Benjamin Britten News

The 21st annual Summer Festival of Sacred Music at St. Bartholomew's Church continues on Sunday, August 30, at 11 am with Malcolm Archer's 'Christchurch' Mass sung by St. Bartholomew's Boy and Girl Choristers, who will also sing works by Mark Blatchly and John Dankworth.

Brooklyn Art Song Society launces into its sixth season with part one of Britannica, its ambitious six-concert survey of British song.

The Columbia Festival of the Arts is pleased to announce its 2015 Fall Festival, featuring a diverse array of arts events centered around the Fall Festival's theme: British Invasion. The British Invasion Festival will be presented October 2nd through 4th, during which time twelve events will be offered in multiple venues throughout Columbia.

The Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival is delighted to announce that it has just received one of the largest awards to an arts festival this year, £300,000 from the UK-based T.S. Eliot Trust. This major new funding over three years secures the Festival's future for Enniskillen and Northern Ireland.

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2015, under the leadership of General Manager Bernard Foccroulle, will present world premiere productions of operas by Handel and Mozart; the return of director Robert Carsen's acclaimed 1991 Festival production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream; and the French premiere of Jonathan Dove's children's opera, The Monster in the Maze, led by Sir Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra. Major vocal presentations in 2015 will also include a new production of Serbian composer Ana Sokolovi?'s uncommonly original one-act a cappella opera Svadba (Marriage), and a double bill of Persephone-Stravinsky's hybrid musical work for speaker, singers, dancers, and orchestra-with Tchaikovsky's last opera, Iolanta.

Devoted to kids and families since 1995, The New Victory Theater embarks on its 20th Anniversary season as New York's premier destination for inventive, inspiring and international performing arts at affordable prices. Among its roster of 16 shows in the 2015-16 season, which begins October 2, 2015 and runs through May 22, 2016, The New Victory is thrilled to bring five American works of theater to New York's family audiences.

The second program of the Royal Ballet of England's return to New York City after an 11-year hiatus – and the first appearance of the company at the Koch Theatre in Lincoln Center – was an ambitious but not entirely successful presentation of works by British choreographers. The greatest failing was not onstage but in the Playbill. No notes at all were included to help the audience appreciate the ballets and the music in a historical context. While I applaud the company as well as the presenting Joyce Theater Foundation for eschewing the standard story ballets in favor of repertory fare, I am at a loss to figure out why the dancegoers were not given any information other than titles, credits, and casting. On the afternoon of June 27th when I was there, I overheard many people during pauses and intermissions commenting that a little assistance in comprehending the inspiration and intent of the choreographers would have been appreciated.

The School of American Ballet's Workshop Performance Benefit 2015 on Tuesday, June 2, 2015 raised more than $890,000 for scholarships and school programs. The evening began with cocktails at 5:30pm in Juilliard's Morse Hall, followed by the performance at 7pm in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Lincoln Center, and concluded with a seated dinner at 9pm at the Mandarin Oriental. The evening celebrated the legendary Rudolf Nureyev and commemorated the 20th Anniversary of the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Scholarship.

Tonight, June 5 and June 6, 12, & 13 at 7:30pm, Utopia Opera presents Richard Strauss' ground-breaking and thrilling Ariadne auf Naxos in a staged production performed with an 18-piece orchestra at the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall at Hunter College (695 Park Avenue). Utopia founder and artistic director,William Remmers, conducts while the acclaimed Benjamin Spierman (Indianapolis Opera, Dayton Opera, St. Petersburg Opera, Bronx Opera) directs; costume stylings are by Eric Lamp. 18-piece orchestral reduction by Christopher Fecteau.

The UK premiere of MARTYR by Marius von Maybenburg will be directed by Ramin Gray at the Unicorn Theatre, September 16 to October 10. Press Night September 17, 2015. Actors Touring Company teams with Unicorn to present von Mayenburg's study of religious radicalisation in the classroom. 

The School of American Ballet announces the Workshop Performance Benefit 2015 tonight, June 2, 2015.

SAB's annual Workshop performances have been a treasured staple on NYC dance lovers' calendars ever since 1965 when the legendary Alexandra Danilova, then a faculty member, initiated the iconic spring ritual. The event is not a graduation ceremony, but rather a tantalizing glimpse of what the future of dance may hold. This year, not only the school's most promising advanced students but also a group of prodigiously talented nine to 14-year-olds took the stage in fully costumed performances of excerpts from the New York City Ballet repertory, danced to live orchestral accompaniment.

On June 5, 6, 12, & 13 at 7:30pm, Utopia Opera presents Richard Strauss' ground-breaking and thrilling Ariadne auf Naxos in a staged production performed with an 18-piece orchestra at the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall at Hunter College (695 Park Avenue). Utopia founder and artistic director,William Remmers, conducts while the acclaimed Benjamin Spierman (Indianapolis Opera, Dayton Opera, St. Petersburg Opera, Bronx Opera) directs; costume stylings are by Eric Lamp. 18-piece orchestral reduction by Christopher Fecteau.

The Who gets classical!

The School of American Ballet announces the Workshop Performance Benefit 2015 on Tuesday, June 2, 2015. The evening begins with cocktails at 5:30pm in Juilliard's Morse Hall, followed by the performance at 7pm in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Lincoln Center. A seated dinner at 9pm at the Mandarin Oriental will conclude the evening. For more information, please contact the special events office at SAB at

(Annapolis, MD – May 15, 2015) Season tickets for new and renewing subscribers are now on sale for the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra's (ASO) 2015-16 Season.  The programs chosen by Music Director José-Luis Novo feature a stellar group of guest soloists and an intriguing selection of symphonic showpieces.

(Boston, MA) – Odyssey Opera, a Boston-­based opera company dedicated to exploring the full spectrum of adventurous repertoire, today announced THE BRITISH INVASION, a month-­??long opera festival of fully-­staged productions of works by English composers. From May 17-­June 20, Boston opera lovers will have the unique opportunity to choose from four evening-­length programs encompassing nine diverse operatic works, including the Boston premiere of Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love, a double bill of Walton's The Bear and Sullivan's The Zoo, five compelling monodramas, and Adès's masterpiece of modern cultural commentary, Powder Her Face. (See below for complete program details.)