Opera at Chilmark produces one opera a year over the August Bank Holiday weekend in the barn at Cleeves Farm, Chilmark, Salisbury. The 2018 production, on Sunday 26 and Monday 27 August was a double bill - John Blow's Venus and Adonis (in concert format) and Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (staged).

Venus and Adonis - A Masque for the Entertainment of the King was performed at court and later at Josias Priest's Boarding School at Chelsea in 1684 - a few year's later Dido was performed at the same school. Purcell and Blow were very well acquainted and Dido was clearly influenced in many ways by Venus.

Opera at Chilmark warmly thanks Henry and Elizabeth Pelham, our extremely generous hosts.


In 2017 we produced the first performance in over 200 years of the pasticcio opera The Spring, created by James Harris. You can read about it on the page 'About The Spring'.  On June 2 2019 we shall be performing The Spring again for the Salisbury International Festival in the Medieval Hall in Salisbury's Cathedral Close - a few hundred yards away from where it was composed. If you are not already on our opera mailing list and would like to be informed of this production, please let us know by going to the Contact page on this website.