Glyndebourne wins the RPS Opera and Music Theatre Award for Uprising

Glyndebourne’s community opera uprising has won the Rps Opera and Music Theatre Award

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Feature

Photo: Mark Allen.
Jonathan Dove, April De Angelis and Helen McCarthy at the 2026 RPS Awards ceremony.

As one of the UK’s foremost musical charities, the Royal Philharmonic Society has promoted and protected classical music and musicians for over 200 years. Presented in partnership with BBC Radio 3, the RPS Awards aim to be classical music’s biggest ‘good news story’ of the year: a vital portrait of classical music’s resonance, impact and reach.

It is wonderful to see this community opera – a co-commission by Glyndebourne and Saffron Hall Trust – recognised as an outstanding production in opera and music theatre in the UK.

Congratulations to all of the 2026 Royal Philharmonic Society Award winners, including Louise Alder – who sang in Le Nozze de Figaro at Glyndebourne Festival 2025 – for the RPS Singer Award.

Uprising tells the story of one teenager’s action in the face of the climate emergency, the impact on her relationships, and the global movement her courage inspires. Co-commissioned by Glyndebourne and Saffron Hall Trust and supported by Jim and Hilary Potter, The Chalk Cliff Trust and MariaMarina Foundation, it was the biggest ever mainstage community opera in our 35-year history of community productions.

Uprising featured six top-level principal singers, 38 members of the Glyndebourne Sinfonia, including 10 former Jerwood Pit Perfect players, 51 adult and 50 youth chorus members from the local community, 17 youth instrumentalists and 8 on-stage percussionists.

Penned by the world-renowned composer Jonathan Dove, who composed Glyndebourne’s first community opera, Hastings Spring, in 1990, and librettist April De Angelis, the full resources of a major international opera house were brought to bear on a production that conjured a vast flood, mass protests, and the destruction of a singing forest.

Uprising premiered at Glyndebourne in February 2025 and was then performed in concert at Saffron Hall, Usher Hall and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The performances at Glyndebourne reached over 3,500 audience members at Glyndebourne, and an additional 1,000 schoolchildren for a dedicated schools performance.

Creative team

Composer
Jonathan Dove

Librettist
April De Angelis

Conductor
Andrew Gourlay

Director
Sinéad O’Neill

Designer
Ana Inés Jabares-Pita

Movement Director
Mike Ashcroft

Assistant Movement Director
Megan Frances

Lighting Designer
Danny Vavrečka

Assistant Director
Rebecca Marine

Chorus Master & Assistant Conductor
Ashley Beauchamp

Répétiteur
Avishka Edirisinghe

Glyndebourne Sinfonia
including players from its Jerwood Pit Perfect programme for young Instrumentalists and young players from Brighton & East Sussex Youth Orchestra and Brighton & Hove Percussion Ensemble

‘It is hard to express what this project has meant to me […] We were all part of this amazing, beautiful, profound and significant work that will live on in our hearts for years to come and has something vital to say to the world.’
– Uprising 2025 participant

‘I was really nervous about playing alongside professional musicians, but it was such an eye-opening experience and I soon realised I didn’t need to worry as everyone was so friendly and inclusive.’
– Uprising 2025 participant

‘Personally, I began the project carrying two years of extreme stress, an exhausted carer who had lost track of herself in someone else’s abyss. By the end of Uprising, I recognised myself again and know that through the project, I have become more.’
– Uprising 2025 participant