A country opera house in the village of Longborough, Gloucestershire, founded by Martin Graham and his wife Lizzie. It was converted from a chicken shed and cow barn in the Grahams' back garden.
The opera house is flamboyantly pink and white, with terracotta statues of Wagner, Mozart and Verdi on its pediment. It seats about 500 and has an orchestra pit for roughly 70 players, mostly hidden under the stage in the manner of the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth. The seats are red plush, acquired as discards from Covent Garden.
In the late 1990s audiences sat on benches and straw bales, and hens moved back in between seasons. The house grew from small-scale and miniature productions into a proving ground for some of Britain's best singers. Graham recruited the conductor Anthony Negus, a notable Wagnerian.
In 2013, Wagner's 200th anniversary, the LFO was the only company in Britain to stage the full 16-hour tetralogy "Der Ring des Nibelungen", to critical delight. The cycle cost roughly £1.2m and was funded entirely without public money.
Graham's daughter Polly Graham took over as artistic director in 2018. The enterprise retained its village character: locals opened spare bedrooms to casts and crews, did repairs and fed performers.
Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They've just learned to hide in the trees.