Into The Woods

Next month, the doors of Surrey’s new opera house will open to the public for the first time. Tinx Newton goes behind the scenes to speak to Wasfi Kani who, 30 years after launching her first opera company, is taking on her biggest challenge to date.

- Tinx Newton

WASFI Kani’s first foray into producing operas in unusual settings was in 1987, when she founded the small-scale touring company Pimlico Opera. Following many successful performances in marquees, village halls, banks, castles and a hospital, she staged Sweeney Todd in Wormwood Scrubs, where prisoners took on roles alongside professionals. Her concrete belief that opera is good for our well-being and should be available to all was gathering pace.

In 1998 she founded Grange Park Opera as a charity and since then she has produced over 50 operas, raised tens of millions of pounds, and built a family who think of ‘The Grange’ as central to their summer season. But Wasfi is not one to sit back and reflect on her successes when there is work to be done. She is now frequently seen donning a yellow builder’s hat and pacing the grounds of her biggest venture to date, the relocation of Grange Park Opera to West Horsley Place.

Seemingly unfazed by the enormity of the project she says, “I have built a theatre once before, but this new theatre, with a brilliant acoustic and a bigger pit size, will allow a greater vision. With the help of our thousands of generous supporters, Grange Park Opera at Horsley will let us introduce more people than ever - and young people especially - to the magic of opera and the wider arts. It will also allow us to give the local area something it can support and own, one of the most powerful reasons for holding a festival in the regions.”