Mairi Nicolson, Damien Beaumont and Christopher Lawrence will be leading music and opera tours in 2017.

Popular ABC Classic FM presenters Mairi Nicolson, Damien Beaumont and Christopher Lawrence have signed up to travel the world and lead music and opera tours for Renaissance Tours in 2017.

Nicolson will helm a tour to Romania’s Enescu Festival in Bucharest in September, followed by a six-day Treasures of Transylvania tour. “It’s my second visit to the Enescu Festival,” Nicolson told Limelight. “Of the nine tours I’ve taken to Europe and the USA, it was the most astonishing. One of my abiding memories from the tour three years ago was wandering in to a rehearsal of the Staaskapelle Berlin (no security) with keyboard titans Daniel Barenboim and Radu Lupu arguing the toss about the tempi of the Mozart double concerto they were playing that night. Needless to say, the performance was magic!”

The 2017 Enescu Festival will include a line-up of concerts by ensembles such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, Orchestra of La Scala Milan and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

“The Festival is named after Romania’s famous violinist and composer and each visiting ensemble is asked to include a work of Enescu in one of their programmes, making for much more varied fare than touring orchestras usually offer,” Nicolson said. “In 2017 the festival will open with a performance of his opera Oedipe with a stellar lineup of soloists headed by a Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Willard White and Christopher Purves with the LPO conducted by Jurowski who is the festival’s current Artistic Director.”

“In 2017 the visitor list is jaw-dropping! Orchestras include the Pittsburg Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, the Israel Phil, the Concertgebouw, and the orchestras of La Scala and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in a Rome,” she added. “They play in the grand Sala Palatului where Ceausescu met with his cohorts in the communist party and harangued his people so the atmosphere is like no concert hall I’ve ever experienced. And if that’s not enough, the list of guest Soloists is headed by tenor Jonas Kaufmann, pianists Daniil Trifonov, Martha Argerich and Lang Lang.”

Beaumont will be leading a seven-day tour to New York’s Metropolitan Opera next Easter to attend operas including Verdi’s Aida and La Traviata, Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. The Met’s season will feature singers such as Anna Netrebko, Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Lawrence’s tour has a more nautical bent – he will be co-hosting a special opera and music cruise of the Mediterranean onboard the Sea Cloud II in April. He will be joined by Opera Australia’s Sharloyn Kimmorley as well as a troupe of well-known opera performers including sopranos Cheryl Barker and Lauren Fagan, tenor Aldo di Toro and rising star baritone Morgan Pearse.

“Yes, it really exists: a fully rigged tall ship that captures the romance and sense of adventure in sea voyages of the past, together with true five-star accommodation and service on the magnificent Sea Cloud II,” Lawrence told Limelight. “Calling into places like Cadiz, Valencia and Mallorca en route and ducking down to the Lounge for recitals at close quarters by operatic illuminati such as Cheryl Barker, it’s an experience at once sybaritic and stimulating. Ahoy there – opera ahead!”

For more information on Renaissance Tours’ music and ballet tours click here

For more information on Renaissance Tours’ opera tours click here