composers to have their new musicals introduced to the stage. This revue features songs from across the genre of musical theatre - from big, belty old-school numbers through to the most contemporary, with writers including David Reiser, an American composer with no less than forty eight musicals to his name, and Emmy award winner Jack Urbont.

Bellini     La Sonnambula
a live performance of the opera relayed in high-definition direct from one of the world's greatest opera houses.

A programme of Lenten Music
featuring Allegri's Miserere

Orlandus Lassus - a great cosmopolitan!
a progamme of highly varied music of the most influential and prolific composer from the end of the 16th century. Based around his highly popular 8 voice Missa Bell' Amfitrit’ altera this concert will also feature some of his passionate songs to the Virgin Mary and include secular French songs and a selection from his final great work, the Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St Peter).

Rock
live musicians, dance and a 60-strong choir perform a new musical by Roger Jones.  It's based on the biblical story of Peter, called away from his fishing nets to years on the road beside Jesus.

Music for Passiontide

Thursday 26 March at 7.30 pm Christ Church, Grafton Road, Worthing tickets: 01903 238792 or book using the contact form

this concert is given again
on Wednesday 1 April in Goring-by-Sea
and Thursday 2 April in Findon

A celebration of
English Cathedral music

Britten    St Nicolas
and other works

A Baroque Festival of Gloria settings

Bizet     Carmen
Francesca Zambello’s vibrant direction with Tanya McCallin’s richly coloured designs create the sun-drenched and sultry world of 19th-century Spain, with its ranks of soldiers and crowd of peasants, its gypsies and bullfighters, its spectacle and its deadly, white hot emotions.

Dvořák     Stabat Mater

Music of the Angels
an exploration of music for harp and voices including works by Janáček, Bach, Fauré, Britten and Holst. Concordia Singers are joined by Professor Skaila Kanga, Head of the Harp faculty at the Royal Academy of Music, who will talk about the development of the harp and play works written for solo harp as well as for choir and harp.

Come and sing
John Stainer     The Crucifixion
"A Meditation on the Sacred Passion of the Holy Redeemer"
all singers welcome - the practice will be at 3.30 pm

Charles Wood     St Mark Passion
a Passiontide devotion

Handel     Messiah
Handel died on 14 April 1759, almost exactly 250 years ago. This performance will be screened live from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, on Palm Sunday.

Mendelssohn      Elijah

Gilbert & Sullivan
H M S Pinafore
a hilarious G&S tale of love, hypocrisy and mistaken identities – Josephine, daughter of HMS Pinafore's Captain, falls secretly in love with a common sailor, jeopardising her father's plans for her to marry the "ruler of the Queen's Navy", Sir Joseph Porter.

Leonard Bernstein     On the town
three sailors Gabey, Chip, and Ozzie, free on one-day shore leave hit New York City, falling in love with the town and women.

Just So – the musical
based on Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories for children, this musical takes the most imaginative of these tales and weaves them into an enthralling adventure. Join the Elephant’s Child as he sets out on a song-filled journey, across oceans and through the jungle, to the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River. Along the way discover how the rhinoceros got baggy skin, the leopard got spots, the kangaroo got bounce, and the elephant got his trunk!

This concert is presented by the Brighton & Hove, South Downs Rotary Club.

Music by Jule Stein / Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Gypsy
Gypsy tells the story of Rose, a stage mother determined to push the vaudeville career of her daughter June.  But June elopes, and Rose turns her attentions to her older daughter whom she transforms into burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.  Includes the songs Everything's coming up roses, You gotta have a gimmick and Some people.

Voces8
winning international awards, Voces8 has established itself as the foremost young British a capella group - an octet of voices performing repertoire ranging from early polyphony to unique jazz and popular arrangements.

a double bill –

Suor Angelica is set in the 17th century in a convent. Sister Angelica, was formerly a young noblewoman, but gave birth to an illegitimate son. Her scandalised family had forced her to take the veil. While spending her days in prayer she still waits for word about her family and her adored child.

Pagliacci is set in a small town in southern Italy where a troupe of travelling players has arrived to perform a show. But underlying their perfomance lies a real-life tragedy of love and murderous revenge.

double bill of Gilbert & Sullivan
   Trial by Jury
a one-act operetta set in a Court Room – the Judge has the job of deciding whether or not there has been a breach of promise of marriage.
   HMS Pinafore
a typical G&S romp centering around a lovesick heroine and a lowly sailor, not to mention an Admiral who’s never been to sea! A wonderful mix of mistaken identities, comedy and the inevitable love triangle.

Mozart     The Magic Flute
a witty translation by Jeremy Sam brings Mozart's enchanting story to magical life.

These are Thy Wonders
music by Purcell, Handel, Haydn, Mendelsohn, Frank Bridge, John Ireland.   The programme includes Kenneth Leighton's These are Thy Wonders and the Song of Ruth by Czech composer Petr Eben.

Janáček      Kát’a Kabanová
a moving story of a sensitive married woman who falls in love with a younger man.  Based on Aleksandr Ostrovsky's play The Storm, the atmosphere is dominated by the nearby brooding Volga River.

Coffee, cake and song

Rossini     La Cenerentola
a live performance of the opera relayed in high-definition direct from one of the world's greatest opera houses.

music by Vincent Youman
No no Nanette
a lighthearted musical telling the story of Jimmy Smith, and all the trouble he gets into and out of on a summer weekend. Included in the score are two of the most famous show tunes ever written: Tea for Two and I Want to Be Happy.

Lunchtime concert

Strouse, Charnin & Meehan
Annie
the musical tells the story of orphan Annie's search for her parents and for love. Well-known songs include It's a hard knock life, Easy Street, You're never fully dressed without a smile and Tomorrow.

music by George Stiles, lyrics by Anthony Drewe
Just so
a musical comedy inspired by the stories of Rudyard Kipling

Tchaikovsky      Eugene Onegin
based on a verse-novel by Aleksandr Pushkin, this dramatic and lyrical opera set in St Petersburg's high society tells the story of wearily self-centred Onegin who comes to regret his off-hand rejection of Tatyana's love and his careless incitement of a fatal duel with his best friend Lensky.

A 35th birthday show
celebrating their 35th birthday with a selection of choral music covering the various styles of shows that the company has done over the years, as well as some fun new stuff with a Swing theme.

Now is the month of Maying
thoughts of Spring and Nature illustrated with a lively variety of music. Tea is available after the concert.

Jewish Chronicles
songs, laughter, some tears... a songwriter’s   exploration of race, religion and identity.  "Daniel is winning hearts wherever he goes... fine musicianship ...his songs are really stories which keep audiences hooked"  The Jewish Chronicle

Handel      Solomon

Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music)
My Fair Lady
the musical based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion – one cold March night at Covent Garden market Henry Higgins, Professor of Phonetics, comes across Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl. He declares to his friend Colonel Pickering that in three months he could transform Eliza into a duchess ...

Oklahoma !
the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it focuses on cowboy Curly McLain's his romance with farm girl Laurey Williams.

From Dowland to Rammstein
16-man German a cappella group with a varied programme of musical styles from the 16th century to the present day.

Verdi       Falstaff
This new production for 2009 is directed by Richard Jones and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, the team which scored such a striking success with their 2007 collaboration on Verdi’s first Shakespearian opera, Macbeth.   Sung in Italian with English supertitles.

Tchaikovsky      Eugene Onegin
based on a verse-novel by Aleksandr Pushkin, this dramatic and lyrical opera set in St Petersburg's high society tells the story of wearily self-centred Onegin who comes to regret his off-hand rejection of Tatyana's love and his careless incitement of a fatal duel with his best friend Lensky.

Choral propaganda
music has been used as a tool for social change – workers' rights, women's rights, gay rights. The programme sings suffragette anthems, contemporary folk, 1930s socialist songs, gay Berlin cabaret ...

A Schubert song recital
in a comparatively short lifetime Schubert wrote over 600 songs, still regarded as some of the most expressive marriages of poetry asnd music ever created. Interpreting and recording these works has been a keystone in Ian Bostridge's career.

Handel       Giulio Cesare
A revival of the 2005 Festival production. David McVicar’s flamboyantly slick and sexy song-and-dance staging veers expertly between black comedy and heartbreaking tragedy.  Sung in Italian with English supertitles.

Caruso & the Quake
in 1906 the famous tenor Enrico Caruso was trapped in the San Francisco earthquake. He had to escape from his collapsing hotel room, cross a city swept by fire, then fight his way past the military onto the only ferry out of town. Beautiful storytelling and live opera  from Puccini, Rossini and Leoncavallo combine to reveal the heart behind a legend.

The music of Mozart
a workshop led by Stephen Gregson to inspire singers and help improve singing skills.  The music covered will include Mozart's Vespers, Kyrie and Te Deum.

Mozart      The Magic Flute
three Glyndebourne singers, accompanied by flute and piano, tell the fairytale opera in a special adaptation for young people about 6 to 11 years-old.

Puccini Opera Gala
selections from Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Turandot, La Bohème, Edgar, Gianni Schicchi and more ...

Sex & drugs & rock'n'roll
innovative choral music from new composers.

Bizet     Carmen
staged in a bull-ring and sung in French with English surtitles.

Verdi     Aïda
a spectacular opera production with the Chisinau National Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, sung in the original Italian with English surtitles.  Aïda is a compelling mixture of splendid chorus scenes and intimate, lyrical moments, telling a story of war, jealousy and revenge, centred around the fated love of the beautiful Ethiopian slave girl Aïda and the Egyptian hero Radames.

Rodgers & Hammerstein
Carousel
in this romantic fantasy musical ayoung mill worker Julie falls for Billy, a charismatic fairground barker. Naive and trusting Julie never stops loving Billy, even when he dies in a botched robbery. Given one chance to put things right by a heavenly gatekeeper, Billy returns to earth for one day to help his unhappy daughter and make amends for his past misdeeds. The music includes the songs June is bustin’ out all over, If I loved you and You'll never walk alone.

Puccini     Turandot
a fully-staged production performed by international soloists and the Chisinau National Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. The opera is sung in the original Italian with English surtitles. Turandot is the story of a cold-hearted princess surrounded by suitors facing death if they fail to answer her riddle correctly. But one man could melt the ice in her heart.

Bizet     Carmen
this colourful story of gypsy seduction and passionate tragedy will be staged in a bull-ring. The production will be sung in French with English surtitles, and performed with international soloists with the Chisinau National Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus.

Book & lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner
Music by Frederick Loewe
My Fair Lady
this evergreen musical, based on the satirical play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, tells the story of bachelor linguistics professor Henry Higgins' bet that he can turn a cockney flower-girl into an immaculately honed young lady of high social class.

Drop another hat
an evening with fascinating impersonations of Flanders & Swann, including performance of classic favourites The Income Tax Collector and The Hippopotamus.

Henry Purcell and the English Restoration
choral works by Purcell, John Blow and Matthew Locke. The concert features Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary.

A Night in Venice
a mini Glyndebourne

Madrigals
a choir of some 16 singers on an annual tour of the UK gives a concert focusing on the tradition of madrigal singing underpinning a wide and diverse repertoire.

Cabaret by Candlelight
a special event to celebrate the 10th anniversary year of the Henfield Festival of Arts

Saturday 13 June at 8 pm Dining Hall, Christ's Hospital, near Horsham tickets: 01403 247434

Bring a picnic to enjoy in the Quad from 7 pm.

Trills and Tiaras
a light concert to finish the season, featuring opera choruses & arias and popular concert encores.

Henry Purcell and the English Restoration
choral works by Purcell, John Blow and Matthew Locke. The concert features Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary.

Purcell       The Fairy Queen
A new production for 2009.  Purcell’s joyous response to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, incorporates of Shakespeare’s text into a fascinating carnival of music, theatre and dance.   It becomes a series of fantastical masques, culminating in a lavish wedding ceremony. The original production called for such staggering scenic effects that the cost of the sets and costumes almost bankrupted Purcell's theatre. Sung in English with supertitles.

another performance of this programme on 27 June in Lewes

Summer concert
including Will Todd's Mass in Blue and a medley of songs from the Last Night of the Proms - Sing Britannia

Sacred Hearts
Music by Josquin, Rore and Palestrina – featured in Sarah Dunant's novel Sacred Hearts.

Music Divine
music from the 17th to the 20th centuries – the progamme includes motets and madrigals by Byrd, Tomkins, Weelkes and Purcell, songs for chorus by Elgar and Moeran, Howells and Salter.

Sing Britannia
an evening in the style of Last Night of the Proms.

Concert
this world famous Welsh choir, 65 men strong, makes its first visit to Chichester Festivities. Famous for its best selling album The Voices of the Vallyes, the choir has also collaborated with Rolf Harris on a re-release of ‘Two Little Boys’.

Summer Concert
a chamber choir feast of choral favourites for a summer's evening, including Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise. Thjere is also a guest appearance by the winner of the 2008 West Sussex Young Musician Competition, Poppy Ewance (oboe).

Verdi     La Traviata
The opera is based on Alexandre Dumas' novel La Dame aux Camélias. When Parisian society courtesan Violetta Valéry breaks society's conventions for a life with Alfredo Germont their arrangement threatens to bring scandal on Alfredo's family and ruin the future of his sister. Alfredo's stern father, discovers that Violetta's love is truly noble, while Alfredo discovers too late the truth of her selfless sacrifice.  This is a revivalof Richard Eyre's acclaimed 1994 production, with Renée Fleming singing Violetta, and conducted by Antonio Pappano. 

Purcell and Handel
this year’s concert will salute two great composers, Purcell and Handel, marking both the 350th anniversary of Purcell’s birth and the 250th of Handel’s death.

Lunchtime recital

A celebration of youth
in this celebration of local musical talent, performed by forces more than 250 strong, the concert will feature choirs from West Sussex primary and secondary schools as well as instrumentalists from across the county.

Gilbert & Sullivan       Trial by jury
Is Edwin guilty of breach of contract?  The audience will be required to help the jury reach its decision.

Lunchtime song recital
Helen-Jane Howells, winner of the 2008 John Warner Memorial Award, sings a mixture of songs and arias by Handel, Poulenc, Coates, Puccini and others.

Music to celebrate anniversaries
included in the programme will be extracts from three of Purcell's masques - The Fairy Queen, Dido and Aeneas and King Arthur. Haydn will be represented by Part Songs and Mendelssohn by Hear my prayer, including the aria O, for the wings of a dove.

Haydn in London
Haydn's vocal compositions may contain coded messages of love!  Song and extracts from the composer's journals, diaries and letters uncover an amorous liaison with poetess Anne Hunter.

Mendelssohn      Elijah

Lunchtime recital
three tenors and piano

Dvořák       Rusalka
This new production for 2009 is directed by Melly Still and conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek. Partly inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s poignant fable The Little Mermaid, Dvořák’s operatic masterpiece tells of a water nymph who longs to become human in order to win the love of a handsome prince, only to find herself betrayed by him.  Sung in Czech with English supertitles.

a late evening performance of the Requiem together with other works by Mozart.

Lunchtime recital

Lunchtime concert

Opera in the afternoon
a fund-raising concert which includes a cream tea or strawberries & cream, together with cake stalls, plants & garden produce.

A programme of Handel and Mozart
Handel's famous Coronation Anthem Zadok the Priest is followed by Mozart's Divertimento for Strings. Commemorating the 250th year since Handel's death, the evening will end resplendently with Handel's Dixit Dominus for soloists, choir and orchestra.

Hot, hot, hot!
a fun-filled programme

Words and Music
the Etchingham Arts Festival presents a specially devised programme of A E Housman’s poetic collection A Shropshire Lad and various choral works performed by the Wadhurst Chorale.

Sumer is ycomen in
a programme of sacred and secular choral music from the 17th century to the present day.

Haydn      The Creation
in a special concert to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer's death, Haydn's oratorio is performed by a leading chamber choir with the period instrumental ensemble Counterpoint.

Chansons Cordiales
music by Mendelssohn, Schubert, Fauré, Hahn, Strauss, Brahms, Mozart, Handel, Donizetti, Bizet and Humperdinck

Singing Day
open to all singers - the singing day will focus on sacred choral works from Victoria to Tavener.  Music to be rehearsed starts with 16th century Victoria's Missa Laetatus Sum, and then contrasting works from the 19th and 20th centuries - Bruckner's Christus factus est, William Harris' Faire is the Heaven and John Tavener's Song for Athene.

Donizetti      L'elisir d'amore
true love, military swagger and a quack selling his "Elixir of Love"  all feature in this comedy opera, full of melody and heartfelt sentiment.   A concert performance.

Bernstein & Bock on Broadway
an evening of musical favourites including items from Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story.

The Producers
a musical-comedy based on the Mel Brooks 1968 film. the story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich by overselling interests in a Broadway flop. The result is an outrageous production called Springtime For Hitler which offends everyone, and so upsets no-one!

Donizetti       L'elisir d'amore
First staged in 2007, this production is directed by Annabel Arden and conducted by Maurizio Benini. Set in an idyllic vision of a Southern Italian village square, Donizetti’s delightful opera tells of the romantic rivalry between the penniless Nemorino and the swaggering Sergeant Belcore for the love of beautiful Adina. Can the travelling quack Dr Dulcamara  have just the potion to turn Adina's eyes in Nemorino's direction?    Sung in Italian with English supertitles.

Bernstein & Bock on Broadway
an evening of musical favourites including items from Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story.

Byrd      Mass for 4 voices

Wagner       Tristan und Isolde
A revival of the 2003 Festival production directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, and now conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. A classic
production of the composer’s ecstatic hymn to the consuming power of human love. “I don’t think I have ever witnessed a more perfect realisation of a Wagner opera than this superb Tristan und Isolde,” wrote The Daily Telegraph.   Sung in German with English supertitles.

this concert is the finale of  the Cranleigh Choral Week

Haydn      Little Organ Mass
and other music, during the Festival Service.