How it all began……..

Opera at Streatley Farmhouse very nearly didn’t happen at all.

Initially postponed due to the pandemic, a post-Covid booking mix-up meant the company which was supposed to pitch up and perform for one night in 2022 was going to be on the other side of the country.

In despair, the team turned to Goring soprano Stephanie Bodsworth, hoping she might be able to put them in touch with an alternative opera group. Stephanie had a better idea: she proposed staging an entire opera themselves. Within days she had recruited singers from some of the country’s finest opera houses and signed up colleague Martin Lamb as director.

Streatley Opera was born.

In an extraordinary stroke of luck, with just four months to put together an entire production, the team discovered that also living in Goring was an international opera designer, Ilka Weiss. She needed no encouragement to get on board and suddenly the opera had staging, lighting and costume design.

With the help of a band of local volunteers, a two-night run of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte went ahead as a headline act of the GAP Festival in June 2022.

The reception from the audience was overwhelming.

There was no question of the team not following up this success with another production at the next Festival in 2024, this time with Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and to cope with demand, performances ran over three nights.

Now preparing for their third production, the team continue to raise their standards striving to bring opera of the highest quality to the Goring Gap.