West Green House is an 18th century country house at West Green in Hartley Wintney in the English county of Hampshire. It was sold on a 99-year lease by the National Trust and is now owned by Marylyn Abbott. The gardens have been developed and now rank in the top 50 gardens in England to visit. West Green House is now home to the critically acclaimed opera season which is held annually in July and August. The gardens are open to the public on certain days between Easter and mid September.[1] English Country House Opera
Country House Opera is a unique English summer tradition showcasing a spectacular garden as the background for good opera. Its format is said to have originated at the Sussex country house Glynbourne attracting elegantly evening attired patrons who stroll beside the lake and terraced gardens before the late afternoon performance. An interval picnic became de rigueur and this quirky mixture of a beautiful ambience for superlative singing was an instant success. Today the genre has grown in diverse directions from purpose built country opera houses to temporary stages set out in agricultural fields where enormous audiences picnic and listen. West Green House has taken the route of creating a garden and atmosphere of great beauty that is listed in England’s top 50. Blessed with a magical setting where a flowering walled garden acts as a vestibule to a covered Green Theatre and a classically inspired lake is surrounded by fanciful pavilions for dinner on summer evenings. It is an intimate setting where on cooler evenings the garden’s orangery, pavilions and conservatories become filled with tables, chairs and flowers for supper. Guests are invited to arrive before the performance to wander the gardens with the curtain rising at 7 pm. Supper is around 80 minutes later then as the long summer evening closes the garden illuminations begin to light up to call the audience back for the last act. The garden lighting show is a spectacular conclusion. Because the Green Theatre’s backdrop is the house whose façade looks like a set for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, the chosen repertoire tends to be baroque opera. The artistic advisers for West Green House Opera are the singer Yvonne Kenny and Tim Walker, general manager and artistic director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in conjunction with Richard Studer, the director of Opera Project productions and Jonathan Lyness, its conductor. Opera Project is the in-house opera company with guest opera companies performing regularly. Drottningholm Slottstheater, Sweden and New Chamber Opera, Oxford performed on 2008 and 2010 respectively. The producer of [West Green House Opera] is Marylyn Abbott, formerly the Marketing Manager of the Sydney Opera House and owner of West Green House gardens.