On 28 June, the world premiere of The Four Seasons: The Opera will be performed at Prior Park Chapel. Composer Richard Mainwaring and Lucis Choir conductor Francis Faux tell us about the reworking of the much-loved classic concerto…
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) has remained one of the world’s most recognised pieces of classical music since its debut performance in 1725. The string concerto has been pulled, prodded at and reworked countless times, reappropriated for adverts, jingles and soundtracks. It’s so well loved that Nigel Kennedy’s 1989 recording became one of the bestselling classical recordings ever, spending a record 80 weeks in the pop charts.
It’s perhaps surprising, then, with all its reworkings, that on 28 June, at Prior Park Chapel, The Four Seasons will be performed, for the first time ever, reimagined into one of the most classic and respected musical forms, opera.
Composed by Richard Mainwaring, performed by Lucis Choir and the Bristol Ensemble and conducted by Francis Faux, The Four Seasons opera takes the original, ever-recognisable music of Vivaldi and reworks it to tell a new story of love, foreboding and finally, tragedy.
Richard Mainwaring first conceptualised the idea of an operatic rewriting about 15 years ago. “It came completely out of the blue.
I realised: ‘Nobody’s done this as an opera.’ And so I slowly started to develop it, but then I worked out that this year is the tercentenary of the original publication. I thought, ‘This has to happen now.’ ”
Despite the 300-year lapse since the original publication, this reworking promises to be faithful to its Baroque roots. “This is ‘What if Vivaldi had written The Four Seasons as an opera?’” Richard says. “The whole thing is almost a historical timepiece. Vivaldi also wrote poems for each of these movements, so it’s not just a series of melodies; it all has a very specific narrative to it. Working with the brilliant writer Jo Yeaxlee-Batch, we’ve extended the idea of Vivaldi’s original poems and taken the arc of the story from spring all the way across to winter.”
Conductor Francis Faux explains how the narrative is written into this new version: “It’s almost akin to your jukebox musicals in the West End, where the plot gets put into the greatest hits of Queen or ABBA, and a narrative gets woven into music.”
The narrative follows two ill-fated lovers who are warned of their fate by Mother Nature. The couple, whose respective gods tell them that they are not supposed to meet, fall in love in spring. They ignore the teachings of their gods, and Mother Nature sends a warning through summer storms. Yet again, they ignore the warnings, and the couple get married and bear a child in autumn. After ignoring the signs of nature – and of climate change, as a poignant reference to today’s alarmingly changing seasonal rhythms – the story ends in tragedy, and the couple perish in the winter.
“The choir act, at times, like a Greek chorus, in that it’s commenting all the time, warning the couple and the audience” says Richard. “They say, if you don’t change your attitude to Mother Nature, if you don’t respect the climate, it’ll end in tragedy.”
“The original is more like episodic pieces about the seasons, based on short poems. Whereas here we’ve got a narrative, a sort of Romeo & Juliet style, but with a clear climate message coming through.”
Though the reimagining seemed obvious given the storytelling, theatrical nature of Vivaldi’s composition, the writing hasn’t been a smooth process. “One of the toughest things the choir found during rehearsals were articulating the words clearly,” Francis explains. “In Summer, for example, there are a lot of words per bar. So we needed to do justice to those words and make sure they’re really crisp. So not only is the music coming through, but the imagery too.
While the opera’s debut isn’t a staged performance (this is in the works for 2026), the performative and comedic elements naturally come through in the music.
“It isn’t all doom and gloom!”, says Richard. “The story is a tragedy, but there are some beautiful, quieter movements among the drama. The third movement of autumn is the wedding scene, and the wedding guests all get drunk – the original music sounds so much like a drinking song. So there’s a little bit of comedy in there as well. Our fantastic guest soloists won’t just stand there with a book in front of them – they will act it out!!”
The Prior Park venue is a fitting setting for this world-premier performance, says Richard. “I recently discovered that 1725, the year that Vivaldi published The Four Seasons, is the same year that John Wood the Elder returned to Bath. He started designing new plans for the city, including the beautiful building of Prior Park. So that’s a lovely link.”
The world premiere of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: The Opera will be performed at Prior Park Chapel and Grounds on Saturday 28 June. Gates open at 5.30pm, performance at 7.30pm. Tickets £35, including prosecco reception. bathboxoffice.org.uk