Following the guidance from Public Health England, it is with heavy hearts that we inform you that our artistic programme will be suspended until the advice changes. Read our full statement.

Please note that Chris Watson, our Artist in Residence for Nature Unwrapped, has created a sound calendar of environments from the northern hemisphere. Ahead of this show, you will be hearing sounds from an old railway path in Suffolk. Come half an hour before the performance to enjoy the installation in Hall One. Your ticket is required.

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Bach Weekend opens with a programme that features both Bach’s Cantate Burlesque (known as the Peasant Cantata) and his Coffee Cantata.

These extraordinary works, written in collaboration with Bach’s favourite librettist Picander, are nothing less than short comic operas. In the Cantate Burlesque, the themes of rural politics and bucolic sexuality form a heady mix within its bawdy text, while the Coffee Cantata explores the perils of coffee addiction, and the lengths that our heroine, Lieschen, will go to to secure a steady supply.

The performances will be dramatised and there will be English surtitles to show the quick-witted repartee of Picander’s poetry in real time. Charles Daniels will complete the programme with his reading of the beautiful tenor cantata ‘Ich armer Mensch, ich Sündenknecht’.