Fête Galante and Façade Entertainments

Wits’ End Productions pair Ethel Smyth’s chamber opera with William Walton and Edith Sitwell’s modernist entertainment, accompanied by a live chamber orchestra.

Smyth’s Fête Galante follows Commedia dell’Arte characters through love, jealousy and mistaken identity, with a dark turn. Façade combines Walton’s music with Sitwell’s experimental poetry. Walter Hall directs and Gloria Gamboz conducts. Henry Grant Kerswell, Emma Roberts, Robert Forrest, Rosalind Dobson and Ethan Jacobs lead the opera; Felix Kemp sings Pierrot on 5–6 November and James Geidt on 7 November. Adrian Dannatt and Catherine Coldstream narrate Façade. The current full chorus and chamber-orchestra bill is retained in research evidence; no runtime is published.