Opera Gala with Singing Salon

Review by Louise Dumas

19th October, 2025

Capitol Theatre, Horsham

Conductor: Steve Dummer
Leader: Rachel Ellis
Compere: Pippa Dames-Longworth

In collaboration with Singing Salon and featuring best loved opera excerpts, including:

• • Mozart: Magic Flute

  • Beethoven: Fidelio

  • Bizet: Carmen

  • Puccini: La Boheme

  • Dvorak: Rusalka

  • Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin

  • Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

  • Lehar: Merry Widow

It isn’t often that an orchestra shares the stage with an opera. Usually, they’re in the pit, under the feet of the singers, largely hidden from the audience and the cast. Only the conductor is visible to all.  But in a wonderful collaboration by the Horsham Symphony Orchestra with Pippa Dames-Longworth’s Singing Salon, we got both, in glorious  semi-staged costumes and full view. How rewarding to watch and listen to voices and instrumentalists, singing and playing together, even if it meant that conductor Steve  Dummer had to dance between them.

 The Opera Gala on Sunday afternoon at Horsham’s Capitol Theatre was the first time that the HSO had played operatic excerpts with singers on stage and I hope it won’t be the last. Singers and players shared the  great success of the afternoon on entirely equal terms,  all with the bounce, enthusiasm and sparkle that characterises the best of amateur performance.

Pippa Dames-Longworth created her informal group of fifteen singers twelve years ago, in order to enjoy  flexible performance with imaginative theatre.  Her Singing Salon has sung all over the place, on trains, in gardens and private houses with a repertoire ranging from baroque opera to  Victorian parlour song: reviews nationwide have been ecstatic. As an experienced and professional  mezzo soprano, Pippa is able to help serious singers develop their craft, and as a brilliantly creative director, she brings understanding to the  often strange stories involved.  Her introductions from the side of the stage, were  much more than the equivalent of surtitles as well as being  entertaining instruction in themselves.

A nod to tradition was the orchestra as soloist in The Magic Flute, and a real chance for the horns and wind section to shine  in the grand opening fanfare. Enter Ladies One, Two and Three in glorious harmony before the Queen of the Night tackles one of the toughest coloratura arias ever, wonderfully sung by Catherine Long. Papagena and Papageno pap papped together perfectly. Mir Ist so Wundebar, the richly melodic canon from Fidelio was beautifully rendered by Cath Bilton, Eleanor Harvie, Bob Ahern and Robin Smith. Helen Duxbury romped through Carmen’s Card Scene, followed by Jenn Eatwell and Jenny McCalmont sharing the joys and sorrows of Mimi. Charlie Woods, in fluent Russian, sang Lensky’s lament with poise and passion before Cath Bilton  carolled to the Moon with exquisite longing.  Katie Wright, Jenny McCalmont and Jenn Eatwell, each demonstrating a different colouring of the soprano voice, sang the Trio from  Der Rosenkavalier, explanation, if one were needed, why this has become one of the most beloved moments from Richard Strauss. Finally, and hilariously, almost everyone on stage including Robin Smith, Hazel Starns and Melanie Stephenson for excerpts from The Merry Widow, being very merry indeed.

Rachel Ellis led the orchestra with aplomb. The fifty or so strong ensemble acquitted themselves with distinction as usual and I hope they had as much fun as the singers and the audience. It was a magical afternoon. Was I the only one to feel my eyelids prickle at the nostalgia of Lehar’s final waltz tune?