The Magic Flute, Garsington Opera, Wormsley; Tristan und Isolde, Grange Park ...

A temporary theatre, a greenfield site, a wealthy audience – sound familiar? Richard Wagner created the template in northern Bavaria nearly 150 years ago, and it flourishes today in southern England.

Glyndebourne, Garsington, Grange Park, Longborough – all these purveyors of unsubsidised opera to the rich began as the eccentric vision of one person, who had the drive to persuade others to pay for it. English country house opera might not have the philosophical creed underpinning Bayreuth – it is too hedonistic for that – but it shares other characteristics. It unites art with the landscape of nature, it behaves like a socially exclusive club – and it thrives on long dinner intervals.

Like Bayreuth, country house opera invariably starts out in a temporary structure that becomes permanent. The latest to take the leap is Garsington Opera, which last week unveiled its new theatre at Wormsley, the Getty family estate in Buckinghamshire. The structure – a pagoda-style pavilion seating 600, with spacious stage, lively acoustics and airy wings – is collapsible, and will be removed at the end of the season. But it feels permanent and provides a more spectacular focus for the landscape at Wormsley than the existing cricket pitch and artificial lake.

Garsington, founded 22 years ago by the late Leonard Ingrams at his Oxfordshire manor, has signed a 15-year agreement with Mark Getty and is paying a commercial rent, so this is no rich man’s indulgence. Where kings and queens in centuries past spent extravagantly to sustain a court opera, Getty has been gifted one on his doorstep, from which he will derive not just kudos but a steady income.

Garsington wins, too. The manicured splendour of Wormsley’s secluded grounds is, against expectations, even more amenable than Ingrams’ home, and much more spacious. Robin Snell, an alumnus of the Glyndebourne rebuild 20 years ago, has created a timber, steel and sail auditorium that seems to float in the wooded landscape surrounding it. Despite the hostile economic climate, Garsington raised £3.5m to fund it – an amazing achievement, given that about the same amount needs to be found each summer for the company’s running costs.

Artistically, it is business as usual, and the overriding impression left by Thursday’s performance of The Magic Flute is that Garsington will have to raise its game to suit its new home. It was a wise decision to perform in English an opera that Mozart intended for vernacular consumption but Olivia Fuchs’s humour-free, panto-style staging was focused more on designer diversions – an umbrella motif, a punk Papageno, a hippy-style commune of sun worshippers – than providing a coherent vision.

Alright, I'm Wrong: An Opportunity To Support Children And Poetry

My name is Andrew Lapham Fersch. I'm a teacher. I love poetry. I love working with young people. These days, with budgets so tight, it can be very difficult as a school system to bring in writers to help inspire the students. As a teacher, it has been my goal to inspire students in the classroom, as a young reader, it was Shel Silverstein who inspired me to become a writer. Now I'd like to do it on a larger scale. I'm working on my first full length book of poetry (tentatively titled, 'The Rough Draft of My Life Story'). I am working with Phil Ashworth, a professional (and spectacular) illustrator to create a 96 page (80 poem) book of poetry. This book will then be delivered, at no cost, to every public elementary school in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine (all 971 of them). At this point, I will offer writer's workshops at an extremely affordable rate (travel costs and time). I've included some poems below for your reading enjoyment, and there are some preliminary sketches for the poems above. If you'd like to support the project, you can do so by sending your donation, in the form of check or money order, to; Andrew Lapham Fersch, PO Box 738, Epping, NH 03042-0738 . Every penny goes to the project. If you donate $50 or more, you get a free signed copy of the book when it's published as well.

New England families, genealogical and memorial, a record of the achievements of her people in the making of commonwealths and the founding of a nation

History of Concord, New Hampshire, from the original grant in seventeen hundred and twenty-five to the opening of the twentieth century

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Atlantic reporter