Garsington Manor
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Garsington Manor, in the village of Garsington, near Oxford, England, is a Tudor building, best known as the former home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Today, it is the setting for an annual summer opera season, the Garsington Opera.
The manor house was built on land once owned by the son of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and at one time had the name "Chaucers". Lady Ottoline and her husband, Philip Morrell, bought the manor house in 1914, at which time it was in a state of disrepair, having been in use as a farmhouse.
They completely restored it in the 1920s, creating landscaped Italian-style gardens. The parterre has 24 square beds with Irish yews at the corners; the Italian garden has a large ornamental pool enclosed by yew hedges and set about with statues; beyond, is a wild garden, with lime-tree avenues, shrubs, a stream and pond.
Garsington became a haven for the Morrells’ friends, including D.H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Lytton Strachey, Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell. In 1916, they invited conscientious objectors, including Clive Bell and other bloomsberries, to come and work on the home farm for the duration of World War I, to avoid prosecution. Aldous Huxley spent some time here before he wrote Crome Yellow. The Morrells moved out in 1928.
Opera at Garsington
In 1982 Leonard Ingrams and his wife Rosalind bought Garsington Manor and quickly realised the opportunities it offered for outdoor performance. In 1989 English Touring Opera performed Le nozze di Figaro there and in 1990 Garsington Opera was launched.
Beginning with the Cosi fan tutte and the British premiere of Haydn's Orlando paladino, the characteristic feature of the programming at Garsinngton has been the successful combination of well known operas with discoveries of little known works. These have included significant British premieres of Richard Strauss’s Die ägyptische Helena, Rossini’s La gazzetta, L'equivoco stravagante and the first British professional productions of Haydn’s La vera costanza, Richard Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae, Janácek’s Šárka and Tchaikovsky's Cherevichki.
The family became well-known for organizing this annual season of opera in the manor gardens, and also for letting the local Amateur Dramatics Society and the Church use the grounds. Leonard Ingrams died after a heart attack on 27 July 2005 at the age of 63. His surviving brother is Richard Ingrams, the founder of Private Eye.
As announced in November 2005, the Garsington Opera will continue following the appointment of Anthony Whitworth-Jones as General Director. Rosalind Ingrams (Leonard’s widow) has become President, her daughter Catherine Ingrams has joined the Board.
Anthony Whitworth-Jones was General Director of the Glyndebourne Opera Festival for from 1989 to 1998 and of the Dallas Opera from 2000 to 2002. As Whitworth-Jones noted upon taking over the company, “under Leonard Ingrams’ passionate leadership, (it) has established a reputation for musical excellence, the presentation of some fascinating operatic rarities and the promotion of young singers. I will try to uphold and develop this tradition”
The Theatre at Garsington Manor
Initially offering programmes in an adjacent barn, performances are now given in a purpose-built auditorium seating around five hundred, and the audience benefits from an exceptional natural acoustic with excellent sight-lines with the stage partly covered but open to the gardens behind.