With choosing this year to perform indoors in the Orangery at Westonbirt for the first time rather than open air on the terrace, we've certainly opened up debate and discussion! Questionnaire responses are arriving thick and fast, and are fairly equally divided between those who like to be warm indoors and those who prefer charm outdoors... (note the appropriate rhyme - must remember that for a future translation!) There were many good reasons behind our choice and we're sure it was the right decision for The Italian Girl, especially given the scale of our set and the problems that would have caused outside - but for the future, well, we'll see. We're delighted at the very positive comments nearly everyone makes about their enjoyment of the occasion. Last Sunday's performance was well attended and received and as always it was gratifying to see a large audience at the pre-performance talk. It's always coming back to a production after a break of time, and the month's absence seems to have had the excellent effect of creating new levels of energy and relaxed wit - it proved a sparkling performance. A selection of photographs show indoor and outdoor picnics, as well as our utterly wonderful volunteer crew (aged 16 - 76 or thereabouts!) rolling up the "Nelson Hotel" carpet - part of which we're now about to donate to St Mary's Church, Bampton for children's activities.

At last we can pause for breath with a free day ahead! The last few days have been relentless. Sunday was the get-out from the Deanery Garden (in the rain again) and the journey up to Buxton for set and cast, with even heavier rain there to greet us. Monday was spent in the theatre with all systems go from 8am right through to the evening performance. There was a really good audience for Jeremy's pre-performance talk, followed by a sell-out house (we believe) of 900 in the wonderful Frank Matcham Opera House - it is such a delight to perform there. The applause was long and warm, and we hope that the fun of the action and text was appreciated. For the cast it is a very different experience from performing open-air at Bampton, and we were able to add new scenic features to the set - a ghastly carpet (salvaged from an ex-hotel) and a chandelier which performed hilarious antics in the Act 1 storm. At Bampton where we have no pit, the orchestra and conductor are positioned unconventionally to the side, so the more usual arrangement at Buxton was more congenial. We also had a different colour to the sound, with Charlotte Forrest playing a fortepiano rather than our Bampton harpsichord, providing an attractively mellifluous quality to the recitatives. The photographs were taken during the afternoon rehearsal which was not in costume, but which give an idea of the lighting effects created by John Bishop, the resident lighting designer for the Festival. By now, on Tuesday, the set has returned to Bampton and been unpacked, only to have to travel up to Derbyshire again in a few days for our Saturday performance.

Miraculously the rain stayed away for our two Bampton performances, despite the deluge of Saturday morning when it was bouncing off the stage, as you can see in one of the photographs - "pity about the weather" as the cast ruefully sing at the end of the opera. We may not have been exactly warm, but at the performances the sun shone and there was a good deal of magic in the atmosphere as the evening drew on and the lights came to play on the set. Both performances ran very smoothly and the laughter and buzz amongst the audience was warm and responsive. And there were a couple of good parties to enjoy afterwards, ending up in the small hours with songs from the shows around the piano.

There were a few technical hitches to keep us on our toes (too many different copies of the Times and the Daily Mail - all from 1982 of course - flying around), but we had an excellent dress rehearsal at the Deanery last night, and the completed set and costumes all looked fantastic under the lights. Our designers Nigel Hook and Fiona Hodges have done a superb job, and the delightfully crazy antics of life in the Nelson Hotel at Trafalgar Square are emerging with razor-sharp wit. In the photograph Don Polidoro (Nicholas Merryweather) imagines he is invisible but Madama Brillante (Caryl Hughes) has eyes in the back of her head. We're now just praying those blue blobs on the weather map don't pass over until after 10pm....

We had our first sessions today on the set and stage in Bampton, usually a somewhat fraught day when the cast have to renegotiate roles after the relative security of the London rehearsal venue. The weather was kind, and the set proved to be a delight to operate on in terms of space and ambience, thanks to our designer Nigel Hook. Tom, our conductor, was up north in Buxton rehearsing the Northern Chamber Orchestra in readiness for our performances there next week, but we worked under the expert guidance of our repetiteur Charlie Forrest. This was not a costume run, of course, so the photos don't indicate the full effect but there's a glimpse of our set, a gloriously awful London hotel.

We're now on the homeward run - London rehearsals finished yesterday with a very successful costume run, and today has been rehearsal-free. But in Bampton there's been plenty of activity: our stage was built at the Deanery garden on Saturday, and today designer Nigel Hook has joined our local team to get the set up and standing. All is looking good, although there will be plenty of tweaking and paint distressing to do over the next few days. The photos show the construction in progress, including Anthony levelling the corner of the stage.

Rehearsals are well underway, although it has been a complex week with our Mozart and Gluck concert (a delight!) at the Purcell Room on Wednesday to rehearse and organise as well. Today's Cimarosa tasks have included proof-reading our material for the programme for the Buxton Festival, rehearsing for the first time the brilliant Act 2 Finale, and celebrating (a day late) the birthday of our 'Lord Arespingh' - Bampton favourite, Robert Winslade Anderson.