Offenbach at the Beach - Garsington Opera

Garsington Opera scores a first AND trumps Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach (next month's sensation at the Barbican).  Garsington Opera is doing Offenbach's La Périchole at home in Wormsley Park  this season, and also screening it live in Skegness at 745pm on 1st July, part of the Skegness arts festival. Quite a venture as this will be aimed at an audience completely new to opera. There will be pre-show music and street theatre performance before the screening, and a fireworks display afterwards. Families are encouraged to come along and do the country house opera experience with picnics on the beach.

Deckchairs provided for early arrivals! Fish and chips and ice cream cones instead of salmon and champagne! Swimsuits (or winter gear, if the weather's bad), but you could always turn up in tux and gown. Stilettos on the shingle!

 It's a good idea to choose this opera instead of Don Giovanni and Vivaldi's rare L'Olympiade, because La Périchole isn't something non-opera audiences will have preconceptions about. Besides, in this production by Jeremy Sams, it will be "a hugely fun and bubbly comedy which will be performed in English, is set in the 1940s in Cuba, follows the highs and lows of the heroine Périchole, an impoverished Peruvian street singer." 
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