Sounds of Blossom: Spring celebrations at Kew fuse blossom and new music

The Sounds of Blossom festival of music and nature is returning to Kew Gardens once again in collaboration with the Royal College of Music (RCM). From 15 March to 6 April 2025, visitors to Kew will be able to appreciate the vibrant colours of blossom complemented by gentle soundscapes which open up the spaces and draw listening back into the sounds of nature. 

Seven composers all students on the RCM Bachelor of Music programme have created original pieces inspired by specific garden locations, creating an immersive experience for visitors as they explore the gardens in bloom. Drawing inspiration from the character and atmosphere of their selected locations, their pieces reflect the natural beauty of these spaces.

Professor Jonathan Cole, Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music, commented: "Working to a specific brief, engaging with the public and connecting to different industries teaches our students important skills, invaluable as they make the change from education to the professional life of a working composer, and we're deeply grateful to Kew for supporting such a collaboration."

Full details from Kew Gardens website.

An evening of compelling and involving theatre: Britten, Weill and Ravel triple bill at the Royal College of Music

Ravel: L'heure espagnole - Alexandria Moon, Edward Birchinall, Benedict Munden, Marcus Swietlicki (part) - Royal College of Music (Photo: Chris Christodoulou)

Britten: Les illuminations, Weill: Chansons des Quais; Ravel: L'heure espagnole; Georgia Melville, Cecilia Zhang, Alexandria Moon, Marcus Swietlicki, Benedict Munden, Sam Hird, Edward Birchinall, director: Ella Marchment, conductor: Michael Rosewell, Royal College of Music Opera Studio; Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music
Reviewed 27 November 2024

Three contrasting French texted pieces, drawn together in an evening of vibrant, thought-provoking performances which very much created an evening about the female gaze

The latest opera offering from the Royal College of Music is a triple bill presented by their Opera Studio which, in some ways, could be seen as an intriguingly imaginative answer to the question 'what do you programme with Ravel's L'heure espagnole?'. Director Ella Marchment has put together a triple bill of French-texted works, adding two works that are not strictly operatic and are not by French composers, Britten's Les illuminations and Chansons des Quais, a 2017 sequence of Kurt Weill's music created out of his incidental music for Jacques Deval's play, Marie Galante, originally written in 1934.

The evening was largely double cast, and we caught the performance on 27 November 2024 at the Britten Theatre, when the Royal College of Music Opera Studio presented Britten's Les illuminations with soprano Georgia Melville, Weill's Chansons des Quais with Cecilia Zhang, and Ravel's L'heure espagnole with Alexandria Moon as Concepcion, plus Marcus Swietlicki, Benedict Munden, Sam Hird and Edward Birchinall. Michael Rosewell conducted, Ella Marchment directed with designs by Cordelia Chisholm. Adam Haigh was the movement director and assistant director for Chansons de Quais.

Britten: Les illuminations - Georgia Melville - Royal College of Music (Photo: Chris Christodoulou)

Sounds of Blossom: Kew Gardens' Spring festival offers a full sensory experience with collaboration with the Royal College of Music

Magnolia campbellii 'Pink tulip tree' © RBG Kew

Kew Gardens' Spring festival, Sounds of Blossom, will see visitors not only enjoying the sights and smells of Spring blossom at the gardens but hearing sounds too, as as bespoke compositions emerge from blossom trees thanks to a new collaboration with the Royal College of Music.

Working with students from the Royal College of Music, the festival will feature six bespoke commissions that celebrate Kew’s unique landscape in the spring, with recordings of music emerging from carefully chosen locations, including avenues of cherry blossom and vistas dotted with magnolias, offering the prospect of a complete sensory experience. There will be Spring and blossom-inspired music from six of the college's students, Daniel Musashi, Jasmine Morris, Tymon Zgorzelski, Lucy Holmes, Delyth Field, and Louis Enright.

Kew Gardens' Sounds of Blossom festival runs from 23 March to 14 April. There will be blossom-inspired dishes in the cafes, and a series of free talks from Kew horticulturists and scientists and a programme of wellbeing events, such as Tai Chi and Yoga amongst the cherry blossom.

Full details from Kew Gardens' website.

The National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain celebrates its 70th birthday with an exciting and challenging programme conducted by Martyn Brabbins

Members of NYBBGB rehearsing during Easter residency (Photo Joy Newbould)

The National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain (NYBBGB) is celebrating its 70th anniversary with a concert at the Royal College of Music on 6 August 2022. Conducted by Martyn Brabbins, (whose earliest musical training was in a brass band), eighty young brass players from across the UK – all aged between 14 and 19  – will come together to perform two of Brabbins' works for brass band, John Pickard’s 1995 symphonic suite Men of Stone, and the world premiere of a piece commissioned for the anniversary, Hyperlink, by Scottish composer Peter Graham. Also in the programme will be masterpieces of the 20th-century brass band repertoire by Eric Ball, Derek Bourgeois and John Ireland, plus a selection of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne with guest soloist Nardus Williams. 

The celebratory concert begins a new chapter in the history of band under the new leadership of CEO Mark Bromley and Director of Artistic Planning Dr Robert Childs, whose recent appointments follow the unexpected death of the band's long-standing administrator Philip Biggs in 2019 and the standing down due to ill health of Artistic Director Bramwell Tovey in 2020.

Remarkably, the band has already achieved a balance in gender equality, with equal numbers of girls and boys generally participating in its Easter and Summer courses, shattering commonly-held perceptions that brass playing is still a male-dominated preserve. It is also working to nurture more female conductors in the sector, including Anna Beresford, who is working alongside Martyn Brabbins in preparing the band for this concert.

Full details from the band's website.

Beyond Boundaries: Dmitri Alexeev & Friends In Memory of Dmitri Bashkirov

The Russian pianist and teacher Dmitri Bashkirov died in March this year, he was 89. He had had a long and distinguished career though perhaps his name is not as well known as it should be. In addition to his pianistic career, which included winning the Marguerite Long Piano Competition in Paris in 1955, he had a long career as a teacher, first in Moscow and then in Madrid, where his pupils included Dmitri Alexeev, Arcadi Volodos, Nikolai Demidenko, his daughter Elena Bashkirova, Kirill Gerstein and many more.

Now, under the title Beyond Boundaries: Dmitri Alexeev & Friends In Memory of Dmitri Bashkirov, Bashkirov's friends, pupils and grand-pupils are coming together in a series of concerts to honour his memory at St John's Smith Square and the Royal College of Music from 23 October to 21 November 2021.

The first concert features Dmitri Alexeev's former pupils from the Royal College of Music, and now established artists in their own right, in Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Liszt and Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert Songs (23/10/21). For the second concert, Dmitri Alexeev is joined by Nikolai Demidenko for piano duo music by Liszt, Saint-Saens and Shostakovich, ending with Alexeev's transcription of Stravinsky's Firebird (4/11/21). Then Alexeev gives a solo recital, featuring Brahms and Schumann, including two of Alexeev's transcriptions of Brahms' Choral Preludes (13/11/21). Finally, under the title Bright Future, there is a concert from a group of Alexeev's current pupils in music from Bach to Ligeti (21/11/21).

The first three concerts are at St John's Smith Square, whilst the final concert is at the Royal College of Music.

The world's oldest guitar and earliest keyboard instrument with strings: the new Royal College of Music Museum opens this week

Royal College of Music Museum (Photo Phil Rowley)

 The Royal College of Music has around 15,000 items in its historic collection, though I suspect that few of us ever got around to going to the old museum in the college's South Kensington headquarters. But as part of the college's current £40 million four-year campus transformation project a brand new museum has been built. 

The new museum opened this week (5 October 2021) and offers visitors the chance to interact with 500 years of musical history. Items on permanent display include the world's oldest guitar and earliest keyboard instrument with strings, along with 56 other instruments from the collection. 

As well as musical instruments, the museum tells its story through art, including an iconic portrait of Farinelli and a remarkable Tischbein featuring an instrument from the collection displayed alongside. A series of portraits by German artist Milein Cosman (1921-2017) will be on display to the public for the first time in the Lavery Gallery, featuring intimate sketches of college alumni Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Imogen Holst and Amaryllis Fleming, alongside many other composers and musicians.

The new museum building features a double-height atrium which includes a hanging artwork installation by Scottish artist Victoria Morton which takes its inspiration from the permanent exhibition, having been specially commissioned and created for the space.

Originally due to open in spring 2021, the new museum was built from scratch as part of the campus transformation project. Since 2017, the college’s Grade II listed South Kensington home has nearly doubled in capacity, designed by architect John Simpson. The new Royal College of Music Museum brings public access to the heart of the historic institution, alongside a new public café and two new performance spaces. 

Full details from the Royal College of Music website.

Viol music

Byrd, Purcell, Ferrabosco, Parsons, Gibbons, and Lawes; students from the Royal College of Music and the Salzburg Mozarteum; Royal College of Music Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 27 November 2018
Mainly English consorts and fantasies for viols in the culmination of the Royal College of Music's Viol Festival

The Royal College of Music has been holding the RCM International Festival of Viols and for the grand finale in the college's Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall on Tuesday 27 November 2018, 10 young players came together to perform a programme of fantasies and consort works by Byrd, Purcell, Ferrabosco, Parsons, Gibbons, and Lawes.

The players were from the RCM and from the Salzburg Mozarteum, nine viol players in all coming together in a variety of configurations, Isabel Esain, Yusuf Lahham, Luke Challinor, Salome Gasselin, Hannah Kilian, Corinna Metz, Vittorio Ghielmi, Christoph Urbanetz, and Sarah Small, with Claire Williams on organ for the final two works by William Lawes. We heard works for a variety of combinations of instruments, from two bass viols and organ, through four-part and six-part to seven-part works, including a remarkable work by Ferrabosco for six bass viols.

Powerful & emotional stuff: Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse at RCM Double Bill.

Huw Watkins, Peter Maxwell Davies; Royal College International Opera School, dir: Stephen Unwin, cond: Michael Rosewell; Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 29 June 2018 Star rating: 2.5/3.5 (★★½)/(★★★½)
A contemporary double bill higlighting the destructive power of our minds

This Friday, 29 June 2018, at the Royal College Music's Britten Theatre, The Royal College International Opera School performed a double bill of work highlighting the destructive power of our minds the first of which was In the Locked Room by Huw Watkins and the second was Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse, both in productions by Stephen Unwin, conducted by Michael Rosewell.

In the Locked Room is Huw Watkin’s and David Harsent’s take on Thomas Hardy’s short story An Imaginative Woman. Ella, a poetry lover, becomes fascinated by the work of the poet Ben Pascoe. Although they never meet, Ella’s frenzied imaginings, whilst providing solace from her loveless marriage, finally propel her into a damaging life of self-delusion. Josephine Goddard sang Ella Foley, the imaginative woman. Rhys Batt was her disinterested husband Stephen. Christian Adolph played the troubled poet Ben Pascoe and Katy Thompson the landlady Susan Wheeler.

A problem no more: William Relton's production of Handel's Faramondo at the London Handel Festival

Kieran Rayner, Harriet Eyley - Handel: Faramondo - London Handel Festival (Photo Chris Christodoulou)

Handel Faramondo; Ida Räntzlöv, Harriet Eyley, Beth Moxon, Josephine Goddard, dir: William Relton, cond: Laurence Cummings; London Handel Festival at the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Mar 20 13 2017
Star rating: 4.5
A vivid re-invention of one of Handel's problem operas, in a brilliantly theatrical 1960s setting

Beth Moxon, Ida Ränzlöv - Handel: Faramondo
London Handel Festival (Photo Chris Christodoulou)

Handel's 1737 opera Faramondo was never going to be that high on anyone's list, even the great Winton Dean described the plot as a 'whirlpool of inconsequence'. But the role of festival like the London Handel Festival is to explore all the composer's music, and this year's festival opened on 20 March 2017 at the Royal College of Music's Britten Theatre with William Relton's production of Faramondo, giving us a valuable chance to reassess the opera by experiencing it on stage.

William Relton directed, with designs by Cordelia Chisholm and lighting by Kevin Treacy, and Laurence Cummings conducted the London Handel Orchestra, leader Oliver Webber, with Ida Räntzlöv as Faramondo, Harriet Eyley as Clotilde, Kieran Rayner as Gustavo, Beth Moxon as Rosimonda, Josephine Goddard as Adolfo, Timothy Morgan as Gernando, Harry Thatcher as Teobaldo, and Lauren Morris as Childerico.

Part of the problem with Faramondo is that the original libretto by Apostolo Zeno from 1699 reached Handel in mangled form and he trimmed it further, removing over 700 lines of recitative, Like Il trovatore the opera starts in the middle of the plot, and relies heavily on events in the past. William Relton's brilliantly theatrical production re-invented the piece as 1960s gang warfare with Ida Räntzlöv's Faramondo the leader of leather clad rockers, Kieran Rayner's Gustavo as a night-club owning mod and Timothy Morgan's Gernando as the leader of a gang of skin-heads. Relton brought out the vividness of the action, and kept the pace moving bringing to mind the opera's similarities to soap opera.

The key to appreciating such opera seria is not to worry about narrative logic but to savour that different emotional binds that the characters are put into. By 19th and early 20th century operatic logic, the libretto is hopelessly obscure and the characters lack detailed motives for their actions. But Handel's audience would have worried less about this, and would have relished the chance to see a scene between a father threatening to kill his son, a woman torn between hatred and love for her brother's killer, a tender duet between to lover's destined for execution. That none of the scenes followed logically on from the other, would have worried them less.

Relton and his cast gave the opera the virtue of taking it seriously, and by setting it in the world of young gangs, the characters' impulsive actions jarred far less. Cordelia Chisholm's designs kept up the pace, she used a drop curtain frequently to mask the scene changes so we moved seamlessly between Gustavo's seedy club to a world of dark alleys. Relton and Chisholm ensured that we knew exactly who these characters were (something which the libretto's terseness makes difficult).

Royal College of Music Junior Department celebrates 90 years

Royal College of Music Junior Department & Vladimir Ashkenazy
(c) Chris Christodoulou

The Royal College of Music Junior Department (RCMJD) is 90 this year. The Saturday school for committed and talented 8 to 18 year old musicians was founded in 1926 and is the United Kingdom's oldest junior conservatoire. On Sunday 10 July 2016 there will be a celebratory gala concert at the Cadogan Hall. Peter Stark will conduct young musicians from RCMJD in a programme which includes Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and Malcolm Arnold's Homage to the Queen which was originally written for coronation year and is being revived in celebration of the Queen's 90th birthday.

RCMJD welcomes around 300 young people each year and distinguished alumni include pianist John Lill, clarinettist Michael Collins, and composers Mark Antony Turnage and Gabriel Jackson.

Full details of the concert from the Cadogan Hall website.

Time just flew by - Handel's Ariodante from London Handel Festival & Royal College of Music

Handel - Ariodante - London Handel Festival - photo Chris Christodoulou

Handel Ariodante; Kamilla Dunstan, Gemma Lois Summerfield, Marie Lys, Thomas Scott-Cowell, Thomas Erlank, Simphiwe Simon Shibambu, dir: James Bonas, cond: Laurence Cummings; London Handel Festival at the Britten Theatre
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Mar 9 2016
Star rating: 4.5
Handel meets game of thrones in superbly confident and emotionally strong performance

Kamilla Dunstan
photo Chris Christodoulou

London Handel Festival's annual staging of a Handel opera in collaboration with the Royal College of Music International Opera School has reached Handel's Ariodante (their 24th Handel staging), a run of lesser known works. In 2014 they performed Arianna in Creta, and Ariodante was written a years later and both operas featured the mezzo-soprano castrato Carestini. We caught the performance on 9 March 2016 at the Royal College of Music's Britten Theatre, the first outing of the alternative cast with Kamilla Dunstan as Ariodante, Gemma Lois Summerfield as Ginevra, Marie Lys as Dalinda, Thomas Scott-Cowell as Polinesso, Thomas Erlank as Lurcanio, Simphiwe Simon Shibambu as the King and Joel Williams as Odoardo. The production was directed by James Bonas (who directed The Tales of Hoffman for English Touring Opera in 2015), designed by Molly Einchcomb with lighting by Rob Casey. Laurence Cummings conducted the London Handel Orchestra.

Ariodante is set in mythic Scotland and requires a setting where duelling as a means of settling honour disputes is convincing. David Alden's 1996 production at English National Opera showed that this sensibility can be combined with a challenging investigation of the underlying psychological disturbance in the plot, particularly when it comes to the treatment of Ginevra who is accused of being unchaste without being allowed to put her point of view, and at the end is expected to return happily to the former status quo.

Bonas and Einchcomb seem to have chosen A Game of Thrones as their inspiration; a neo-medieval society, all homespun fabrics, coarse knitting and furs. The set consisted of a system of screens and curtains moved by supers, which allowed for quick changes of scene. Using video too, designer Molly Einchcomb created some magical scenes. But at other times Bonas seemed to be aiming for filmic immediacy and long arias such as Polinesso's act two aria 'Se l'inganno sortisce felice', had virtually a different setting for each sub-section creating a breathless, whistle-stop feel. Lighting was dramatic with strong shadows on faces thus making life difficult at times. And we never did work out whether Polinesso was supposed to have a huge facial scar or a tattoo.

Royal College of Music celebrates International Women's Day

Amaryllis Fleming

The Royal College of Music (RCM) will be celebrating International Women's Day (8 March 2016) with a diverse programme of events including the broadcast on BBC Radio 3 of a lunchtime concert from the college including the premiere of a new work by Judith Bingham. There will also be a public masterclass from Imogen Cooper, student workshops with percussionist Genevieve Wilkins and composer Anna Meredith. College alumnae Amy Green and Charlotte Harding present Over 100 years of Women and the Saxophone, which celebrates the pioneering female saxophonists, composers and bandleaders who were integral to the development and promotion of this instrument.

BBC Radio 3 will broadcast the day’s lunchtime concert live from the college. The Albany Trio, former RCM Junior Fellows, will perform music by Rebecca Clarke and Judith Weir, plus the world premiere of Judith Bingham’s The Orchid and its Hunters. Bingham’s work was commissioned for the Albany Trio. The concert is part of a day of programming on BBC Radio 3 reflecting International Women’s Day by celebrating women in music and exploring the work of female composers, along the theme of Inspiring Women.

Throughout the day an interactive exhibition looks at RCM Women in Music from the last 100 years. Female musicians are firmly rooted in the RCM’s history, from the mill girl and brick maker’s daughter among the first twenty five female RCM scholars in 1883, through the many illustrious alumnae that have studied at the College, including soprano Dame Joan Sutherland, mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, cellist Natalie Clein and cellist Amaryllis Fleming after whom the RCM's concert hall is named. Today, women comprise over 50% of the RCM’s student body.

Albert Herring at the Royal College of Music

Peter Aisher, Janis Kelly, William Wallace, Timothy Connor, Maria Ostroukhova, Kieran Rayner, Simon Grange, Elspeth Marrow, Katie Coventry, Sofia Larsson - Albert Herring - Royal College of Music - photo credit Chris Christoudoulou

Benjamin Britten Albert Herring; Peter Aisher, Katie Coventry, Timothy Connor, Janis Kelly, dir: Liam Steel, cond: Michael Rosewell; Royal College of Music International Opera School at the Britten Theatre
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 04 2015
Star rating: 4.0
Strikingly imaginative version of this modern classic

Benjamin Britten's comic opera Albert Herring, with its youthful lead, and large number of vivid characters, would seem ideal material for music college performance. But many of the characters require the young singers to play far older. The new production at the Royal College of Music, directed by Liam Steel, designed by Anna Fleischle, with lighting by Joshua Carr, applied a lively imagination to the problem and came up with a vividly etched, and strongly characterised performance. Lady Billows was played not by a student, but by Janis Kelly who has sung the role in Los Angeles and who teaches at the Royal College of Music. The remainder of the cast were all from the opera course, and we saw the second cast (4 Jully 2015) led by Peter Aisher as Albert, Katie Coventry as Nancy and Timothy Connor as Sid. Michael Rosewell conducted the Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra.

Peter Aisher
photo credit Chris Christodoulou

Anna Fleischle's set was on a revolve, one side a very striking depiction of the Herring's shop and the other the village hall. By some dextrous adjustments to the libretto these to settings did duty for the whole opera, (the opening scene took place in the village hall, and the May Day celebrations had clearly been relocated to the village hall by a thunderstorm). Liam Steel also used the revolve itself during the scene changes, with much coming and going in the town.

The characters of the town worthies were all played rather younger than they often are, giving them an additional reason to be in awe of Lady Billows (Janis Kelly) and thus not requiring the young singers to play old. And having a young cast meant that the entered with a will into Liam Steel's very distinctive style of physical theatre. Not everything was naturalistic, and a certain stylised element to the movement worked extremely well with the music and reminded me of some stagings of Rossini's comic operas.

But Liam Steel was clearly interested in more than just telling a story, and his lively imagination had been at work in all sorts of details in the staging and the plot. There was a great deal of comic business, such as the Vicar (Kieran Rayner) constantly fiddling with the microphone during the May Day celebrations, which was very funny but sometimes felt like and added layer of comedy rather than being germane to the plot.

Royal College of Music - a dramatic new development

Artists Impression: New quad viewed from cafe in foyer at RCM
John Simpson architects

The composer George Dyson is famous for the fact that, when he became principal of the Royal College of Music one of his first acts was to re-organise the Ladies' lavatories! Dyson devoted a great deal of his energies to the college plant at a time when the student body was expanding and money was tight. This was because he understood the importance of surroundings on doing good work. 

This week the Royal College of Music (RCM) announced a spectacular new plan to further enhance the plant. As anyone who has visited the college's Britten Theatre (see my review of the recent performance of Adriano in Siria there), the imposing college building hides a welter of buildings arranged round courtyards. Now the college has commissioned John Simpson architects to open up on of the courtyards to provide improved facilities and better circulation. The image to the right is the artist's impression of the new courtyard.

RCM courtyards today from the air - photo Google Earth
Britten Theatre to the left, new courtyard space to right
Prince Consort Road at top of picture

 

The project is planned to start in 2016, and will take two years and cost £25 million. The resulting works will give the students, and us:-

• Two new performance spaces (of 150+ and 90+ seats) with the latest technology in acoustics and lighting.
• Additional music practice rooms.
• A permanent and accessible home for the RCM’s Museum of Music to display the RCM’s Special Collections in an interactive context.
• Additional recording and broadcasting capability.
• Improved access and circulation around the site, connecting together the RCM’s key spaces; the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, the Britten Theatre, the Library and the Museum of Music.
• An enriched experience for the general public to include new foyer and meeting spaces for visitors, participants on RCM’s community learning programmes, students and RCM professors, a new café/restaurant area, a theatre bar and additional visitor facilities.
• Increased step-free access to the RCM’s facilities.

It is an impressive and much needed project. As anyone who has ventured beyond the concert hall or the theatre will testify, the RCM is a positive rabbit warren and needs a strong hand to create order out of the chaos of over 100 years of expansion on a limited site.

Fizzing with fun: Rossini's La gazzetta

Kelly Mathieson and Timothy Nelson

Rossini La gazzetta; Royal College of Music<
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jun 27 2014
Star rating: 4.0
Lively account of one of Rossini's neglected comic operas

Rossini's comic opera La gazzetta was written in 1815, between Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola but it is far less famous then these two and has, until recently, been rarely performed. A new critical edition of the opera, including the recovery of such items as the act one quintet, have enabled a new re-assessment. The opera was presented by the Royal College of Music in its Britten Theatre and we caught the third performance on June 27. The work was directed by Donald Maxwell and Linda Ormiston, themselves both veterans of the comic opera genre, in designs by Nigel Hook with choreography by Louisa McAlpine and lighting by John Bishop. 

The opera was double cast and we heard the first night cast's second performance, with Filipa van Eck as Lisetta, Hannah Sandison as Doralice, Angela Simkin as Madama de la Rose, Luke D Williams as Filippo, Gyula Rab as Alberto, Timothy Nelson as Don Pomponio, Matus Tomko as Anselmo and Julien Van Mellaerts as Monsu Traversen. The Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra was conducted by Michael Rosewell, Director of Opera at the Royal College of Music.

Rossini wrote the opera for Naples, where he had just started work on his sequence of opera serias for the Royal theatre in Naples. La gazzetta was premiered at the Teatro dei Fiorentini a few days after the premiere of Elisabetta Regina d'Inghilterra at the Teatro San Carlo. In both works Rossini seems to have been concerned to show off what he could do and both include extensive borrowing from his back catalogue. The music is not always imported bodily, the act one quintet which has recently been re-discovered, includes a mixture of newly composed sections and borrowed ones. And the overture, specially written for the opera, was then taken bodily into La Cenerentola. But of course, the first night audience would not have known any of the existing music, as the operas it was borrowed from had been premiered in Northern Italy. And what makes the piece a delight is the way it segues from the known to the unknown with delightful speed.