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| David Butt Philip, Alison Langer, St Paul’s Opera chorus at the David Butt Philip & Friends gala in 2024 St Paul’s Church (Photo: Craig Fuller Photography) |
My local opera company, St Paul’s Opera will be welcoming tenor David Butt Philip back for the third year running for a fundraising gala, David Butt Philip and Friends at St Paul’s Church, Rectory Grove, SW4 0DZ on Friday 28 March 2025.
This year’s gala will featured soprano Alison Langer, mezzo-soprano Clare Presland and bass William Thomas alongside David Butt Philip, accompanied by Ed Batting and Nicholas Ansdell-Evans.
This year David Butt Philip’s performances include Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Met in New York, and Wagner’s Lohengrin in Vienna, but he will be performing in the UK on 5 April for Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in Huddersfield with Huddersfield Choral Society and the Orchestra of Opera North, conductor Martyn Brabbins [further details]. On 23 May he joins Mark Elder, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Alice Coote for Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde at the Barbican [further details]. And on 15 June there is a chance to get up close and personal as he and pianist James Baillieu are in recital at Wigmore Hall [further details].
Alison Langer returns as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata at Opera Holland Park this Summer have made such a memorable stir in the 2018 Young Artists Production [see my review] and she is also singing in the Royal Opera’s revival of its recent production of Bizet’s Carmen. Clare Presland was recently singing in the premiere performances of Mark Antony Turnage’s Festen at the Royal Opera. She too is getting up close and personal, joining tenor Nicky Spence and pianist Andrew Matthews-Owen at Wigmore Hall on 20 June [further details] and in August she will be in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Japan. William Thomas has been singing Colline in Puccini’s La Boheme at the Bavarian State Opera and will be in Bach’s St John Passion at Carnegie Hall, New York next month.
Last year, the gala featured arias and duets from operas by Bizet, Gounod, Mozart, Verdi, Beethoven, Korngold and Puccini, and from music theatre works by Bernstein and Rogers & Hamerstein, [see my article] so we are going to be for a treat this year.
St Paul’s Opera’s Summer performance this year will be Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore from 3 to 5 July 2025
Full detail from the St Paul’s Opera website.
