4th January 2007

From the Conductor of StoweOpera, Robert Secret

To the audience of Stowe Opera,

I regret to have to say that there will be no Stowe Opera again at Stowe this summer. The Headmaster, Dr A K Wallersteiner, feels that work taking place on the interior of the new boarding house might be audible in the Roxburgh Theatre and that this noise could be intrusive and would thus reflect badly on the school. As there are plans to start building another boarding house even closer to the theatre this could mean no more Stowe Opera at Stowe School until 2010. Dr Wallersteiner is a supporter of Stowe Opera and, having come to Hansel and Gretel shortly after his arrival at Stowe, he agreed to be a trustee of The Stowe Opera Development Trust.

I wrote to Stowe early in the summer last year giving the dates on which we intended to perform in 2007 but did not hear about this objection until October. (Many of you who have given me your email addresses will know that I took a straw poll on the possibility of performing Handel’s Rinaldo). I offered to make it clear in our publicity that there was a chance of noise during our performances but that was not considered acceptable by the school. I went on to explore the possibility of hiring a performance marquee and putting it in the Landscape Gardens close to The Queen’s Temple and did talk about this to The National Trust at Stowe.  However the idea became academic once I discovered that finding the right sort of marquee acoustically plus seating, staging and so on, I was looking at a cost of over £30,000 – it might just have been feasible to have tried to raise the money starting in June but not in October.

I have the most wonderful team of Stage Director, Designer, stage crew and music staff around me, a truly fantastic group of singers to draw upon, superb players in the orchestra and surely the most wonderful and friendly audience ever. Thank you for your continued support and any thoughts or ideas about our future will be received with gratitude.

Robert Secret

Sadly, we are once again unable to present an operatice season for 2008.

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Dates for your 2008 diary:
The Buckingham Summer Festival will take place from 5th - 12th July 2008. The final concert on July 12th will be given by the Orchestra of Stowe Opera, conducted by Robert Secret, and includes the Beethoven: Violin Concerto and Symphony No. 5