Longborough Festival Opera

Longborough Festival Opera (LFO), a now internationally-recognised summer opera festival with wide-reaching education programmes, has a remarkable story with humble beginnings. Set in the quintessentially English Cotswolds, and sharing the same county as the country residence of HM King Charles III, it was founded by a man who had no formal musical education, who listened to Beethoven while working on a building site. It has grown into an established opera company, with a summer festival in a purpose-built theatre which has its own humble beginnings – as an agricultural chicken shed.

Longborough punches well above its weight, achieving many times over what others have not even attempted: in 2013, a full-scale production of Wagner's Ring Cycle established the Festival as a destination for Wagnerians in the UK and abroad, becoming the first ever (and as yet the only) UK festival to stage a full Ring Cycle. A new Ring culminated in another full cycle in 2024, thus also racking up the extraordinary achievement of having produced two new productions of this epic work in just over a decade.

The world’s leading magazine about opera, Opera Magazine, said of the Longborough Ring Cycle (August 2024): "No other "country house" opera company has risen to such a challenge, not even Glyndebourne… the stamina, the superb diction, the focused musicianship: all of these served as a model of the best this daring, innovative Ring cycle could produce."

Our new strategy to 2030 is heavily influenced by some of the themes that we see in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: learning, love, craftsmanship, community music-making, midsummer feast-days and philosophy of art. We will produce this opera for the first time in 2027, our 30th anniversary year of opera-making in this theatre. It also cements our historic connection with the work of Richard Wagner, taking inspiration from the composer which inspired the Festival in the first place.

Our vision is to be recognised as a bold, audacious company essential to the UK’s opera landscape, rooted in our community and our environment, fostering the best of British Wagnerian talent and the next generation of artists and audiences through its innovative festival and education programmes.

Strategic Goals:

1. To be recognised as a centre of excellence for learning and apprenticeship in all areas of our work and to be renowned as the birthplace of British Wagnerian artists.

2. To present a bold, varied annual summer festival rooted in the ambitious spirit of its founders, delivering a singular, unique experience for artists and audiences.

3. To invest in the sustainable development of our theatre and our site for the benefit of future generations of art-lovers.

4. To be a trusted neighbour and partner, embedded in our local community with wide-reaching local, national and international links, offering valuable and diverse interactions with people of all ages and backgrounds.