Grimeborn 2025

Green Opera, the award-winning sustainable opera company and arts charity, returns to the Grimeborn Opera Festival with TESTAMENT—a bold and thought-provoking journey through four centuries of vocal music. This immersive performance explores humanity’s evolving relationship with nature, blending timeless masterpieces with modern revelations. The evening features dramatic stagings of Monteverdi’s gripping Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, Janáček’s emotionally charged The Diary of One Who Disappeared, and the long-awaited theatrical premieres of Libby Larsen’s Try Me, Good King and Thomas Weelkes’ The Nightingale. With sustainability at its core, Green Opera continues to redefine opera for a new era—where art and

Adina is beautiful, popular and doesn't believe in true love. Nemorino is geeky, shy and in love with Adina - and with buses. When Dulcamara turns up selling the latest social media craze - The Love Effect fragrance - Nemorino thinks his dreams have come true and Adina might finally fall for him. But will his dreams go awry when her usual type, the good-looking, arrogant Belcore shows up? Follow our characters’ entangled love story in this bold contemporary re-imagining of The Elixir of Love story for London life today. Baseless Fabric return to Grimeborn following 2022's Carmen (★★★★ Evening

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me." Arcola Theatre and Green Opera proudly present John Joubert’s Jane Eyre—his final opera, now fully staged for the first time. First heard in concert with the English Symphony Orchestra under Kenneth Woods, this bold adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel follows one woman’s fight for freedom and fulfilment on her own terms. Facing adversity, injustice, and a shattering betrayal, Jane’s journey unfolds through a dynamic cast of young performers, directed by Eleanor Burke. As Green Opera’s second production of the season and fifth for the Grimeborn Opera Festival, Jane Eyre continues the

Tristan und Isolde: the opera that changed music forever. A forbidden love, a deep betrayal, a wound that never heals - these are the operatic ingredients that Wagner alchemically reforged into a music drama of sublime beauty and painful intensity. Staged with the audience on three sides, this stripped back, up close, and personal view of the piece will shed light on Wagner’s idea of the impossibility of living according to our desires, charting the lovers’ inexorable musical and dramatic course to Isolde’s final Liebestod, perhaps the single most iconic moment in any of Wagner’s operas. With a brand new

Have you ever wondered how singers unlock the drama in opera and bring the music to life? Step behind the curtain and join us on the set of Tristan und Isolde, part of this year's Grimeborn Opera Festival. In this special masterclass, emerging artists Robin Whitehouse and Becca Marriott, who are covering the roles of Tristan and Isolde, will delve into key scenes from Wagner’s masterpiece under the guidance of an experienced Wagnerian musical director. This is a rare opportunity to witness the dramatic and musical transformation from score to stage. Whether you're a seasoned opera lover or brand new

If ever a novel were screaming for a musical adaptation, Sense & Sensibility is the one. After 2024’s sold out run, Sense & Sensibility: The Musical comes to you in a new, intimate chamber setting, featuring outstanding international singer-actors from the UK premiere cast. Set against the stoic and judgemental values of Regency-era England, the Dashwood sisters experience the world very differently. Elinor, patient and thoughtful, upholds the values of society, yet yearns to express her true feelings. Marianne, young and passionate, dives head-first into romance without a thought for her reputation. With its soaring musical score and sensitive lyrics

After last season's 5-star production of Le Nozze di Figaro, Ensemble OrQuesta returns to Grimeborn with the second opera of the Da Ponte trilogy, featuring one of the most iconic lines in opera: Don Giovanni! Come enjoy another unique minimalist production by Marcio da Silva, performed by the Ensemble OrQuesta company with the orchestral accompaniment by the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra Ensemble.

Catholicism and the appeal of dictatorship are never far from the surface in Puccini’s Tosca. Can revolution or religion change human nature? Can art be the agent of either, or does it merely passively record the process? Becoming Tosca, a unique and innovative lyric drama, relocates the action to an unspecific Latin American setting in the second half of the 20th century; a nation founded on Jesuit colonisation, where religion now jostles with the politics of capitalism and self-interest. It is a society dominated by the struggle to exchange poverty for influence, still seeking solutions to all-pervasive inequalities and oppressions.

Following last year’s sell-out success of La Traviata, Barefoot Opera return to Grimeborn Festival bringing their unique blend of ensemble storytelling and physical theatre to Donizetti's classic gothic opera Lucia di Lammermoor. The fragility of mental health and the subjugation of a woman are at the very heart of this drama. Our heroine, Lucia, does all she can to break free from the tyranny of her older brother. She attempts to make her voice heard in a male-dominated world but the betrayal of the only man she trusts, her lover Edgardo, finally pushes her over the edge. Beren Fidan, last