The GAC at Sudeley Castle: Inaugural Season 2025-2026
Sunday, September 21st 2025, 4:00 pm concert
Location: The Chapel
Recital: Catharine Woodward, soprano & Ben Woodward, piano
With an introduction by Jon Morrell | General Manager & Artistic Director of The GAC
The program will feature works by Beach, Duparc, Fauré, Haydn and Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
(Running time 80 minutes)
The GAC at Sudeley Castle are thrilled to welcome acclaimed British Wagnerian soprano Catharine Woodward, accompanied by Ben Woodward, conductor and Artistic Director of Regents Opera, to open our first residency 2025-2026 season at Sudeley Castle.
In early 2025, British dramatic soprano Catharine Woodward completed her first two full Ring Cycles as Brünnhilde for Regents Opera in London to great acclaim. This Summer she returns to the Bayreuther Festspiele as Gerhilde Die Walküre.
Since moving into the dramatic repertoire she has been twice in the live finals of the Lauritz Melchior (Wagner) Competition in Denmark, and has been selected as one of the top singers in NYIOPs ANON:DE audition project. Her first Wagner role was Eva Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 2019. In February 2022 she made her debut as Leonora di Vargas La Forza Del Destino for Regent’s Opera in London. On the concert stage she has sung Isolde Tristan und Isolde Act 2 at the Tonhall Zürich and Kundry Parsifal Act 2 in London for New Palace Opera.
Catharine studied Music at the University of Durham, Vocal Performance at Trinity Laban & at the Alexander Gibson Opera School at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has worked at the Royal and Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden; English National Opera; Scottish Opera; the Aix-en-Provence Festival and many other prestigious companies and festivals. Career highlights include a documentary for the Open University - Future Diva, and performing at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Coronation Festival in 2014. In 2017 she appeared in comedy series “Taskmaster” on Dave & also demonstrated the function of the vocal tract by singing Puccini in an MRI scanner for the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. In January 2018 she performed excerpts of Madama Butterfas a featured artist in ITV drama “Next Of Kin”.
Her opera roles include all three Brünnhilden, Eva Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Elisabetta Don Carlo, Leonora di Vargas Forza del destino, Mimi La Boheme (Regent’s Opera), Donna Elvira Don Giovanni (Diva Opera UK), Alice Ford Falstaff (Fulham Opera), Edna Tobias & The Angel and Sarah Clemency (both Highbury Opera Theatre). Roles in preparation include Elsa Lohengrin Isolde, Kundry, Elektra, and the Kostelnička Jenufa.
Ben Woodward is Artistic Director of Regents Opera (formerly Fulham Opera), known as the largest and most ambitious fringe opera company in London.
He has been Repetitor mit Dirigierverpflictung at the SH-Landestheater in Flensburg, Germany, where he conducted performances of Singin in the Rain, Guys and Dolls and Der fliegende Holländer, and assisted on Vanessa, Manon Lescaut and Le Grand Macabre. He has also worked at the Staatsoper Hannover and the Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen.
With Fulham Opera, he has conducted performances of Don Carlo and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, for which Opera Magazine praised his “flair” and “real poetry” and Strauss’s Die Ägyptische Helena, which received 5 stars from Opera Now magazine and 4 stars in The Times.
He has also led Fulham Opera in productions of Falstaff, Simon Boccanegra and Der fliegende Holländer, as well as a 2014 complete Ring Cycle, in which he led a small ensemble from the piano.
He has started a three-times yearly orchestral workshop programme, where he leads a full symphony orchestra through some of the largest opera repertoire available over a weekend. With this orchestra he has tackled six operas by Strauss, Peter Grimes, the Lyric Symphony of Zemlinsky, Otello, Der fliegende Holländer, and the complete Ring.
He has and continues to lead tours of operas across the UK. Between 2015-17 these were Le Nozze di Figaro, La Boheme and Rigoletto, and since 2021 La Traviata, and 2022 will see him lead tours of Carmen.
He has also worked for Opera Up Close, Opera de Baugé as both repetiteur and chorus master, Grange Park Opera as assistant chorus master, Opera Loki, Opera Vera and Focus Opera.
A passionate vocal cach, he maintains a thriving coaching studio in both Berlin and London and is a visiting coach at the Berlin Dramatic Voices Academy. He has also instituted a competition for the singing of the works of Verdi in memory of one of his co-founders of Fulham Opera.
Ben was a student of organ, piano and viola at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, was organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then an organist at Christ Church, Greenwich, CT, USA and Director of Music at St Mary RC Church, Stamford, CT. During this time he was Assistant Artistic Director of the New Baroque Soloists, for whom he played continuo harpsichord, including several performances of Bach’s 5th Brandenburg concerto, organ and also edited many baroque works for performance across New England.
He lives in Berlin with his wife, soprano Catherine Woodward.
Jon Morrell, general manager and artistic director of The GAC, is excited to have this opportunity to collaborate with Sudeley Castle and bring these concerts to this magnificent national treasure. An acclaimed Otello, Samson, Peter Grimes, Florestan (Fidelio), Siegmund (Die Walküre) and Parsifal, and a respected recitalist and soloist, Morrell was a member of the Concordia Foundation in London, and performs regularly in the UK.
As well as having an active singing career, Jon has had a long career producing operas, recitals and concerts, and has been the general manager / artistic director of the Garage at Chatham The GAC summer festival since 2020.