Jewish composer Roxanna Panufnik's opera Silver Birch will be premiered at the Garsington Festival in Oxfordshire in July.

Silver Birch will feature over 180 participants from the local community aged eight to 80, including students from primary and secondary schools, members of the local military community, student Foley artists under the guidance of Pinewood Studios and members of Wycombe Women’s Aid. They will appear alongside alongside top professional singers and orchestral players.

Novelist and journalist Jessica Duchen, who also writes for the JC, is the librettist, and the opera, which draws upon Siegfried Sassoon's poetry, is described as a "celebration of music, drama and poetry for all the family".
 
Panufnik, one of Britain’s leading composers, is the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Polish Catholic father, the composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik.