Continuing where Handel left off: Opera Settecento's completion of Handel's Titus L'Empereur at London Handel Festival was a terrific showcase for some of the composer's lesser-known arias

Handel/Renioult/Duarte: Titus l'Empereur; Steffen Jespersen, Rachel Redmond, Chiara Hendrick, Hugo Hymas, Lucija Vaarsic, Edward Grint, Francis Gush, Opera Settecento, Leo Duarte; London Handel Festival at St George's Church, Hanover Square
Reviewed 5 March 2026

Handel's tantalising unfinished, unrealised operatic fragment used as the starting point for a Racine-inspired opera showcasing some of Handel's lesser-known arias in engaging and involving performances 

During the 1731/32 season, Handel began a new opera, titled on the manuscript Titus l'Empereur. Only the overture, three scenes including two arias were completed. Handel seems to have abandoned the work and the material was reused in his next opera Ezio (which was delivered late). 

Having given us a whole sequence of Handel's pasticcios, Leo Duarte and Opera Settecento turned to Titus l'empereur for their latest project at the London Handel Festival. On Thursday 5 March 2026 at St George's Church, Hanover Square, they performed a 'new' Handel pasticcio, Titus l'empereur with new recitatives by Pierre-Antoine Renioult and arias from Handel's operas (mainly pre-1732) chosen by Leo Duarte. Countertenor Steffen Jespersen was Titus (emperor of Rome), soprano Rachel Redmond (queen of Palestine, betrothed to Titus) was Berenice, mezzo-soprano Ciara Hendrick was Antioco (king of Comagène and in love with Berenice), tenor Hugo Hymas was Paolino (a confidant of Titus), Lucija Varsic who won the audience prize at last year's Handel Singing Competition was Dalinda (a confidante of Berenice), baritone Edward Grint was Oldauro (a Roman tribune), and countertenor Francis Gush was Arsete (a confidant of Antioco).

Handel's libretto for the putative Titus l'Empereur has not survived, but it seems to have been intended as an adaptation of Racine's 1670 play Bérénice. Given Handel's use of French in the title (despite the opera being in Italian), commentators suggest that Racine's play was being adapted directly and that the halting of work was caused by the librettist not being up to the task. Bérénice is in fact a relatively strange work to be considered for adaptation for an Italian opera. The entire play is taken up with the complexities of Titus and Berenice's relationship when he becomes emperor but discovers the Roman people do not want a foreign queen, add in his friend Antioco's unspoken love for Berenice and you have a complex triangle. But that is it. There is no subplot. It is worth bearing in mind that when Handel set the Alceste story in his opera Admeto the librettist introduced an entire subplot that is not in Euripides and not in Gluck's Alceste.

Opera Settecento's solution was to enlist the help of Professor Patrick Boyde in creating a libretto out of Racine's play, which was then translated into Italian by Matteo Dalle Fratte and the recitative set by Pierre-Antoine Renioult in Handelian style. Leo Duarte chose the arias, focusing on the lesser known music from Handel's operas pre-1732 including some that had never been performed. The result did exactly what pasticcios were often intended to do, to showcase music. We had arias from Amadigi, Floridante, Giulio Cesare, Lucio Silla, Ottone, Rinaldo, Scipione, Tamerlano and of course the original ones from Titus l'Empereur which found their way, in altered form, into Ezio. For the more nerdy amongst us, it was a shame that the programme was not able to give us more context for this music. So that, for instance, at a climactic point in Act Two Berenice sings 'Piangero la sore mia' from Giulio Cesare, but it definitely was not the well-known version of the aria. 

With one exception, arias were sung with their original texts which is something that may not have happened in Handel's day but which is more understandable in our present musicologically conscious age. 

Whether Racine's Bérénice was the idea vehicle is a point in question. Handel may have indeed been right. The final opera as performed in St George's Hanover Square might have been called 'Titus the ditherer'. Or, given that the plot happens almost simultaneously with that of Mozart's opera, The Dithering of Titus!

Applications open for The Cumnock Tryst's 2nd International Summer School for Composers with Sir James MacMillan & Brett Dean

Dumfries House where The Cumnock Tryst's 2nd International Summer School for Composers takes place

The Cumnock Tryst's 2nd International Summer School for Composers will run from 22 to 28 August 2026 at Dumfries House. The course will be led by The Cumnock Tryst’s Founder and Artistic Director, Sir James MacMillan, and acclaimed Australian composer and violist, Brett Dean, and for the first time The Cumnock Tryst is partnering with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), who will provide an octet of musicians to work alongside the composers throughout the week.  

The inaugural course in 2024 attracted composers from across the UK, Europe, North America and China. The 2026 course will offer eight selected composers an exceptional opportunity to develop their craft throughout the week under the guidance of MacMillan and Dean as well as giving participants the invaluable experience of hearing their works shaped and rehearsed by professional orchestral musicians in real time. 

Sir James MacMillan commented: "The Cumnock Tryst is committed to encouraging the composers of today at all levels, from the very young in our East Ayrshire home to advanced international students at the beginning of their careers. The course also signals The Cumnock Tryst’s intentions to amplify our international standing and impact in the world of contemporary music."

Te course will culminate on Friday 28 August in a public performance of the new works at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s New Auditorium at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, presenting the eight compositions created during the course, performed by the RSNO ensemble.

The course is open to composers aged 18 and older. There is no maximum age limit, reflecting The Cumnock Tryst’s commitment to making the course as inclusive and accessible as possible. Applications should be submitted via the Cumnock Tryst website 

‘Somewhere further North’: has an authentic voice from England’s ‘living centre of music’ survived in Andrew Downes?

Andrew Downes (1950-2023)

During 2026 Prima Facie is releasing three albums celebrating the choral works of the late Andrew Downes conducted by David Trippett. 

The first disc is released this month (March 2026) and features the premiere recording of Andrew Downes’ A St Luke Passion alongside his sacred choral music performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Philharmonia Voices conducted by David Trippett. In this guest article, David Trippett considers Andrew Downes's legacy.

Recent calls to ‘level up’ appear to have aged badly. The political slogan of the 2019 general election was short lived, but its consequences left the fate of English National Opera in the balance, even as it sought to champion left-behind bastions of culture outside London (via a £4.8B fund allocated to ‘maintaining, regenerating, or creatively repurposing existing cultural … assets’).  For decades, cultural historians have been suspicious of centre/periphery models – noting their hidden assumptions about hierarchy, homogeneity, and national prioritisation. In the event, the levelling-up fund was quietly retired (in 2022), exposed as so much hocus-pocus. Few would question the degree to which London’s musical institutions have drawn the lion’s share of investment in the arts, so the idea that musical activities outside the capital are somehow lesser lingers stubbornly. Exceptions abound (I hear you shout!), yet the very word provincial still carries a telltale hint of condescension.

In 1903, Elgar felt the need was the other way around. In a letter to The Musical Times he judged that the real engine of musical growth in England lay outside the capital. ‘Some day’ he mused, ‘the press will awaken to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North.’

Mosaic Seasons presents Music of Our Time at Bechstein Hall

Mosaic Seasons was founded in 2023 by composer Tatiana Svetlova as a classical music festival based in the South of France and Monaco. The festival envisions envisions a creative dialogue between music, poetry, art, and dance, and its Music of Today series focuses on contemporary music. Svetlova is now expanding the reach of the festival to London and on 14 March 2026 Mosaic Seasons presents Music of Our Time at Bechstein Hall. Pianists Edna Stern, Evelyne Berezovsky, and Louis-Victor Bak will perform music by Silvina Milstein, Geoff King, Tatiana Svetlova, Edna Stern, and George Benjamin.

The programme opens with a pairing of Silvina Milstein’s Piano Phantasy after Mozart K. 475 and Mozart’s Fantasia No. 4 in C minor, K. 475. Milstein’s piece transforms Mozart’s Fantasia into a rhapsodic exploration of tonality. Geoff King's David in Hastings is the third movement of his suite family photos which was written as a companion to Schumann's Carnaval.

Audiences will hear two works by Tatiana Svetlova that blend playfulness with reflective depth. Sonnets No. 4 and 5 on the Theme of Bach’s Chaconne represents her own reflections on Bach's chaconne. Madonna and Child (for Gaudi’s La Pedrera) is a meditative homage to the architect Antoni Gaudi, who wanted to create the sculpture of Madonna and Child on the roof of La Pedrera in Barcelona, but the developer refused this plan. 

Edna Stern will perform three of her own compositions: Prelude without a C/do, Etude “La disparition d’après Perec” without E/mi, and Kidnapped: 7.X.2023. These pieces are inspired by Georges Perec’s novel La Disparition (a novel written without the letter E) and his poems that systematically suppress a letter. They explore this systematic absence through musical language. 

The evening concludes with George Benjamin's Shadowlines, sequence of six canonic preludes written for Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Full details from Bechstein Hall website. 

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival, which evolved from the old Norfolk & Norwich Triennial, blazes a cultural trail for the East Anglian region

Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus who perform Walton's Belshazzar's Feast at this year's Festival

By far the largest arts festival in the East of England and the fourth largest in the UK, the 2026 Norfolk & Norwich Festival runs from Friday 8 to Sunday 24 May offering a grand cultural feast to include a performance of Walton’s magnificent Belshazzar’s Feast by the Norwich Philharmonic Society. 

Without a shadow of doubt, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, one of the oldest music and arts festivals in England established in 1772 to raise funds for the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital, has a glorious and illustrious past of attracting major international soloists and orchestras which, I’m pleased to say, continues to this very day. 

However, the festival has moved on over the years thus becoming a triennial event in 1824 rotating between the cities of Birmingham and Leeds much in the same way as the Three Choirs Festival rotates to this very day between the cathedral cities of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester. 

And from 1988, the festival has been held on an annual basis and, therefore, each year presents a host of international performers working alongside emerging talent and homegrown East Anglian artists in an expansive and engaging programme featuring not only classical and choral music but also taking in drama, dance and film with the literature and visual arts side of the festival ever growing. 

A charity-funded organisation supported by Arts Council England and Norwich City Council with generous support coming from a multitude of sponsors and donors, the festival also offers a year-round programme of creativity and culture for children, young people and their communities like no other. 

This year’s edition not only takes over the fine city of Norwich for 17 wondrous and action-packed days but spreads out for the first time into Norfolk with events taking place at Wells-next-the-Sea, Lowestoft, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Diss and Swaffham thereby transforming the county into a hive of cultural activity.  

Norwich Cathedral Choir (Photo: Bill Smith / Norwich Cathedral)

Double, Double Toil & Trouble: the recorder quartet Palisander explore 900 years of music inspired by the mystical and magical

Double, Double Toil & Trouble : Palisander 
Reviewed 24 February 2025

An engaging look at music for recorder inspired by the mystical and magical spanning 900 years from Hildegard of Bingen through to the winner of the BBC Radio 3/National Centre for Early Music for the 2021 Young Composers’ Award

Having given us a debut disc broadly inspired by the idea of tarantism, the latest disc from recorder quartet, Palisander (Tabea Debus, Lydia Gosnell, Miriam Monaghan & Caoimhe de Paor), Double, Double Toil & Trouble is equally imaginative. With repertoire spanning some 600 years, the disc is inspired by the mystical and magical. 

There are modern versions of traditional pieces alongside music by Hildegard of Bingen, Diego Ortiz, Cipriano de Rore, Maddelena Casulana, Anthony Holborne Sweelinck, Bach, Tartini, and a suite from Purcell's The Fairy Queen, plus Kepler's Planets by Miriam Monaghan who plays with the group, and the winner of the BBC Radio 3/National Centre for Early Music for the 2021 Young Composers’ Award (18-25 Category), Kagura Suite by Delyth Field.

The Tempest: Vache Baroque collaborates with Out of Chaos theatre company to present a 17th century semi-opera remade

Pergolesi's L'Olimpiade at Vache Baroque in 2024 (Photo: Michael Wheatley) - [see my review] 

The 17th-century English tradition of the dramatick opera (often called semi-opera nowadays) remains a fascinating challenge for modern performers with much fine music attached to long and seemingly unworthy texts. Semi-operas ran in London from roughly 1673 to 1712, in other words from the Restoration to the establishment of regular Italian opera. Though the best known name attached to the genre is Henry Purcell, music could often be provided by a selection of composers. 

For more on semi-opera see my article The Invention of English Opera: the surprising history of opera in 17th century England - from masques to dramatic-opera 

In 1674, there was The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island with a libretto by Thomas Shadwell (who became Poet Laureate in 1689) based on John Dryden and William Davenant's adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest (this was a period when few Shakespeare plays were performed unaltered). The music by was provided by Matthew Locke, Giovanni Battista Draghi and Pelham Humfrey, a fine trio of composers. 

Towards the end of semi-opera in London (the large-scale ones were getting too expensive), The Tempest was revived again. This time in 1712, still with Shadwell's text but with new music that was long attributed to Henry Purcell but may be by John Weldon. In 1701 Weldon took part in, and won, the competition to set Congreve's libretto The Judgement of Paris to music and his music for this was recorded for the first time in 2025 by Julian Perkins and the Academy of Ancient Music [see my review].

Now for its Summer 2026 festival, Vache Baroque is joining forces with the theatre company Out of Chaos (artistic director Paul O'Mahoney) to present The Tempest, a semi-opera inspired by Shakespeare's play and featuring music by Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke, Pelham Humfrey, and others including a full Purcell masque, along with pieces by other European composers of the period, shanties, and improvisations. The Vache's landscape setting with its lake and trees makes it an ideal venue for the venture. The Tempest will be directed by Paul O’Mahony (of Out of Chaos), choreographed by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster and designed by Caitlin Mawhinney. Jonathan Darbourne will direct the Vache Baroque Band with a cast of singers including Stephanie Hershaw, Isabelle Peters, Camilla Seale, Conor Prendiville and Ross Cumming alongside actors from Out of Chaos.

Still on-theme, Water Music will feature a concert of water-themed works (but not Handel's famous one) featuring Sophia Prodanova (violin) and Isabelle Peters (soprano) plus sound recordist Chris Watson with music by Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi and Maria Martines (her cantata La Tempesta from 1778). Jonathan Darbourne directs the Vache Baroque Band and Singers.

Full details from the Vache Baroque website. 

 

Rossini's William Tell, Previn's Streetcar, Golijov's Ayre and more: Boston Lyric Opera celebrates 50 years

Boston Lyric Opera (BLO), New England’s largest and most enduring opera company, is in celebratory mood. Founded in 1976, 2026 is its 50th year and 2026/27 is its 50th season. And recent seasons have seen the company experience significant growth. During its 2024/25 Season, BLO welcomed more than 22,000 audience members — its highest figures in more than a decade. Between 2019 and 2025, audience members aged 18 to 34 years old have tripled in number and audience racial diversity has increased by 70 percent.

This month BLO opens its Opera + Community Studios, a renovated and repurposed space that will serve as a rehearsal centre and administrative headquarters, and operate as a shared creative hub available to regional arts organizations and community groups. The opening is celebrated with a new production of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde reimagined and staged by BLO Artistic Associate Anne Bogart, and conducted by BLO's music director David Angus, from 20 to 29 March 2026.

The 50th season launches in October 2026 with a new production of Rossini's Guillaume Tell, conducted by David Angus, directed by Vita Tzykun and David Adam Moore​, with George Gagnidze, Konu Kim [a former Jette Parker Young Artist at Covent Garden] and Anya Matanovič. Other operas during the season include André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire, conducted by Daniela Candillari​ and directed by Patricia Racette, the soprano who is now director of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis [she was Giorgetta in Covent Garden's 2016 revival of Puccini's Il trittico, see my review, and sang the title role in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at ENO in 2015, see my review]; a semi-staged performance of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades with the BLO Chorus being joined by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus; and a new production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro featuring Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha as the Countess.

A new community opera by composer Carlos Simon and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer/former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith had been commissioned by BLO and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Telling the stories of Bostonians and featuring dozens of community organisations, the opera will premiere at Symphony Hall, Boston in May 2027.

Other events at  Opera + Community Studios include celebrity gala featuring tenor Michael Fabiano, and a staging of Osvaldo Golijov’s genre-defying work, Ayre, that draws on Jewish, Arab and Christian traditions to illuminate their connections -- and their tensions. Arye stars soprano Ailyn Pérez who made her debut with BLO as Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro during the 30th anniversary season.

Full details from the company's website. 

Vital, alive & compelling: Handel's Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno from David Bates & La Nuova Musica at Wigmore Hall

Handel: Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno - Jeanine De Bique, Polly Leech, Christopher Lowrey, Nick Pritchard, La Nuova Musica, David Bates - Wigmore Hall (Photo: image capture from Wigmore Hall live stream)

Handel: Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno; Jeanine De Bique, Polly Leech, Christopher Lowrey, Nick Pritchard, La Nuova Musica, David Bates; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 28 February 2026

Vivid musical presence and compelling drama make this concert performance of Handel's first oratorio an engrossing evening, vividly alive and vital playing combining with vocal beauty and sense of drama 

Handel's first oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusion) had a remarkably long life. Premiered in Rome in 1707 during Handel's youthful Italian trip, the work not only provided source material for many of Handel's subsequent works, but resurfaced in London in 1737 (and 1739) in a revised and expanded version, still in Italian, as Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità and finally was recast in English as The Triumph of Time and Truth in 1757 as a stop-gap because the blind and ageing Handel was no longer capable of writing new work.

It is a remarkably exuberant piece. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili's highly intelligent libretto might be somewhat conceptual with conversion of Beauty from a yearning for worldly enjoyment personified by Pleasure to an aspiration to more secure rewards revealed by Time and Disillusion, but in execution Pamphili gave Handel sufficient character and drama that the composer was to create a quasi-opera. It is worth bearing in mind that the work was written at a time when there was no opera in Rome. The piece works as a psychological study, as demonstrated by Jacopo Spirei's staging at Buxton in 2024 which successfully recast the oratorio as family drama. But it also contains music which demonstrates Handel at his best. Italy had clearly been liberating for him and his musico-dramatic experiments in his cantatas paid dividends in works like Il trionfo.

David Bates and La Nuova Musica treated us to Handel's original Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 28 February 2026. Soprano Jeanine De Bique was Belezza, mezzo-soprano Polly Leech as Piacere, countertenor Christopher Lowrey as Disinganno and tenor Nick Pritchard was Tempo. David Bates directed the 17 players of La Nuova Musica from the harpsichord.

Tea for Two - Spring Songs: Caroline Taylor & George Ireland mine unrecorded 19th century song from Musica Britannica for their debut album

Caroline Taylor (Photo: Alia Thomas)

It never fails to amaze me how much good music fails to become common knowledge even when available in good modern editions. Solomon's Knot's espousal of the work of 17th century composer George Jeffreys [see my review of their recent concert at Wigmore Hall] despite his English sacred music being available in Musica Britannica volume 105 (published in 2021) is a case in point.

Musica Britannica volume 56, somewhat laconically titled Songs, 1860-1900 and edited by composer Geoffrey Bush was published in 1989. Yet a new recording project is set to mine it for still unrecorded songs.

Soprano Caroline Taylor and pianist George Ireland received a Musica Britannica Recording Award last year for the planned recording, Tea for Two: Spring Songs which will include songs by Sullivan, Alexander Mackenzie, Arthur Goring Thomas, Frederick Cowen, Maude Valérie White, Liza Lehmann and Hamish MacCunn, all culled from Musica Britannica volume 56. The selection includes 12 songs (of 18 in total) that do not seem to have been recorded before.

On Sunday 15 March 2026, Caroline Taylor and George Ireland will begin their journey of recording the album with a concert at St Columba’s Church, Knightsbridge. Further information from the church website. During April, Caroline Taylor will be singing in Verdi's La Traviata with Hurn Court Opera.

The disc is due for release in 2027, so watch this space. 

Cheltenham Music Festival's Composer Academy returns with Laura Bowler, George Parris & The Carice Singers

George Parris & The Carice Singers at Cheltenham Music Festival Composer Academy

Cheltenham Music Festival has announced the 2026 season of its highly regarded programme for early-career composers, Composer Academy, which will be led this year by composer Laura Bowler. The intensive five-day course, which takes place alongside Cheltenham Music Festival in early July, will be led by Bowler as director along with George Parris [see my 2025 interview with him] who returns as music director with his ensemble The Carice Singers. Selected composers will have their work performed by Parris and The Carice Singers in a special showcase concert as part of the Festival.

The course offers early-career composers the chance to feel more immersed in the professional classical music world, says George Parris:

"Our aim is to create the most conducive environment possible for emerging composers. The scheme offers an innovative environment of experimentation for new voices – it’s a laboratory for new music! Our goal is to create productive dialogue and community between composers and industry figures, which leads to better work more widely promoted. Composing doesn’t have to be a lonely game!"

While The Carice Singers will premiere the pieces completed during the week – participants are expected to bring with them a piece 80% completed – composers of all musical styles, and of any age, are encouraged to apply. The minimum age of participants is 18 and there is no upper age limit. Composers from any and all backgrounds are welcome, and no formal education in composition is necessary. In addition to the Cheltenham performance, all works composed for the 2026 Academy will also receive a London premiere at Spitalfields Music Festival in 2027. 

Composer Academy will take place 6-10 July 2026. Applications open at the festival website from March 2.  Cheltenham Music Festival announces its full 2026 programme on March 6. 

Celebrating in style: current and past City Music Foundation Young Artists in showcase at the restored Great Hall of St Bart's

City Music Foundation 2025 Young Artists in the Great Hall at St Bart's

The City Music Foundation (CMF) was founded in 2012 and has developed significantly into an organisation that supports young artists by offering career development, turning talent into a success. For some years CMF has developed a relationship with St Barts giving concerts in the Great Hall. Following the recent restoration of the hall after extensive conservation and restoration work in the last two years under the direction of Will Palin and Barts Heritage, the Hall and the Hogarth Stair are looking absolutely stunning. By way of a celebration both of CMF and the Great Hall, there was a Meet the Artists event in the Great Hall on Wednesday 25 February where there was a chance not only to see the hall but to meet the CMF team and hear performances from some of the current CMF Young Artists, as well as being able to meet members of earlier cohorts including some of the first.

Proceedings were opened by percussionist James Larter (CMF 2021) playing Asventuras by Alexej Gerassimez, an amazing tour de force for untuned percussion. The first set also included pianist Nikita Lukinov (CMF 2024) playing Mikhail Pletnev's sparkling arrangement of the Adagio from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Suite, mezzo-soprano Joanna Harries (CMF 2024) and pianist Mihai Ritivoiu (CMF 2016) in If I loved you from Rogers & Hammerstein's Carousel, the wind quintet Ensemble Renard in terrific form in two movements from Bartok's Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Mikrokosmos Vol. 6 in arrangements by George Strivens, and soprano Caroline Taylor (CMF 2022) and pianist Sholto Kynoch in Schubert's Im Frühling.

The second set featured violinist Basil Alter (CMF 2025) and pianist Jack Redman (CMF 2024) in a bravura account of Tchaikovsky's Valse-scherzo, Intesa Duo (CMF 2025) consisting of Lucine Musaelian and Nathan Giorgetti (viols and voice) in a haunting Armenian traditional song Kakavik where Musaelian whilst playing the viol, Duo Melos (CMF 2024) consisting of Katie Taunton, flute, and Jack Redman, piano) in a fast and delightfully dazzling short piece by Dilys Elwyn-Edwards and a Welsh traditional song, A I want with Tom to Town arranged by Stephen Goss that proved to be rather perky and surprisingly complete, and finally pianist Sofia Sacco (CMF 2024) played Couperin's Le rossignol en amour and Kabalevsky's brilliant, rather neo-classical Prelude and Fugue in C Major, Op.61 No. 2.

The final set opened with soprano Theano Papdaki (CMF 2024) and percussionist James Larter in EL Vito for the lovely combination of voice and marimba. Then pianist Will Harmer (CMF 2025) played one of his own compositions, a fugue that was complex yet rather engaging; cellist Geirþrúður Anna Guðmundsdóttir (CMF 2024) and pianist Antoine Preat (CMF 2021) gave a vibrant, upfront account of the scherzo from Brahms' Sonatensatz; then baritone George Robarts (CMF 2024) and Will Harmer brought things to a lively, light-hearted yet apt conclusion with Noel Coward's There are bad times just around the corner.

The CMF programme of concerts continues on 11 March when cellist Arian Kashefi and pianist Petr Limonov are performing Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata and Amy Beach's Three Pieces, Op. 40 in the Great Hall in Barts North Wing. Full details from the CMF website.

From a Parisian salon to South America: Julieth Lozano Rolong charms & engages in her Salon Concert for Opera Rara with Anna Tilbrook at Bechstein Hall

Schubert, Donizetti, Yvette Souviron, Babi de Oliveira, Modesta Bor, Borja Mariño, Lia Cimaglia Espinosa, Jaime León, Zully Murillo, Margarita Lecuona, Maria Grever; Julieth Lozano Rolong, Anna Tilbrook; Opera Rara at Bechstein Hall 
Reviewed 26 February 2026

Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong mixes songs from Opera Rara's Donizetti Song Project with song more recent South American composers in an engaging recital full of charm the proved a lovely introduction to relatively little known repertoire

Opera Rara's Salon concerts are a chance to hear artists in concert in relative intimacy, often showcasing younger artists and providing a platform for the type of repertoire for which the company is known, not just rare operas but neglected 19th century song.

Its 13 volume Il Salotto on disc provided a delightful overview of 19th century salon life, and now the company is combining this effort with scholarship as Roger Parker and Ian Schofield have been creating a new edition of Donizetti's songs, all 200 of them (!), for Opera Rara's Donizetti Song Project. There are recordings, volumes 5 (in Italian) and 6 (in French) were issued last September and the project will culminate this summer when, following the release of Volume 8 with Nicola Alaimo and Carlo Rizzi on Friday 5 June, Opera Rara presents its final ‘Donizetti & Friends’ recital with the two artists at Wigmore Hall on Tuesday 16 June. And in February, the OPER! Awards honoured the Donizetti Song Project with the Best Complete Edition Award (replacing the usual Best Complete Opera award).

There was a chance to hear a pair of songs from the Donizetti Song Project in context at Opera Rara's Salon concert on Thursday 26 February 2026. This was at the new Bechstein Hall in Wigmore Street, the first of a planned series of collaborations between the hall and Opera Rara. Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong was accompanied by pianist Anna Tilbrook in an eclectic programme that mixed Donizetti and Schubert with songs by South American composers including four UK premieres.

Julieth Lozano Rolong made her debut with Opera Rara in the recording and performance of Puccini's final (1921) version of La rondine late last year and earlier this year she sang in the premiere of Dai Fujikura and Harry Ross's The Great Wave at Scottish Opera. In summer 2025 she sang in Campra's Le Carnaval de Venise with Vache Baroque and wrote an article for Planet Hugill about combining opera with circus skills [see Julieth Lozano Rolong's article]

At Bechstein Hall we heard songs by Yvette Souviron (1914-2010), Babi de Oliveira (1908-1993), Modesta Bor (1926-1998), Borja Mariño (born 1982), Lia Cimaglia Espinosa (1906-1998), Jaime León (1921-2015), Zully Murillo (born 1944), Margarita Lecuona (1910-1981) and Maria Grever (1885-1951), alongside Schubert's Heimliches Lieben and Gretchen am Spinnrade, and Donizetti's Les Billets doux and La Mere et l'enfant. All exploring themes of love, exploring the different angles of human expression through the lens of feminine voices.

A 365 year old ghost story into a surreal fantasy epic where drums, voice and orchestra collide: Sean Noonan's The Drummer of Tedworth

Sean Noonan by Linda Pedroso

Sean Noonan describes himself as a speaking drummer; he is a composer, and rhythmic storyteller whose music defies categorization. Drawing on the traditions of wandering minstrels and African griots, he weaves imaginative narratives through a distinctive polyrhythmic language that blends voice and percussion into his "fifth limb".

His piece, The Drummer of Tedworth, is a wild, immersive journey blending rock opera and punk-
jazz energy, blurring concert, theatre, and ritual, and the recording of it with the London Symphony Orchestra was released on Friday 20 February.

The work's premiere takes place on Monday 30 March 2026 at Milton Court in London when Sean Noonan will be joined St Paul's Sinfonia and Darren Bloom. The music is described as a fusion of jazz, contemporary classical, and global folklore in an immersive zany performance.

A concerto for anyone who’s ever doubted existence… and laughed anyway. 

Academically accomplished, Noonan holds a Doctorate from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, a Master’s in Composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music, and a Bachelor’s in Music Education from Berklee College of Music. His doctoral thesis, Rhythmic Storytelling with Drum and Voice (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), explores the intersection of narrative and percussion and is available via City, University of London’s open access archive. Early formative experiences included backing Hollywood legend Marni Nixon.

The recording of The Drummer of Tedworth is available from Sean Noonan's website,  tickets for the concert are available from the Guildhall School's website.

John Foulds, Edgar Bainton & Alan Rawsthorne premieres at this year's English Music Festival

The English Music Festival takes place at a new venue this year. From 22 to 25 May 2026, Dartington Hall in Devon will host the festival which was founded by Em Marshall-Luck. The festival will be featuring three premieres, works by John Foulds, Edgar Bainton and Alan Rawsthorne.

John Foulds' Caprice Pompadour and Alan Rawsthorne's Theme and Variations in A minor, both for violin and piano, will be featured in the recital by Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin) and Peter Cartwright (piano) which also includes music by Howells, Delius and Bliss along with the first professional performance of Four Deceptive Pieces by David Lewiston Sharpe.

John Foulds' Caprice Pompadour which receives its world premiere, was published in 1916 and is the revision of Foulds’ first publicly performed piece, Rhapsodie nach Heine of 1897. In his unfinished novel Florentine Nights, Heinrich Heine included a passage evoking a phantasmagorical violin recital by Paganini, which Foulds’ rendered into music once again through this sensational work.  Alan Rawsthorne's Theme and Variations in A minor is receiving its UK premiere. The movement comes from the second of Rawsthorne's two unpublished sonatas (dating from 1933/34), the second movement of which was released as in independent work in 1937.

The festival's third premiere is Edgar Bainton's To the Name above Every Name, a setting of the 17th century metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw, and the last of Bainton's choral works. Bainton completed the vocal score but left it unorchestrated. The work is being performed by the University of Exeter Chapel Choir, conductor Howard Ionascu in a programme that features music by Vaughan Williams, Britten, Elgar, Holst, Dyson, Howells and Robin Milford.

The festival opens with a concert featuring John Andrews conducting the London Mozart Players. Peter Cigleris will be the soloist in Finzi's Clarinet Concerto and Lucilla Rose Mariotti Banwell is the soloist in Thomas Linley's Violin Concerto. The concert also includes music by Thomas Pitfield, Delius, Howells and Alan Rawsthorne.

Elsewhere in the festival: 

• Ben Goldscheider and Simon Callaghan perform English music for horn and piano including sonatas by Bax, Vaughan Williams (reconstructed by Martin Yates), William Alwyn and York Bowen, along with Huw Watkins' Lament which was written for Goldscheider
• Violinist Madeleine Mitchell's London Chamber Ensemble perform string quartets by Alwyn, Howells, Delius and Charles Wood
• Guitarist Fabio Fernandes presents English music for guitar including music by Purcell, Duarte, Ernest Shand, John Gardner, Thomas Pitfield, Josiah Andrew Hudleston, and Bridge
• Tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Nathan Williamson perform songs by Carwithen, Holst, William Busch, Warlock, Crosse, Jeremy Thurlow and Thomas Pitfield
• Mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts Dean, baritone Kieran Rayner and pianist Nigel Foster explore the work of Ralph and Ursula Vaughan Williams including settings of her poems by Roderick Williams, Jonathan Dove, Roger Steptoe and Alan Hoddinott, two of Ralph's setting of her poems along with a selection of his other well-known songs
• Eleanor Grant (soprano and double bass) and Gus McQuade (guitar) present a selection of 20th and 21st century music under the title Seasons change yet we remain.
• Pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi is playing music by John Ireland, Alan Rawsthorne, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Carwithen and a transcription of Elgar's Organ Sonata 

The festival ends with a piano trio made up of Rupert Marshall-Luck, Raphael Wallfisch and Hiroaki Takenouchi in Ireland, Alan Rawsthorne, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and E.J. Moeran.

Full details from the festival website. 

Catching lightning: Solomon's Knot explore George Jeffreys & the birth of the English Baroque at Wigmore Hall

Solomon's Knot at Kirby Hall in 2023

George Jeffreys & the Birth of the English Baroque; Solomon's Knot, James Garnon, Helen Schlesinger, writer & director: Federay Holmes; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 24 February 2025

A dramatised presentation that brought to life the almost forgotten English composer George Jeffreys and his turbulent times, illuminating his impassioned, Italianate music

George Jeffreys, the most important English Baroque composer between Byrd and Purcell, still remains a name that many have not heard of. But thankfully, he seems to be having something of a moment. In 2024, Solomon's Knot released an album of Jeffreys's music on Prospero Classical [see my review] and I chatted to organist William Whitehead about his enthusiasm for Jeffreys's music [see my interview].

Now Solomon's Knot has developed a live programme based on Jeffreys's music, collaborating with director and writer Federay Holmes (an associate artist of Shakespeare's Globe) and actors James Garnon and Helen Schlesinger. George Jeffreys & the Birth of the English Baroque was performed at Wigmore Hall on 24 February 2026. The evening wove together works Jeffreys' and other composeers with a dramatic presentation of Jeffreys's life with Garnon as the composer and Schlesinger playing his wife and Lady Hatton, the wife of his patron. The singers were Zoe Brookshaw, Clare Lloyd-Griffiths, Kate Symonds-Joy, James Robinson, David de Winter and Jonathan Sells. James Robinson was replacing tenor Thomas Herford who was unwell, though some of Herford's solos were sung by David de Winter.

In her programme note, Federay Holmes points out that if Jeffreys's scores and part books had been lost or destroyed then we would have known him only as the unremarkable Steward of the Hatton family working away at Kirby Hall. Jeffreys's surviving letters to Lord Hatton, Lady Hatton and their son cover the 1630s to the 1680s, yet none mentions music. We know a lot about Jeffreys, relating to his work as steward, and we know the music he was writing and copying. But we have no texts to link the two.

A significant commitment to bringing orchestral music to audiences across North Yorkshire: John Wilson, Sinfonia of London & Ryedale Festival in three-year partnership

John Wilson & Sinfonia of London

The Ryedale Festival has announced a new three-year partnership with Sinfonia of London and the conductor John Wilson, marking a significant commitment to bringing orchestral music of the highest quality to audiences across North Yorkshire and the wider region.

The partnership will begin in summer 2026 with a major orchestral concert presented as part of the Ryedale Festival at York Barbican on 12 July 2026. Entitled An English Summer, the programme features Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending, William Walton’s Spitfire Prelude and Fugue, as well as a glorious parade of British light music classics by composers including Richard Rodney Bennett, Eric Coates and Haydn Wood. 

Launched by John Wilson in 2018, Sinfonia of London revived the legendary studio orchestra of the same name, founded in 1955. It made its live debut in 2021 at the BBC Proms and has appeared there on an annual basis since. The orchestra has quickly built a celebrated range of over 30 recordings on the Chandos label, covering a wide range of music with the orchestra’s most recent releases being Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady and Walton’s Cello Concerto and Symphony No.1.

This year's Ryedale Festival runs from 10 to 25 July and the full programme will be announced on 27 March 2026. The festival was founded in 1981 and its artistic director is pianist Christopher Glynn. It has twice been a finalist at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards where it was praised for ‘an extraordinary breadth of programming’ and the way it ‘always wraps its arms around the local community’.

Full details from the Ryedale Festival website. 

What began as a record of performances has become essential infrastructure for artistic planning: Operabase turns 30

This year Operabase celebrates its 30th anniversary, marking three decades of shaping how the global performing arts community works, collaborates, and connects.  Founded in 1996 by Mike Gibb, Operabase was created to document opera performances on a single platform, and over the past three decades it has expanded beyond that original scope, developing into an essential professional resource.

The platform maintains the world’s most extensive structured record of performing arts performances, covers more than 1.1 million performances, features over 400,000 artist profiles and includes more than 64,000 organisations, ranging from opera houses and concert halls to orchestras, choirs and academic institutions. 

Operabase is now managed by Arts Consolidated ApS, a technology company based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The CEO of Operabase is Ulrike Köstinger and we chatted to her when she took over the role in 2023 [see my interview]. About the current milestone, she commented: 

"Reaching 30 years is an extraordinary moment for Operabase. What began as a record of performances has become essential infrastructure for artistic planning, casting and international collaboration. I’m deeply grateful to the artists and organisations who share their data, and to the professionals who rely on Operabase every day. As the sector evolves, our focus is clear: to keep listening, adapting and building the best tools that truly support artistic work worldwide."

Operabase offers a free, publicly accessible database and a premium subscription designed for professionals. While audiences can explore upcoming performances, premium subscribers benefit from advanced tools for career planning, casting and artistic planning decision-making. 

Further information from the Operabase website. 

Bringing music & art into a space which belongs to everyone: Olivia Warburton's The Big House Arts Festival at Lincoln Cathedral

Lincoln Cathedral

The Big House Arts Festival is a three day multi-arts festival showcasing chamber music and art in Lincoln Cathedral from 10 to 12 April 2026. The festival's founder is soprano Olivia Warburton, who grew up as a chorister in Lincoln. Her Mum used to refer to the Cathedral ‘The Big House’— it was her way of making something grand and historic feel familiar and part of everyday life. That affectionate nickname stayed with her, and it captures exactly what the festival aims to be about: bringing music and art into a space which belongs to everyone.

To open the festival, Olivia Warburton is joined by actor Eliza Butterworth, guitarist Samrat Majumder and pianist Johan Barnoin, for The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls, an evening of song, poetry and solo music inspired by Shakespeare’s vision of the seven ages of human life. Other concerts include jazz vocalist and clarinetist, Giulia Marro performing songs from her debut album, A Portrait of Giulia, with duo partner, Tom Ward; and the Solem Quartet bring things to a close with quartets by Dvorak, Debussy and Chausson.

There will also be a masterclass from Richard Stokes, Professor of Song at the Royal Academy of Music, working with five young singers.

Full details from the festival website. 

One of the few operas by a woman produced at the Paris Opera in the 19th century. Augusta Holmès' La Montagne noire finally gets its UK premiere

Augusta Holmès' La Montagne noire at Theater Dortmund in 2024

Whilst best known for her orchestral symphonic poems, the French composer (of Irish descent) Augusta Holmès wrote four operas in total, though only one was performed. This was La Montagne noire which was staged at the Paris Opera in 1895, one of the few operas written by a woman to be produced there during the nineteenth century. A four act lyric drama, Holmès wrote the libretto herself. She wrote the opera in 1884-1885, when she was living with the poet Catulle Mendès who wrote librettos for Chabrier, Messager, Hahn and Massenet.

She first heard Wagner's work at the age of 13 and was influenced by Wagner throughout her life. La Montagne noire was poorly received, partly because Holmès' Wagnerian inspiration was viewed as old-fashioned. However, the gender rhetoric of the nineteenth century came into play too. When reviewing her symphonic poem, Les Argonautes, Saint-Saëns remarked on her "excessive virility – a frequent fault with women composers – and flamboyant orchestration in which the brass explodes like fireworks..." When considering the opera, critics criticised her for crossing the boundary into styles which were thought of as masculine territory. The critic Arthur Pougin said that the best pages of the opera were the passages of "gentleness, grace and tenderness", going on to comment that the noisier passages were banal!

The opera received a rare modern revival in 2024 at Theater Dortmund in a production that was nominated for the Best Rediscovered Work by the International Opera Awards. 

Now UK audiences are getting a chance to hear the opera for themselves. That enterprising group the Opera Makers, who performed Ethel Smyth's Der Wald in 2023 [see my review] is giving the UK premiere of La Montagne noire at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge on 8 March 2026. Panaretos Kyriatzidis conducts with Francesca Lauri at the piano and a cast including Matthew Curtis, Felicity Buckland, James Newby, Becca Marriott, Masimba Ushe and Lauren Easton.

For this concert the company has curated a cast that includes three female leads whose careers have all been deeply affected by their choice to become mothers. The decision to start a family remains an impediment to the careers of many singers, particularly those with larger voices whose instruments blossom at precisely the time when it is most likely they will be starting their families.  There is also a diverse chorus of students and volunteers, supported by Trinity Laban. 

Full details from the company's website. 

 

 

 

Keeping it local: David Butt Philip & Friends Gala at St Paul's Opera, Clapham

David Butt Philip & Friends Gala - David Butt Philip - St Paul's Opera, Clapham, 2025 - 'Falke, falke, du wiedergefundener' from Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten

If you want to hear tenor David Butt Philip the chances are that you may well have to travel outside the UK and his performances this year include Milan, Tokyo and the USA. In the UK he is performing the role of Bacchus in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne as well as singing Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius with the London Symphony Orchestra.

But the good news for his admirers is that David Butt Philip is also patron of Clapham-based St Paul's Opera, and he performs in an annual fundraising gala for the company at their home base of St Paul's Church, Clapham. Previous years, he has treated audiences at the gala to the Emperor's remarkably expansive solo, 'Falke, falke, du wiedergefundener' from Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten and Florestan's solo from the opening of Act Two of Beethoven's Fidelio.

This year's David Butt Philip & Friends Gala takes place on 13 March 2026, when he will be joined by soprano Ellie Laugharne, mezzo-soprano Niamh O’Sullivan and bass-baritone Liam James Karai with pianists Susanna Stranders and Eric Melear.

Ellie Laugharne was Adele in Strauss' Die Fledermaus at The Grange Festival last year [see my review]. Niamh O'Sullivan sang the title role in ENO's most recent revival of Bizet's Carmen, and we caught her as Ino in Handel's Semele at Covent Garden last year [see my review] and we first encountered Liam James Karai in Opera North's recent new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro [see my review]

See my review of last year's gala, and full details of this year's event from the company's website. 

A busy summer: from touring The Marriage of Figaro directed by Danielle de Niese to recording Iain Farrington's version of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, Wild Arts goes from strength to strength

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin - Emily Hodkinson, Xavier Hetherington - Wild Arts 2025 (Photo: Allan Titmuss)

Wild Arts, the Essex-based musical charity headed by Orlando Jopling, has a busy summer ahead. Their new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro is not only set to be performed at over 20 venues across the south of England but the production will be directed by soprano Danielle de Niese who is making her directorial debut. The tour begins at Layer Marney Tower in Essex and then wends its way across England, with a performance at Opera Holland Park on 22 August, two performances at the Minack Theatre in Cornwall (3 and 4 September), and a performance at Norwich Theatre Royal on 8 September. Alongside this tour, the company is presenting its annual summer Opera Evening with four singers and a string quartet popping up at over 20 venues. Later on in the year, the company's dramatic presentation of Handel's Messiah will be returning [see my review of the original 2023 performances].

We first caught the company in Donizetti's The Elixir of Love in 2023 [see my review of their performance at the Thaxted Festival]. Last year they presented Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in a production directed by Dominic Dromgoole [see my review] 

In addition to this, the company has plans for its first recording. Tenor Xavier Hetherington (who played Lensky in last year's performances of Eugene Onegin) and mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons will be joining Orlando Jopling and the Wild Arts Ensemble in the recording studio this autumn for Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in Iain Farrington's chamber orchestration. Farrington's version makes a full orchestral picture from only sixteen players, using only the instruments in Mahler’s score. It attempts to capture the timbre and balance of the original, as much as the spirit and energy.

We had a lovely preview of the recording at a private event on Thursday 19 February when Orlando Jopling, at the piano, accompanied Hetherington and Fontanals-Simmons in a performance of the work and chatted about the piece. Wild Arts is presenting two performances of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in Iain Farrington's version at St Peter ad Vincula Church, Coggleshall on 22 March, and at Smith Square Hall on 31 March. Both concerts are raising money for the recording, and you can also support the recording via the company's donation page.

Founded as a charity in 2022, Wild Arts has grown rapidly and in 2025 reached audiences of over 15,000 people through over 70 performances at 60 venues with 200 performers and creatives. 36% of their 2025 audiences was made up of first time opera goers.  Their Emerging Artist programme supports talented young performers as well as those interested in the technical and managerial aspects of the production. As part of the company's education and outreach they reached some 500 children nationwide including six weeks of lessons, twelve workshops and two schools performances. 

Full details of Wild Arts presentation of Das Lied von der Erde from the company's website. 

Leonardo Vinci's Artaserse in Chicago: Haymarket Opera Company's Craig Trompeter on countering the tendency for audiences to only listen to music that they know.

Vinci: Artaserse - Craig Trompeter & orchestra of Haymarket Opera Company (Photo: Elliot Mandel)

As Chicago-based Haymarket Opera Company's recording of Leonardo Vinci's Artaserse is released on Cedille Records, we chat to the company's founder and musical director Craig Trompeter about rare repertoire and how he wants to counter the tendency for audiences to get lazy and only listen to music that they know.

The last known opera he composed before his death and widely considered to be his masterpiece, Leonardo Vinci's Artaserse was premiered in Rome in 1730. The opera was the first of over 90 settings of Metastasio's libretto (other composers who set the libretto include Hasse, Gluck, Graun, Galuppi, JC Bach, and Arne). Vinci and Metastasio are known to have collaborated closely for the world premiere of the opera in Rome. It was celebrated as a classic in its time with multiple revivals into the 1750s. The first modern revival of Artaserse was staged at the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy in 2012, and the work was recorded by the same cast with Diego Fasolis conducting Concerto Köln.

The Chicago-based Haymarket Opera Company which specialises in historically informed performance staged Vinci's Artaserse in June 2025, conducted by Craig Trompeter; the work's professional premiere in the USA. The cast featured countertenors Kangmin Justin Kim, Key’mon Murrah, and Ryan Belongie, tenor Eric Ferring, mezzo-soprano Emily Fons and male soprano Elijah McCormack.

Subsequently, the company went into the recording studio and their recording of Vinci's Artaserse is released on Cedille Records in March 2026, a follow-up to the company's 2022 recording of Joseph Bologne’s L’Amant Anonyme, also on Cedille.

Vinci: Artaserse - Elijah McCormack and Ryan Belongie - Haymarket Opera Company (Photo: Elliot Mandel)

The company chose Artaserse because, in Craig's words, it is "such a wonderful opera", but also because there is only one version of it in the catalogues (and that dating from 2012), he felt that it would be a good to have another version disc. Also, Craig thinks that such a classic opera deserves more exposure. It is full of great music, both beautiful and exciting, and shows off the voices so well. The style of music is not well represented in the catalogues.

Farewell to a legendary singer: José van Dam, the definitive Saint François in Messiaen's opera Saint François d'Assise, dies at 85

José van Dam in the title role of Olivier Messiaen‘s Saint François d’Assise, Salzburg Festival, 1998. (Photo: © SF/Bernd Uhlig )

The legendary bass-baritone José van Dam, whose death was announced yesterday, was a singer whose career many knew from recordings and film than live. His discography was wide and extensive encompassing much of the standard repertoire.

I was lucky enough to catch him live on a precious few occasions at Covent Garden. He was an astonishing Wozzeck in Berg's opera in Willy Decker's 1984 revival of Covent Garden's original 1952 production designed by Caspar Neher. In 1986, he was Jokanaan in Strauss' Salome in a revival of August Everding's 1970 production notable for Gwynneth Jones' performance of the title role. And in 1996 he was an unforgettable Philippe in Luc Bondy's French-language (hurrah!) production of Verdi's Don Carlos with Roberto Alagna in the title role.

Perhaps his greatest single role was as Saint François in Messiaen's opera Saint François d'Assise.  José van Dam sang it at the premiere in Paris, conducted by Seiji Ozawa in 1983, and he would again undertake the role in the 1992 Salzburg Festival (at the Felsenreitschule), directed by Peter Sellars with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and revived in 1998. 

"In a certain way, that performance changed my life", the artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, Markus Hinterhäuser recalls. "In this role, José van Dam was not simply a singer, he was an embodiment. He had a quiet authority, a mixture of humility and strength which corresponds exactly to what Messiaen meant when he created the role of his Francis."

Perhaps fittingly, the Salzburg Festival is returning to Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise this year with a new production designed and directed by Romeo Castellucci with Maxime Pascal conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Philippe Sly in the title role. See the festival website for details.

José van Dam's obituary on the OperaWire website.

Sonic & dramatic splendour: Jonathan Cohen, Arcangelo & a strong cast demonstrate the richness to be found in Handel's Saul to open the London Handel Festival

Handel: Saul - Christopher Purves, Arcangelo (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Handel: Saul; Christopher Purves, Hugh Cutting, Jessica Cale, Emőke Baráth, Linard Vrielink, Liam Bonthrone, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; London Handel Festival at Smith Square Hall
Reviewed 18 Feburary 2025

One of those performances of Saul where we could let our imagination run riot with a cast who brought out the rich drama of the work alongside the very vibrant, present and intent account the music from Arcangelo

The 2026 London Handel Festival opened on Wednesday 18 February 2026 with a performance of one of Handel's grandest oratorios, Saul. The work was performed by the festival's principal ensemble in residence, Arcangelo, conducted by Jonathan Cohen, the ensemble's founder and the Festival's principal artistic advisor. And the event coincided with the announcement that Arcangelo and Cohen's relationship with the Festival will continue until 'at least' 2029.

The concert took place not at St George's Hanover Square, a favourite venue with the Festival, but at Smith Square Hall which meant that Cohen and Arcangelo could present Saul in all its sonic and dramatic splendour fielding a choir of 30 singers and orchestra with twenty strings plus of course flutes, recorders, oboes, bassoons, trombones, timpani and continuo. The cast had distinct links to Glyndebourne Opera's 2025 revival of Barrie Kosky's 2015 production: Christopher Purves as Saul, Linard Vrielink as Jonathan and Liam Bonthrone as the High Priest were all in the Glyndebourne performances which were conducted by Jonathan Cohen. At Smith Square, they were joined by Hugh Cutting as David, Jessica Cale as Michal, and Emőke Baráth as Merab.

As Ruth Smith points out in her excellent article in the programme book, Handel's Saul was revolutionary in many ways. Only his fourth English oratorio: the first three were Esther, Deborah and Athalia. Saul was also his first dramatic work with a bass lead, something Handel would return to four years later when he wrote Samson with tenor John Beard (Jonathan in Saul) in the title, lead role.

Saul was the longest English music-theatre work to date and Handel used larger forces than any English music theatre work or Italian opera previously performed in England. In our modern age when bigger can seem to be the norm, it is salutary to remember that the sort of large choral/orchestral forces Handel gathered together for Saul were unusual, that people would have to refer back to the Coronation of 1727, when Handel's specially written anthems were performed by significantly large forces.

Handel: Saul - Jessica Cale, Emőke Baráth, Linard Vrielink, Christopher Purves, Arcangelo (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Smith also points out that English oratorio was not acted and that much of the drama can be found in the music. Whilst it is tempting to stage works like Saul, the vision of a director can sometimes seem somewhat reductive and allowing the music space; giving our imaginations free rein is more productive. Not that this performance was lacking in physical drama. Linard Vrielink sang his role from memory whilst Christopher Purves rarely needed his score. Purves' Saul was a character hard to contain and Purves prowled the stage constantly and projected Saul's mental deterioration even when not singing. 

The other singers reacted and expressed. There was a surprising physicality to Hugh Cutting and Linard Vrielink's portrayal of David and Jonathan's relationship. The version of the oratorio performed (which was slightly cut but admirably complete) included David's solo in the Lament which has a remarkable homo-erotic inference. This was oratorio as drama without the necessity of constantly refreshing the stage picture that a fully staged performance can require.