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THRONE INTO CONFUSION
at
Garsington Opera
Reviewed by Julia Gasper 3 June 2008
,%20Paul%20Nilon%20(Dario),%20Katherine%20Manley%20(Arpago)%20L'incoronazione%20di%20Dario%20credit%20Johan%20Persson.jpg) Garsington
Opera, one of the great treats of the summer in Oxford, will not last
forever. Now that its fans know that only three more seasons will take place at
the Ingrams’ enchanting manor-house, we appreciate each remaining production
even more keenly.
Yesterday the
2008 season opened with a revival of Vivaldi’s L’Incoronazione di Dario,
a real humdinger of an opera. It has wonderful melodies, virtuoso arias,
touching duets, striking characters, intrigue, comedy and melodrama. What a
jewel they have recovered from oblivion! There could be no better place to enjoy
it than here, with the familiar loggia in the background and the occasional dove
flying in and circling over the audience’s heads.
After the death
of the King of Persia, his only heirs are his two daughters, and whoever marries
the elder one, Princess Statira, (the delightful Renata Pokupic, soprano) will
be the next king. Not surprisingly she attracts a crowd of suitors, including
the hero, Dario (the stunning tenor Paul Nilon) and a couple of rivals. Even her
tutor is in love with her. Statira is naïve and simple, wanting to marry nobody
or all her suitors at once. She does not realize that her younger sister Argene
(sung brilliantly by Wendy Dawn) has fallen passionately in love with Dario
herself and is scheming to get him and the throne. As Argene’s plots proceed
from the ingenious and comical to the unscrupulous and desperate, the danger to
the credulous Statira grows and grows. Meanwhile another, foreign, princess, the
deserted Alinda, pursues one of Statira’s suitors, Oronte, who has heartlessly
abandoned her.
The mix of
modern and antique costume works well in this production, and the action on
stage is vigorous and riveting, particularly the fight scenes, which drew
applause. When Dario rushes off stage to pick some flowers with his sword and
returns, presenting them to the coy Princess Statira, there was more laughter.
Does he eventually win his love? Well, the opera is called The Coronation of
Dario. There is no forgiveness for the erring Argene, who plots to cast her
sister out to be eaten by lions and bears. Well, we were never a close family.
She ends up as a tragic figure, led astray by an irresistible passion.
During the long
interval we were free as ever to wander in the equally irresistible gardens,
thankful that Sunday was a fine day. The honey-coloured rose still clambers over
the dove-cote. The freckled foxgloves, in mauve, white, pink and palest lilac,
grow tall and stately here. There are irises, purple, golden and palest buff,
yellow poppies suffered to wander unreproved, lavender not yet in bloom but
already sweetly-scented, delphiniums and lupins, the casual tumble of catmint,
white peonies (the only pleasing kind), aubretia cluttering the steps, and a
laburnum entwining its blossoms and branches with a walnut tree near where a
trickle of water from the pool makes a soft gurgle. A rosemary bush runs totally
wild, and just when you think this is the perfect English garden, you
come across an olive tree, small and silvery, not quite sure whether it is real
or part of a stage set.
Follow the
curving stone steps under the gloomy branches of a yew-tree to find the topiary
walk, leading to the poplar in the far corner of the garden, its vertical line,
like a church steeple, providing such an important marker and boundary. Statues,
standing in niches cut out of box hedge, look over the lily-pond towards the
gabled manor-house itself, listening to the fountain and the evenings
canzonettas of birds.
Whatever happens
to
Garsington Opera in the future, (and I pray it will find another venue not
too far away, perhaps somewhere such as Wytham?) nothing will ever spoil the
memory of this annual delight.
L’INCORONAZIONE DI DARIO Performers
Garsington
Opera - Performance schedule
MUSIC THEATRE WALES - FOR YOU
OPERA BY MICHAEL BERKELEY & IAN MCEWAN
CANCELLATION OF REMAINING SUMMER TOUR DATES
Thursday 19 June, Oxford Playhouse - CANCELLED
Music Theatre Wales has announced the cancellation of the remaining three dates
of the summer tour of Michael Berkeley and Ian McEwan’s opera FOR YOU in Oxford
(June 19), Birmingham (July 19) and Aberystwyth (July 31).
Yesterday, the Company announced the cancellation of the World Premiere
performances at Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon (May 31 & June 1) and Clwyd Theatr
Cymru, Mold due to the indisposition of baritone Eric Roberts, who was to have
sung the role of Charles Frieth, the opera’s leading character.
Mr Roberts had been experiencing serious vocal health problems and on Tuesday
morning was instructed by his consultant not to sing for at least four weeks. As
a result of the need to rest his voice Eric Roberts has now decided to withdraw
from the production entirely.
The company’s Artistic Director, Michael McCarthy said:
The postponement of the world premiere is not a decision that Music Theatre
Wales has taken lightly but we all agree, including the composer Michael
Berkeley and librettist Ian McEwan, that we wanted our audiences to see this
fantastic new opera in the best possible circumstances. We have all been very
clear that we must not launch it in any way that will compromise it. “
Though the decision is a costly one for a relatively small company, Michael
McCarthy stressed that artistic considerations were of prime concern. Music
Theatre Wales is widely acknowledged as one of Europe’s leading contemporary
opera companies, with a twenty-year history of presenting new and commissioned
works by leading composers. This is the first time that the company has ever
cancelled a performance.
The autumn tour will go ahead as planned in London, Cardiff and Durham. Further
details regarding the world premiere will be announced in due course. Patrons
who have purchased tickets for performances in Brecon, Mold, Oxford, Birmingham
and Aberystwyth will receive a full refund from the theatres’ Box Offices.
Box office telephone numbers:
Oxford Playhouse 01865 305305
Birmingham Repertory Theatre 0121 236 4455
Aberystwyth Arts Centre 01970 623232
Oxford New Theatre
A Review by
Julia Gasper.
21st May 2008.
Pirates
were good box-office long before Johnny Depp cornered the market. Gilbert and
Sullivan got there first with their shamelessly silly operatic spoof
the Pirates of Penzance now being
revived by Oxford Operatic Society and directed by the very talented Ann Robson.
There is plenty of dancing, action and stage comedy here, making every scene fun
to watch, and it says something about this production that at the end of the
show the audience was not only clapping, but doing so in time to the music.
There may be
people who are too sophisticated to enjoy a chorus of comic policemen, bending
at the knees in time to the rhythm and twirling their truncheons, or a fine
array of sabre-waving pirates in stripey breeches and buckled swashes, but they
are missing something. They might find themselves tapping along too if they went
to see it, and got carried away by the G and S high spirits. As the Pirate King,
Stephen Pascoe very nearly steals the show, with his fine voice and commanding
stage presence. Deon Adams updates the part of the hero Frederic, giving us a
passable impression of Tom Jones, wiggling his hips, while the veteran Ronald
Hewitt, as Major-General Stanley, gives us a cracking rendering of that classic
G and S hit “I am the very model of a modern Major-General…” He has appeared in
fifty productions of the Oxford Operatic Society, and is still going strong.
Some of the
pleasure in this sort of production is nostalgia, of course, and there is
nothing wrong with that from time to time. Yet some of the humour comes over as
quite fresh and undated. When the Major-General asks “Have you ever know what it
is to be an orphan?” and the pirate king replies, “Oh yes, orphan,” and the
Major-General says, “Orphan? Do you mean, having no parents, or orfen in
the sense of frequently?” - this is as funny as ever to the post-Pratchett and
post-Monty Python generation, because it is just so shamelessly silly. Dave
Crewe, as the Sergeant of Police, is very entertaining, and it is nice to see
him paired off at the end with Frederic’s former nanny, Ruth (Marilyn Moore)
who, though rejected as too old for the twenty-one year old hero, looks so very
fetching in her scarlet pirate breeches, that we feel the Sergeant of Police has
got a lucky deal.
The female
lead, Mabel, is taken by the 17-year-old Frankie Williams, whose performance is
very promising. Her costumes were unflattering - though most in this production
are, along with the scenery, excellent - and like all of the lead singers she
was over-amplified. The microphones they wear do not only increase the sound but
distort it so that the tone and timbre are often impaired, and although the New
Theatre is a big place, I think that the mikes could be turned down quite a bit.
The singers are all aware of the need to be heard – OK – but they are
sacrificing beauty of tone to mere volume throughout. Added to that, the
orchestra consists only of wind instruments and a piano, which produce rather a
harsh sound. If those issues could be addressed before the production ends on 24th
May, the later audiences would, I’m sure, enjoy it even more thoroughly.
LONGBOROUGH FESTIVAL OPERA 2008
Something for Everyone
 Longborough
Festival Opera is delighted to announce that
following its great success this year, its
production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold will
return for a limited number of performances
in 2008. Anthony Negus returns to conduct
Alan Privett’s production and most of the
2007 company will be returning. This is the
start of LFO’s Ring Cycle, which will
continue in future years.
The season will open with a new production
of Verdi’s La Traviata. Set to an Italian
libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, it takes
as its basis La Dame aux Caméllias by
Alexandre Dumas, fils, published in 1848.
In 2008 Longborough will stage its first
Janácek opera – the composer’s delightful
The Cunning Little Vixen. Written in 1924,
when the composer was seventy, this is
Janácek 's lightest opera. In it, the
composer moved away from the more
conversational style of previous and
subsequent operas to a more folk-like style.
Details will be announced shortly for the
education programme for 2008.
IAN
McEWAN LIBRETTO
FOR NEW MICHAEL BERKELEY
OPERA
'FOR YOU'
COMMISSIONED BY MUSIC
THEATRE WALES COMES TO OXFORD PLAYHOUSE
Thursday 19 June
Award-winning
novelist Ian McEwan has written his first opera
libretto for a new work by Michael Berkeley commissioned by leading contemporary
opera company Music Theatre Wales -
FOR YOU
comes to Oxford Playhouse on Thursday 19 June.
FOR YOU
is an original story brimming with all the hallmark elements of McEwan’s work –
a contemporary, edgy situation, destructive desire and lives altered forever by
a tragic error of perception and understanding.
The
opera explores the frailty and foibles of human behaviour and the venom
that sexual jealousy inspires, as the comfortable, middle-class household of a
charismatic, ageing conductor-composer is torn apart by a woman prepared to go
to any lengths in the name of love…
McEwan’s
compelling text has inspired Michael Berkeley to write some of his most
passionate and theatrical music to date. Achieving new depths of emotional and
psychological insight, it is a rewarding continuation of the composer’s musical
journey with Music Theatre Wales.
FOR
YOU
is directed by Michael McCarthy and conducted by Michael Rafferty – joint
Artistic Directors of Music Theatre Wales, with designs by Simon Banham. The
cast is led by Welsh baritone Eric Roberts as the composer, Charles and
mezzo-soprano Allison Cook as Maria, his Polish housekeeper. Helen
Williams (soprano), Christopher Lemmings (tenor), Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone)
and Rachel Nicholls (soprano) complete an exceptionally strong cast.
FOR
YOU
is a remarkable collaboration between two of the UK’s leading creative figures,
brought together by Music Theatre Wales.
Berkeley
and McEwan first worked together on Berkeley’s 1982 oratorio,
Or Shall We Die? and have long discussed writing a new opera
together.
Tickets
for FOR YOU at Oxford Playhouse on Thursday 19 June are available from the Box
Office on 01865 305305 or online at
www.oxfordplayhouse.com
Directed by Ann
Robson
Musical Director: Mark Denton
Oxford Operatic Society returns
with the Broadway version of one of Gilbert and Sullivan's best
comic operas. On his 21st birthday, Frederic leaves the pirates
who brought him up in order to live a more honest life. He falls
in love with Mabel, one of the Major-General's many daughters.
However, the Pirate King has a scheme to keep Frederic in his
band of rogues forever…
This swashbuckling show
includes many well-loved songs such as 'Paradox', 'Poor
Wandering One' and the often parodied 'Major General's Song'.
It's rollicking romance, wit and humour has been pleasing
audiences since the opera first opened in London 120 years ago.
*Booking fee applies. You can
also book tickets in person at the Theatre, in which case no
booking fee is payable.
GARSINGTON OPERA’S FUTURE
PLANS
The
Board of Directors of Garsington Opera today announced that the 2010
season would be the last at Garsington Manor, as the Ingrams family
has decided that the Opera’s occupancy will come to an end on
30 September 2010. Consequently, a new
home for the Opera is being sought for the 2011 season and
thereafter.
The
2009 festival, Garsington Opera’s 20th anniversary
season, has been planned and cast. The 2010 season has also been
planned and casting is under way.
Rosalind Ingrams, whose late husband Leonard founded Garsington
Opera in 1989, said:
“The
family gives its full support to the Board’s plans”.
Graham
Greene, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Garsington Opera,
said:
“Garsington Opera has established a reputation for presenting a
varied repertory including rarely performed works at a high
standard, as well as giving a platform to young British talent. I
am confident this will continue after the three seasons that we
still have at Garsington Manor. It has been a marvellous twenty
years, and I am very happy that we have the continuing support of
the Ingrams family.”
BRITISH
PREMIERE OF VIVALDI OPERA OPENS
GARSINGTON OPERA’S 2008 SEASON
The
British premiere of Vivaldi’s
L’incoronazione di Dario, directed by
David Freeman, will open this
summer’s Garsington Opera season on
4 June 2008. The festival (4 June – 6 July)
also features a new production of Stravinsky’s masterpiece
The Rake’s Progress,
directed by Olivia Fuchs, and
a revival of John Cox’s
celebrated 2004 production of Mozart’s
Così fan tutte. This
year brings conductors Martin André
and Laurence Cummings,
together with Steuart Bedford,
to Garsington Opera and, in the Garsington tradition, features new
talent alongside more established singers.
L’INCORONAZIONE DI DARIO
The
British premiere of
L’incoronazione di Dario is a landmark event for
Garsington Opera. Not only is it to be Garsington’s first production
of a baroque opera but it will also be the world premiere of a new
critical edition from the Antonio
Vivaldi Italian Institute, Venice. Written in 1717,
the early opera is both comic and dramatic with its
richly varied music and strong characterization. It will be
conducted by Laurence Cummings,
a leading practitioner of baroque music and director of the London
Handel Festival, and directed by
David Freeman, founder of the Opera Factory in Sydney, Zurich
and London, whose production of
Tosca at the Royal Albert Hall is shortly to be revived.
Dan Potra designs. The title
role will be sung by Paul Nilon,
who has recently sung the title role of Monteverdi’s
Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
at Netherlands Opera. The promising young Croatian mezzo soprano
Renata Pokupić takes the role
of Statira, the eldest daughter of the late king, with
Wendy Dawn Thompson as her
rival and second daughter Argene. Among those talented younger
artists appearing is one of British opera’s brightest young
prospects, Sophie Bevan (Alinda).
Nicholas Watts (Oronte),
Russell Smythe (Niceno),
Katherine Manley (Arpago) and
Antonio Sotgiu (Flora)
complete the cast.
THE RAKE’S PROGRESS
Olivia Fuchs’ exploration of Russian music at Garsington has so far
included productions of works by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky Korsakov.
She now takes on Stravinsky’s
The Rake’s
Progress, one of the great operas of the twentieth
century. Inspired by William
Hogarth’s vivid sequence of engravings, the opera will feature
Christopher Purves, who
recently performed in the premiere of James MacMillan’s
The Sacrifice, singing
Nick Shadow for the first time, with rising star
Robert Murray (a former young
artist on the Jette Parker programme at the Royal Opera House)
taking the leading role of Tom Rakewell. The young Irish singer
Sinéad Campbell sings the
role of his beloved Anne Trulove, with
Susan Bickley (Barba the
Turk), Stephen Richardson
(Father Trulove), Phyllis Cannan
(Mother Goose) and Christopher
Gillett (Sellem). It will be conducted by
Martin André, who recently
made his Colorado Central City Opera debut conducting
La Traviata.
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Così fan tutte, Mozart’s
glorious exploration of the nature of young love, will be revived
this year, in one of Garsington Opera’s most celebrated
productions. Created in 2004 by director
John Cox, the opera will be
conducted by Steuart Bedford
with Teuta Koço, winner of
the first Leonard Ingrams Award, singing the role of Despina.
Anna Stéphany and
Erica Eloff sing Fiordiligi
and Dorabella respectively.
The men’s roles are taken by D’Arcy
Bleiker (Guglielmo), Ashley
Catling (Ferrando) and
Riccardo Novaro (Don Alfonso). Garsington Opera will give a
concert performance of this opera on Friday 11 July at the Barbican,
as part of the Mostly Mozart festival.
Sung
in their original languages, with surtitles, all three operas will
be staged
on the terrace of the Jacobean Manor house
and performed with the Garsington Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
Lighting is by Bruno Poet.
Before and during the season, Garsington Opera will run an extensive
education programme with schools in Oxfordshire.
L’incoronazione
di Dario 4, 8, 14, 20, 25, 28 June, 5 July
6.05pm
Così
fan tutte
7, 9, 15, 22, 24, 26 June, 2, 4 July 5.35pm
The Rake’s
Progress
19, 21, 27, 29 June, 3, 6 July 6.05pm
BOX
OFFICE: GENERAL PUBLIC BOOKING OPENS
21 April 2008
Tickets £80
– £135
Telephone 01865 361636 Garsington
Opera, Garsington, Oxford OX44 9DH
www.garsingtonopera.org
The season will open with Vivaldi's
L'incoronazione di Dario. While Vivaldi is principally known for the
Four Seasons and his violin concertos, his rich operatic works are
seldom heard. This will mark the first ever performance in Britain of
this work.
Cosi fan tutte, Mozart’s glorious exploration of the nature of young
love, returns in a revival of one of Garsington Opera's most celebrated
productions.
Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, unarguably one of the greatest operas
of the twentieth century, completes the season.
For Performance Schedule see
Garsington Opera - Performance schedule
Donizetti’s operatic rarity Emilia
di Liverpool will be staged by the European Opera Centre in the
magnificently restored Concert Room of St. George’s Hall, Liverpool from
31 December 2007 to 5 January 2008.
This operatic rarity, rediscovered by Fritz Spiegl, was presented in
1957 for the 750th anniversary of
Liverpool’s charter. (Joan Sutherland
sang the title role for the subsequent BBC relay.) It will be performed
in the round in a production directed by the young Spanish director
Ignacio Garcia and will be conducted by Italian Giovanni Pacor, of Arena
di Verona. The designer is Elisabetta Pian and the lighting designer is
José Luis Canales. Talented young singers have been selected from
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Spain
with an orchestra of young musicians from Liverpool’s associate cities –
Bremen, Gdansk and from Liverpool itself. The production will tour to
Gdansk (19 and 20 January), to Bremen (24, 25 and 26 January) and to
Naples later in the year.
Few UK cities can claim to be the setting for a work by a major operatic
composer. Donizetti’s choice of Liverpool for his virtuosic bel canto
work reflects his romantic imagination and stage directions refer to
rustic scenery of deep forests, mountain glens and dizzy precipices. The
city did, however, possess an exotic reputation and by the end of the
nineteenth century, the influx of Italian craftsmen to Liverpool created
a thriving Italian quarter which is now being rediscovered and
acknowledged as part of the City’s cultural landscape.
For these performances, which open Liverpool’s year as European Capital
of Culture, the European Opera Centre has commissioned a new edition of
the opera from the French musicologist, Gilles Rico, who has worked from
all the available manuscripts in Bergamo, Naples and Paris.
In addition to support from the European Union, the European Opera
Centre gratefully acknowledges support from the Geoffrey C Hughes
Charitable Trust for these performances.
Performances: Concert Room, St. George’s Hall,William Brown Street,
Liverpool
31 December 7pm tickets: £55, £75 (with complimentary champagne)
1 January 3pm tickets: £8, £12
2,3,4,5 January 7pm tickets: £25, £35
Box Office: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic 0151 709 3789
Notes:
European Opera Centre
Launched in 1997, with leadership from major opera houses in Europe, the
European Opera Centre, based in Liverpool, provides practical training
for singers and other young Europeans intending to develop a career in
opera. The Centre's work has received strong political and financial
support from the European Union. Established within the Liverpool Hope
University Everton Campus, intensive rehearsal periods lead to staged
productions, concert performances, recordings and other projects. Since
its launch in 1997, the Centre has attracted trainees from 33 European
countries many of whom have gone on to take leading roles in major opera
houses.
www.operaeurope.org
The Concert Room, St. George’s Hall
Refurbished in 2006, the Concert
Hall is a magnificent circular room, half embedded in the main building
and the other half projecting externally as an apse.
The stage, 30 feet by 12 feet, was originally designed to accommodate an
orchestra. The acoustics are excellent due to the panelling fixed free
of the walls, which acts as a sounding board.
The interior has been described as 'perhaps the finest example of early
Victorian interior design'.
The Concert Hall provides a stunning location for your event and with
the addition of breakout rooms is an ideal setting for prestige
conferences and seminars.
St George's Hall was designed by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, a young
architect who won two separate design competitions, one for a concert
hall for the people of Liverpool, and one for the city's Law Courts.
Both these designs were then incorporated into one building - St
George's Hall which was opened in 1855.
The building has several distinct areas, the Great Hall, with its world
famous Willis Organ, Minton tiled floor and high vaulted ceiling, can
seat 1100 people.
At either end are two court rooms, the Crown Court and the Civil Court
which were last used in 1984.
There is also a wonderful Concert Hall which can seat 400 people and is
thought to be the best example of interior design by Charles Robert
Cockerell as well as various other functions rooms and the old prisoner
accommodation in the basement.
After the Law Courts moved elsewhere the Hall was left to languish until
1992, when partial refurbishment meant the Great Hall and associated
ante rooms could be opened for public use.
This area continues to be in huge demand for exhibitions, conferences,
dinners and concerts, although it only utilises 25% of the building.
St Georges
Hall - The Official Tourist Information Website for Liverpool and
Merseyside
Bampton
Classical Opera 2008 Season
W.A. Mozart
Apollo and Hyacinth and C.W. Gluck Le
cinesi
with the Bampton
Classical Players
Tuesday 17
June, Whichford House, near Shipston-on-Stour
(Mozart only)
Sunday and Monday 24,25 August, The Orangery
Terrace, Westonbirt
Saturday 4 October, Music at Wotton (Mozart only;
with piano)
Conductor:
Murray Hipkin
Director:
Jeremy Gray
Singers:
Martene Grimson, Amanda Pitt, Serena Kay, Lina
Markeby, Tom Raskin
Ferdinando Paer Leonora (UK
premiere)
Friday 18 and Saturday 19
July, The Deanery garden, Bampton, with the
Orchestra of Bampton Classical Opera
Tuesday 16 September, St John’s Smith Square, with
the
London Mozart Players
Conductor:
Robin Newton
Director:
Jeremy Gray
Singers:
Cara McHardy, Emily Rowley Jones, Michael
Bracegirdle. Jonathan Stoughton, John Upperton,
Adrian Powter, Samuel Evans
Bampton Classical Opera Presents Vivaldi by Candlelight
Bampton Classical Opera celebrates St
Beornwald’s day, the patron saint of Bampton, on 21 December
with a concert by candlelight of Vivaldi’s
The Four Seasons, the
motet
Laudate
pueri and operatic arias.
The
concert features the Bampton Classical Players, a new and exciting
group of period instrument specialists inspired and led by violinist
Camilla Scarlett. Bampton Classical Opera’s artistic director, Gilly
French, is delighted the group has been formed, “We’ve been
considering how to incorporate period instruments into Bampton
Classical Opera’s work for some time but this has been difficult as
we mostly perform outside; this Vivaldi programme, including
operatic arias, in St Mary’s Church gives us the ideal opportunity
to perform with a period ensemble for the first time.”
Between each
concerto of the familiar The
Four Seasons mezzo-soprano Serena Kay, seen this year in
Bampton’s touring production of Haydn’s
L’infedeltà
delusa,
sings Vivaldi arias - including “Alma oppressa”
from La
fida ninfa, “Fingi
d’avere un cor”
from
Arsilda, “Tu
dormi in tante
pene” from
Tito Manlio
and “Armatae face et
anguibus” from the oratorio
Juditha
triumphans - while Gilly
French performs the coloratura motet,
Laudate
pueri.
The concert will
end an excellent year for Bampton Classical Opera, after its
production of Benda’s
Romeo and Juliet was a
critical success. Plans are in place for the 2008 season and Bampton
Classical Opera continues its tradition of introducing rare works
from the Classical period, with the UK premiere of
Leonora by
Ferdinando
Paer. Further details of the 2008 season
will be announced in the New Year.
Listing
Information:
Vivaldi by candlelight
Vivaldi
The
Four Seasons; Laudate
pueri; Operatic arias
Camilla Scarlett
(violin) Gilly French (soprano) Serena Kay (mezzo) The Bampton
Classical Players
Time: 7.30pm
Date: Friday 21
December 2007
Venue: St Mary’s
Church, Bampton
Tickets: £10 (available from 1 December)
Booking details:
in person
from the Cotton Club Bampton, Music Stand Witney or at the door
by
post from Hardy’s Barn, The Lane, Langford,
Gloucestershire GL7 3LF, telephone 01367 860574.
LONGBOROUGH FESTIVAL OPERA
2008 Something for Everyone
Longborough Festival Opera are delighted to announce that following
its great success this year, its production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold
will return for a limited number of performances in 2008. Anthony Negus
returns to conduct Alan Privett’s production and it is hoped that most
of the 2007 company will be returning to repeat their roles. This is the
start of LFO’s Ring Cycle, which will continue in future years.
The season will open with a new production of Verdi’s La Traviata.
Set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, it takes as its
basis La Dame aux Caméllias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, published in 1848.
This tragic love story, full of wonderful melody, is always popular with
opera-goers.
In 2008 Longborough will stage it’s first Janá?ek opera – the composer’s delightful The
Cunning Little Vixen. Written in 1924, when the composer was seventy,
this is Janá?ek 's lightest opera. In it, the composer moved away from
the more conversational style of previous and subsequent operas with to
a more folk-like style.
Details will be announced shortly for the education programme for
2008.
Amanda Laidler Longborough Festival Opera 01451-830292 or
07702-721775
www.longboroughopera.com
Julia Gasper 4 June 2007
Two
live sheep will be appearing on
(9, 13, 18, 24, 28 June, 1, 4, 9 July 6.30pm
) stage in the new Garsington Opera production of Mozart’s Il Rè Pastore
(The Shepherd King).
I am told that the sheep studied at the Royal
College of Music before winning prizes at various singing competitions
around the country – which is a shame, as Mozart did not write any arias for
them. But being sheep, they may just momentarily up-stage some of the other
characters, which include a beautiful shepherdess, a shepherd who is really
a Prince, a fugitive princess, and Alexander the Great, the benign ruler
obligatory in operas written for the Hapsburg court.
We are
very fortunate to have the up-and-coming soprano
Lucy Crowe singing the role of the heroine,
Elisa. Lucy, who trained at the Royal Academy, sang at Garsington two years
ago, when she took the part of Susannah in another Mozart opera, the
Marriage of Figaro. Since then she has sung the role of Agrippina in
Poppea at the Coliseum, and has been booked to sing the lead in Der
Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden in 2009. Lucy has been
dashing up and down between Oxford and London to rehearse at Garsington in
between singing in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Despite the torrential
rain of the Bank Holiday weekend, (and actually there is an aria in Il Rè
Pastore, sung by Alexander, that is meant to represent storm and driving
rain!) she is thrilled to be back at Garsington, which she considers an
ideal venue for performing Mozart.
“It’s so tranquil and beautiful,” she says, “you can really believe that
you are back in Mozart’s time when you perform here. When rehearsals are
manic, the surroundings of gardens and the rural views are perfect for
creating the atmosphere we need. And the house has an amazing feel to it.
I’m really excited to be back here at Garsington. Both of my solo arias are
very demanding – the first one, when Elisa expresses her love for Aminta,
and the second, a complete contrast, when she is separated from him, she
thinks, forever. She gets quite angry.” In the opera, Lucy will be tightly
laced into a corset (she took a deep lungful of air before they measured her
for it) and sings opposite another soprano, Cora Burggraf, as Mozart wrote
the role of Aminta for a castrato, Tommaso Consolo.
This
is not a juvenile work. Mozart was a veteran of nineteen when he wrote it.
He was already the best opera composer in the world, and while he enjoyed
writing things that are exceedingly challenging for the singers, he
understood that each part needed to have music that was individually crafted
to the character. Additions had to be made to the old libretto by Metastasio
to permit Mozart to write an exciting finale for all five singers in
ensemble – a tour-de-force ending that became very much his hallmark. As
there are three sopranos altogether, and two tenors, this is a unique piece
of writing and very demanding for all the soloists.
The
courtiers of Vienna loved to watch stories set in an idyllic Arcadian world,
where nothing but flowers bloom beneath the shepherdesses’ dainty feet, and
after two and a half Acts of thwarted love, tyrannical decrees, misery,
anguish, bewilderment and shock revelations, everything returns to being
idyllic. Even the sheep live happily ever after. Whatever the weather brings
in the next week or so before the opening night, we can look forward with
great excitement to what promises to be a really sparkling and memorable
production.
BOX
OFFICE:
About Lucy Crowe
January
2007
Lucy was born in Staffordshire and studied at the Royal
Academy of Music, where her teachers included Beatrice Unsworth and Clara
Taylor. She received the Royal Overseas Gold Medal in 2002,
won the Second Prize at last year’s Kathleen
Ferrier Awards and is a Wigmore Young Artist.
She has
sung with the English Concert under Andrew Manze in Poland and Belgium,
‘Dido and Aeneas’ with the Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment under Richard Egarr at the Barbican and at the BBC Proms,
Vaughan Williams ‘Pastoral Symphony’ with the City of London Sinfonia under
Richard Hickox, ‘Messiah’ under Trevor
Pinnock in Canada, Harry Christophers in Japan and Sir David Willcocks at
the Royal Albert Hall and Gounod’s ‘Messe Solennelle’ in St
Sulpice, also under Sir David Willcocks. At the Aldeburgh Festival she has
sung ‘Acis and Galatea’ (Galatea) under Richard Egarr, Britten’s ‘Praise we
Great Men’ with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo,
and Mendelssohn’s
‘Lobgesang’ under Paul Daniel. She recently toured Italy and Portugal with
Trevor Pinnock and sang with the English concert at Wigmore Hall and in
Malaga.
Opera
engagements include, most recently, a highly successful Sophie in ‘Der
Rosenkavalier’ for Scottish Opera. Other engagements include Susanna in ‘Le
Nozze di Figaro’ for Garsington Opera, Michal in
Handel’s ‘Saul’ and Susanna for Opera North, the ‘Early
Earth Operas’, an education project with the English National Opera;
‘Mitridate’ with the Classical Opera Company; the title role in ‘The
Cunning Little Vixen’ with British Youth Opera, Narcissa in Haydn’s
‘Philemon und Baucis’ in the Eisenstadt Haydn Festival under Trevor Pinnock
and Juno in Purcell’s ‘The Fairy Queen’ for the London Bach Festival at The
Linbury Studio, Covent Garden.
Lucy has given recitals at, the Brighton, Belfast,
Norfolk and Norwich Festivals, at St Martin in the Fields, Chelsea Arts
Club, National Portrait Gallery and Wigmore Hall.
Her current and future engagements include Poppea in ‘Agrippina’ and
Drusilla in ‘The Coronation of Poppea’ for ENO, Elisa in ‘Il Re Pastore’ for
Garsington Opera and Nanetta in ‘Falstaff’ for Scottish Opera.
          
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