ETO Autumn Season

Jake Arditti & Paula Sides in
ETO's 2011 Flavio
®Richard Hubert Smith

English Touring Opera's Autumn 2013 season starts on 28 September at the Britten Theatre in the Royal College of Music, where ETO are performing James Conway's production of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea (originally seen at the Royal College of Music). The season includes three baroque operas, all of them written for Venice, with Monteverdi's late masterpiece being complemented by Cavalli's Jason and Handel's Agrippina. Cavalli was a younger contemporary of Monteverdi's and Jason was one of the most popular operas in the 17th century. All three operas use the Venetian style of mixing comic and serious characters. Agrippina uses the same characters as Monteverdi's opera, and is regarded as Handel's first major opera, and shows the composer in lively and comic mode.

ETO are working with the Old Street Band who will be accompanying all the operas. All three operas are designed by Samal Blak, with Jason being directed by Ted Huffman and James Conway directing Agrippina. All three operas are being sung in English.

Helen Sherman and Paula Sides (both of whom impressed in ETO's autumn tour) play Nero and Poppea in Monteverdi's opera, with Sides also playing Poppea in Handel's opera. Gillian Webster will be singing the title role in Agrippina.

ETO will be complementing the operatic performances with a pair of concerts in which the ETO orchestra and singers will be joined by regional choirs to perform Music for a Venetian Orphanage, celebrating Vivaldi's music for the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice, and Handel's music for Vespers, which celebrates Handel's vespers music written whilst he was in Rome. The Vivaldi concert will be performed in Crediton and Harrogate and the Handel concert in Rochester, Newcastle and Warwick.

The tour visits eight theatres and another seven churches, cathedrals and concert halls in England until Sunday 24 November, including Rochester, Aldeburgh, Malvern, Crediton, Bath, Harrogate, Durham, Newcastle, Derbyshire, Sheffield, Warwick,Cambridge and Exeter. Further information from the English Touring Opera website.
Elsewhere on this blog:

• Eugene Onegin at Grange Park
• I Puritani at Grange Park
• Owen Wingrave at GSMD
• Viktoria Mullova in Bach Concertos - CD review
• Cav and Pag at Opera Holland Park
• An encounter with Opera Holland Park's James Clutton
• Lohengrin at WNO
• Sometime I Sing - voice & guitar - CD review
• La donna del lago
• Launch of the Gresham Centre
• Tallis Scholars at Choral at Cadogan
• Home