This exhibition surveys paintings on both sides of the Channel, revealing connections and allowing comparisons. It will offer a rare opportunity to consider whether British artists were merely following French innovations or were producing work that was more suited to contemporary British interests and values. One of the major trends in the practice of painting in this period was artists' investigations into the representation of light. New developments in the materials and implements the artist used and the way they could transport them allowed them to develop new approaches and techniques.
The English actor and humorist Stephen Fry translated the German libretto into colloquial English and supplied pertinent new dialogue. The cast is attractive. Young characters are played by young singers. Branagh has a deft touch with Mozartean contrasts between magic and realism. Half fairy tale, half war drama, visually, this "Flute" is exuberant.’
Kenneth Branagh’s film of The Magic Flute has been signed by Regent Releasing for screening in the United States. The film, which was funded by the PMF, to bring opera to new audiences, received its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2006, and its UK premiere in November 2007.

Details of the US premiere will be posted on Regent Releasing's web site.

The Los Angeles Times

‘Branagh's "Flute" is a joy. Nothing about the production is marginal. Branagh's "Flute" fascinatingly re-imagines Mozart's opera. All the music is intact and excellently conducted by James Conlon, music director of Los Angeles Opera.
Outside In aims to provide a platform for artists who find it difficult to access the art world either because of mental health issues, disability, health or social circumstance.

Artists living in Central England will have the opportunity to have their work selected for an exhibition at Compton Verney, Warwickshire from March - December 2013. They are invited to submit works via the Outside In website for entry into the open art competition. It will be considered for possible inclusion in the Outside In: National exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester opening in October 2012, and for the exhibition at Compton Verney. The successful artists will then select pieces from Compton Verney's Folk Art collection to sit alongside their own work.
Janet Baker sang the title role in Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea with Sadler's Wells Opera (now English National Opera) in 1971. A BBC broadcast forms the basis for this recording.
The Guardian
‘... this is one of the most intelligent performances of the role in sound, revealing layers of calculation and cruelty beneath the woman's surface sensuality.’
Building on its 10 year history of making large scale opera projects happen for, by and with children, EPOC are going to celebrate the London Olympics 2012 by creating, performing and recording the biggest children’s opera ever known. In collaboration with teams of composers, singers, musicians, percussionists and choreographers, EPOC will work with 216 schools – one for every Olympic nation - to create scenes, songs and films to be part of a professional London tour in the summer of 2012.

This enormous project encapsulates education, an opera tour of a brand new opera by Pete Churchill and an online world music resource garnered from the work undertaken which will have information, classroom activities and a world song bank. This will be a permanent resource which will be expanded over time.
The art works in the exhibition have been chosen to represent six principal landscape types, and these themes are explored through a combination of oils, drawings and prints, many not previously exhibited, that show how the artist developed and orchestrated them. Although Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) sold relatively few of his landscape paintings he regarded them as his most important work. When not occupied with his lucrative portrait business the artist devoted much of his time to the creation of landscapes ‘of his own Brain’ (as he termed them).

The Daily Telegraph
(This) 'delightful exhibition of Gainsborough’s landscapes can hardly be called comprehensive. Yet with only seven paintings grouped with related drawings and prints, it deftly traces Gainsborough’s stylistic development from the early years in Suffolk to the last decade of his life.'
It features 54 paintings and drawings from artists including Vanessa Bell, Eugene Boudin, Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Walter Sickert, Alfred Sisley, Alexander Stanhope Forbes and Philip Wilson Steer.
Dame Janet Baker, who can be heard on six Chandos Opera in English recordings, received the Lifetime Achievement award to ‘celebrate her rich contribution to musical life across many decades.'

Pianist Graham Johnson pays tribute to a great and dignified artist:
‘There are certain qualities about Dame Janet Baker that are very special, aside from the fact that she has a sovereign voice, a voice that is instantly recognisable from the first note she utters. That is always necessary for a great singer. Sometimes it takes two lines to identify a singer. With Janet it takes two seconds. She was an extraordinary oratorio singer, an extraordinary Bach singer... Then, in Julius Caesar for example, she was capable of thrilling people with her coloratura. It’s a sheer gift. Nothing can make that particular colour, that excitement in the voice which was able to so beautifully express wounded pride or a glowing conviction or anger.... what I loved about her was that she always trusted the greatness of the music she was making to have its due effect when she, as its plenipotentiary and advocate on this earth, did her best by the composer.’
The Sunday Telegraph
'Taken from a 1981 BBC tape, this is a fine example of ENO at one of its peaks, with the orchestra playing with passion and precision for Mark Elder and a cast of fine singers using Hugh Macdonald's excellent translation.'
The Guardian
'The dramatic tautness that was such a feature of the live event comes across vividly on disc. It's one of Donizetti's most economical scores, its mood sombre and threatening, and Elder and the period instruments of the OAE bring out all the dark tints in the scoring. The wonderfully secure soprano Krassimira Stoyanova is the conflicted heroine, with the tenor José Bros as her former lover Chalais and Christopher Purves as her husband Chevreuse'
Hudson's Heritage Industry Awards were designed to recognise business and creative achievements in the UK leisure heritage industry and help to further promote the UK tourism industry. the judging panel comprised four experts from the worlds of heritage, tourism and architecture:
Norman Hudson OBE, Simon Foster, Lucinda Lambton and Jeremy Musson.
Compton Verney won the Best Art Collection/Gallery category.
The Gramophone Classical Music Awards

The winners were unveiled on October 6, 2011 at London's Dorchester Hotel and Opera Rara won the Opera category with Rossini's Ermione. Rossini knew the work was a masterpiece, “I fear the subject matter may be too tragic", he said.

'The 19th century’s finest operatic treatment of a subject drawn from Greek tragedy' was how Richard Osborne for Gramophone assessed this 'nascent masterpiece', which was not performed after 1819 until the Pesaro Festival’s revival of 1987 – 'one of the unsolved mysteries of operatic history'.

This recording 'runs at white heat whenever Colin Lee’s Orestes is on stage. His cousin Pilade is sung with a comparable mastery of the rhetoric of the role by Bülent Bezdüz, a model of comprimario playing.' And Carmen Giannattasio in the title-role is 'the mistress of every phrase'.
Gramophone
Editor's Choice - August 2011
'Mark Elder's conducting is punchy and delicate by turns, the chorus and orchestra responding to his vigilant control of dynamics... The best performance comes from Alessandro Corbelli, in a part that could have been written for him. Ludovic Tezier spins a beautiful proto-Verdian line as Linda's father, and Balint Szabo is his equal ... As a whole the performance does the composer proud.'
Handel's Julius Caesar from the Chandos Opera in English label was recommended as the CD of choice. Recorded in Abbey Road Studios, London in 1984, it followed a production at the English National Opera conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras with Dame Janet Baker and Valerie Masterton and a supporting cast of English singers.

BBC Music Magazine

'... this version still stands as one of the great Handelian events of our time. Not the least important reason is the late Brian Trowell's translation, a model of its kind, which avoids the awkwardness and the bizarre conventions that still rage in this, the least sophisticated branch of the operatic art... Everything seems to revolve around Janet Baker's glorious singing.'
Gainsborough’s River Landscape
Renoir's St Tropez
PMF Scholar John Daszak makes his Metropolitan Opera debut as Captain Vere in Britten's Billy Budd in May 2012.

A former member of English National Opera, he has performed frequently with the major UK opera companies, including the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival and Welsh National Opera.  Recently he has had debuts at Vienna’s Staatsoper, Frankfurt and Hamburg Operas, Opéra National de Paris, La Scala Milan, Valencia’s Palau de les Arts, the Bregenz Festival and at Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

Frankfurter Allgemeine

'John Daszak has a flexible, beautiful voice combined with most intelligent, effortless characterisation.'
4 February 2012