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| Dinis Sousa conducts Royal Northern Sinfonia & massed forces from the North-East in Tippett’s A Child of our Time as part of The Glasshouse’s Share the Stage in 2024 |
On Sunday 8 November 2026 at The Glasshouse in Gateshead, Dinis Sousa conducts the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with soloists Benjamin Hulett, Sarah Connolly and Roderick Williams. They will be joined by hundreds of non-professional singers and instrumentalists from across the region. The concert is the third event in The Glasshouse’s Share the Stage series, which brings professional and non-professional musicians together to rehearse and perform major works.
Previous Share the Stage concerts included Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, in 2024, and Verdi’s Requiem. For The Dream of Gerontius the 300 performers on stage will include 290 passionate non-professionals between the ages of 23 and 85. Share the Stage is very much driven by Dinis Sousa’s ambition to bring professional and non-professional musicians together to perform major works on the same stage. Dinis Sousa comments:
“The Dream of Gerontius is an extraordinary piece of music to perform. It moves between moments that feel incredibly intimate and these huge, overwhelming passages where the orchestra, soloists and chorus come together with enormous power.
“That makes it a wonderful piece for Share the Stage. There is something very special about bringing hundreds of people together to make this music, with Royal Northern Sinfonia and our guest soloists performing alongside singers and instrumentalists from communities across the region. Everyone on that stage has a part to play in creating the performance, and I think the scale and energy of that will be incredible to experience in Sage One.”
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| Singers from the North-East in rehearsal for Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, 2026 |
On stage will be families, friends and musicians from different generations are coming together, alongside participants with very different musical experiences. Among those returning this year is 73-year-old Suzanne Shell from Morpeth, who rediscovered singing through Share the Stage in 2024 after more than 50 years away from serious singing.
Full details from The Glasshouse’s website.
