A summer festival of opera, open-air dining and country-house charm in the Wiltshire countryside.

There is a particular pleasure to an opera festival in summer when the performance is only part of the attraction. You arrive early, the light is still high, people are already gathering on the lawn with a glass in hand, and the whole evening begins to take shape long before the first note is sung. That is very much the mood at If Opera, which returns to Church Farm, Wingfield from 6 to 16 August 2026 for a 30th anniversary season that brings together opera, gardens, dining and a quietly glamorous sense of occasion.

Set in the Wiltshire countryside, with the Westbury White Horse in the distance and the gardens of Church Farm spread out around it, the festival has built a reputation for doing things in a more intimate, more relaxed way than many of its larger counterparts. It is still unmistakably opera, with all the emotion and drama that suggests, but the atmosphere is warmer, looser and more inviting. This is a festival that understands the appeal of a long summer evening properly spent: music at its centre, certainly, but also picnics on the grass, a restaurant table booked before the performance, a glass of Champagne before sunset and the luxury of not having to rush anywhere.

For 2026, that world feels especially complete. The season marks 30 years of If Opera and the programme has been shaped with that in mind, balancing big operatic titles with smaller events, family moments and the sort of food-and-drink offering that turns a performance into a full day out.

A 30th anniversary season with range

The centrepiece of the programme is Bizet’s Carmen, which comes to If Opera for the first time and runs on 6, 8, 12 and 15 August. It is an apt choice for an anniversary year: dramatic, seductive and full of theatrical heat. Alongside it is Oscar Straus’ The Chocolate Soldier, staged by Opera della Luna and performed on 11, 13 and 14 August, bringing a lighter, more playful note to the season.

Around those larger productions sits a programme that gives the festival its shape. Baroque Drinking Songs arrives on 7 August, followed by Get Into Opera! Family Fiesta Day on 9 August, a Baroque masterclass and concert on 13 August, and a closing Picnic Prom on 16 August. Taken together, the line-up feels carefully judged. There is enough breadth to make the season feel lively and celebratory, but it never loses its coherence. Everything still belongs to the same world.

If Opera has always been good at making opera feel accessible without flattening it. The company remains rooted in artistic ambition, but there is a warmth to the way it presents itself, and that comes through in the 2026 season. It is easy to imagine seasoned opera-goers booking multiple performances, but just as easy to see first-time visitors being drawn in by the setting, the programme and the ease of the experience around it.

Church Farm and the shape of a summer evening

Part of the appeal lies in Church Farm itself. Following the success of the 2025 season, If Opera returns to the home of long-standing patrons David and Fiona Robinson, where the site once again becomes the backdrop for the company’s summer world. The setting is one of the festival’s great assets: a peaceful stretch of countryside with gardens, a duckpond, St Mary’s Church, a fully covered Saddlespan auditorium and plenty of room for the rituals that make summer festivals so enjoyable.

Guests can picnic in the grounds, book a table at the festival restaurant, or settle in with a drink before heading into the performance. The gardens open from 4.30pm for the main evening productions, giving audiences time to arrive properly rather than in a rush. That extra time changes the feel of the whole event. Instead of simply attending a performance, you can build an afternoon or evening around it.

There is also something refreshingly unfussy about the way If Opera approaches the practical side of things. Dress is smart-casual rather than formal, parking is free on site, and audiences are welcome to bring their own food and drink if they prefer to picnic. The effect is not casual in the careless sense, but generous. The festival allows people to choose how they want to spend the evening, whether that means Champagne and dinner before Carmen or a rug on the lawn and a hamper in the grass.

The Cowshed by Homewood

If there is one thing that gives the 2026 season an added sense of polish, it is the return of The Cowshed by Homewood. Back for a second year after its successful debut in 2025, the restaurant has become one of the clearest expressions of what If Opera does so well: turning an opera outing into something more immersive, more indulgent and much easier to settle into.

Set within Church Farm, The Cowshed is not festival catering in the usual sense. It feels much closer to a destination restaurant that happens to sit at the heart of an opera festival. Guests book a table for the evening and are served a Mediterranean-inspired menu built around Somerset produce, locally sourced meats cooked over the Somerset grill and small plates drawn from Homewood’s No-Dig Kitchen Garden. The experience begins with a welcome glass of Champagne and continues at a gentler pace from there, with sharing platters, fire-cooked dishes and a wine list designed to match the menu.

It is a smart addition to the festival because it changes the rhythm of the evening. Instead of treating supper as a practical stop before the main event, The Cowshed makes it part of the reason to arrive early. Lunch is also available for the Baroque Masterclass and Concert on 13 August, which suits the more leisurely shape of that day especially well.

For the 30th anniversary season, The Cowshed will also be joined by the Taittinger Bar, adding a celebratory note to the site and reinforcing the sense that Church Farm is a place to linger rather than simply pass through. Hildon water sits neatly within that picture too, one of those quieter details that helps the dining offer feel properly considered rather than improvised.

More than a performance

That is what If Opera seems to understand especially well. People may come for Carmen or The Chocolate Soldier, but what they remember is often the shape of the whole day: the drive through the countryside, the first drink in the garden, dinner before the show, the atmosphere as everyone makes their way towards the auditorium. Opera festivals have always traded on that sense of occasion, but at If Opera it feels less formal and more intimate. The setting is beautiful, but not intimidating. The programme is ambitious, but the mood is open.

This matters because the company sits in a particular place within the cultural landscape. If Opera is a not-for-profit charitable organisation with no public funding, supported through ticket sales, memberships, donors, patrons and partners. That structure underpins not only the performances themselves, but the wider work around them, from artist development to community engagement. The festival at Church Farm is the public face of that effort, but it is also part of the mechanism that keeps it going.

What the 2026 season offers, then, is more than a list of productions. It offers a way of spending time. You can book a ticket for a single performance and have a lovely evening, of course. But the stronger temptation is to lean into the full experience: arrive early, stay late, book dinner, wander the grounds, make a day of it. In that respect, the return of The Cowshed feels especially well judged. It gives the festival a restaurant with its own identity, and it deepens the sense that If Opera is not simply staging performances in the countryside but creating a summer world around them.

As anniversary seasons go, it is an appealing proposition. There is opera at the centre, as there should be, but there is also food, landscape, hospitality and the easy pleasure of being outdoors in August with nowhere else to be. At Church Farm, If Opera has found a way to make those things feel part of the same story.