BHO went ahead engaging the experienced Harry Fehr to direct a bright, vivid and, above all, witty contemporary realization …Fehr filled the stage with colour, and got memorable characterizations from this well-chosen cast… Fehr’s final pay-off the arrival of Bacchus distributing free mobile phones, rather than wine – was a stroke of genius, a feel-good factor with knobs on.

…this, by any standards, was a great evening, really getting towards the core of Handel’s great oratorio-opera about the vanity of human hope, funny, sad, beautiful and deep. …well directed by Harry Fehr… This is such a labour of love, and it shines through everything they do – but it’s also serious quality. *****

Charming and clever La Sonnambula, Buxton International Festival.

Harry Fehr’s production of Bellini’s La Sonnambula is here given full rein as a comedy …He succeeds where many fail, in taking a well-known opera, bringing something new, and making it work. The direction, using a valid concept with great care for the music, singing and libretto, triumphs.

Bellini’s La Sonnambula is the high-spot of a four-show lyric theatre bill at the Buxton International Festival this year… back with Bellini, whose last showing at the festival was I Capuleti e i Montecchi in 2016, they’ve also returned to the director with a sure touch on that occasion – Harry Fehr – …Fehr makes excellent use of the BIF chorus, which is composed half of “Young Artists” to manage an effective muster of 20 –and are cleverly directed throughout.

Bellini’s half-serious, half-comic piece is delivered with style … [there are] many clever touches in Fehr’s production, which succeeds on every level. Fehr recognises the comic strand that runs throughout this story… Dramatically the result is profoundly moving and, at times, extremely funny.

…and there was an exhilarating sweep to Harry Fehr’s production …it took full advantage of Opera Holland Park’s wide stage, also making judicious use of the catwalk in front of the orchestra…

Fehr paces the busy first set effectively… and Fehr drolly and imaginatively exploits the musico-dramatic potentials offered… Moreover, Fehr makes terrific use of the front runway – the best I’ve seen this season at OHP – evoking movement and milieu.

…a focused and dynamic staging…

…a production that wishes to impress needs both pace, coherent direction of the many crowd scenes, and dynamic creative acting by the principals… Director Harry Fehr and conductor Marit Strindlund drive forward the action impressively…

Fehr’s production was engaging and effective … this production gave us a reminder of quite what a engagingly melodious and profoundly human piece it is. There was a lovely sense of warmth and humanity from the production.

In his canny and cohesive Orlando, the director Harry Fehr transported Handel’s 1733 work to a World War II British military hospital during the London Blitz. The concept harmonised with the libretto, loosely based on Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. By depicting the title character (mezzo Sasha Cooke) as an ambivalent soldier maddened by the defection of his lover to Medoro, a fellow wounded warrior (the compelling counter-tenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen) Fehr turned the roundelay romantic plot into a mediation on the confoundments and devastations of war – and love.