Grimeborn Opera Festival continues to rip up the rulebook and create something radically new

“Take any opera-related stereotypes you might have and bin them”

— Time Out

Returning for its nineteenth year, Grimeborn Opera Festival continues to rip up the rulebook and create something radically new.

This season presents powerful new operas exploring the climate crisis, social injustice and women’s perspectives, alongside reimagined classics including Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto. The result is a programme as captivating, provocative and alive as the modern world it reflects.

Grimeborn 2026 embraces opera as a living, evolving art form – where daring stories, urgent questions and bold reinventions unfold across intimate stages.

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Programme:

• After My Breath / Eden 2.0: A Double Bill
  Composed by Lisa Logan / William Gardner

• Così fan tutte?!
  Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Murder Games: A Double Bill
  Music by Madeleine Dring / Ned Rorem

• Erwartung / The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K: A Double Bill
  Music by Arnold Schoenberg / Kevin Rodgers

• Lowest of the Low
  Music by Tuluğ Tırpan / Based on the book Ganz Unten by Günter Wallraff

• Dido and Aeneas
  Music by Henry Purcell

• Rinaldo
  Music by George Frideric Handel

• Bitter Visions: By Order of Hildegard
  By Hildegard von Bingen and Florence Carruthers Andrews

• The Magic Flute
  By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Giulio Cesare in Egitto
  Music by George Frideric Handel