Longborough Festival Opera is a summer opera festival in the English Cotswolds village of Longborough in north Gloucestershire. It can trace its routes back to 1991 as a series of concerts in the home of founders property developer Martin Graham and his wife Elizabeth.[1][2] Although Martin Graham died in 2025, the organisation is still run by the family, with Elizabeth as director and trustee, her son Leo also a trustee, and her daughter Polly as artistic director.[3]
Longborough Festival Opera began as Banks Fee Opera, named after the Graham's family home. It soon moved from the main house to a temporary stage in the courtyard of the stable block, with productions supplied by Travelling Opera, a small touring opera company.[1]
The Grahams sold Banks Fee in the mid-1990s and moved to a house they'd built nearby.[2] In 1998 they started started their own productions, ending their relationship with the touring company and moving to a converted barn in the grounds of their new home.[4][5]
Longborough and Wagner
The Festival has cultivated a reputation for performing the works of Richard Wagner, mainly due to the interests of its founder, Martin Graham.[3][6] It has been suggested that the Longborough venue is modelled to look like Wagner's own opera house at Bayreuth[6] although Graham himself described it as 'just a big shed'.[7] The festival staged Wagner's Ring Cycle in 2013[8] and again in 2024.[9]
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