Carmen premiere

My article about the alarums and excursions in the run up to the premiere of Bizet's Carmen is here on Music and Vision.

Incidentally, if you want to hear the closest we'll ever get to the definitive score of Carmen then try the Chandos Opera in English recording. This uses a new edition by Richard Langham-Smith which is based on the vocal score which he had published after the world premiere. This is the only published score which Bizet himself edited and it was produced under his impetus rather than in association with the Opera Comique, so there is not reason to believe it does not represent the score as he intended.

Edington Diary - Friday

Friday was our last day at the Edington festival. The day started slightly later than usual as there was no 9.00am Matins service (the Schola got the morning off). Instead Choral Matins was celebrated at 11.30am.

The consort sang the lovely Venite from Orlando Gibbons's Short Service. The Te Deum and Jubilate were more contemporary; Britten's Festival Te Deum and Walton's Jubilate. The Britten was interesting, it eschewed the usual bombast that I associate with festal settings of this text; there were some good solos from the Nave choir. The Walton was given a brilliant, rhythmically exciting performance by the Nave choir. The consort sang Gibbons's I am the resurrection and the life, a beautiful setting of the Gospel reading for the day.

For me, the highlight of the week was the music at the Friday evening Solemn Eucharist. Throughout the week, by getting to the church early (to get good seats) we had overheard Robert Quinney rehearsing the Nave choir, so we had a good working knowledge of Friday's music by the time the service came along. The mass setting was the James MacMillan mass, written for Westminster Cathedral. The Nave choir sang the Kyrie, Alleluia and Agnus Dei. Both the piece and the performance were stunning; its a very tricky work and I can't wait to hear it in Westminster Cathedral. The Consort kept the contemporary theme by singing Tippett's Plebs Angelica, another stunning performance. The Organ prelude was MacMillan's Gaudeamus in loci paci and the Voluntary was Durufle's Fugue sur le nom d'Alain, one of my favourite organ pieces. All in all a profoundly moving service.

From this Month's Opera

In his editorial, John Allison comments on the rumours that ENO may be reducing their season at the Coliseum and taking on a smaller London theatre for Baroque and contemporary music. This would certainly be an improvement. Many years ago, when the David Freeman production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo was new, it was premiered in a smaller theatre, in Nottingham I believe. At the time this was planned as a new way forward for this type of work, but of course nothing further came of it. Lets hope that ENO manage to do something like this convincingly this time.

In the interview with Christine Brewer, I note that her BBC Tristan is due imminently on the Warner Classics label. I can’t wait. We missed the concerts, alas, where the 3 acts of Tristan were spread over 3 different evenings (well spaced apart). Another memorable Brewer evening was when I heard the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment doing Verdi’s Requiem with Brewer as a fantastic soprano soloist. I’ve been hoping that this might have presaged a recording, but no such luck.

Reading about the opera house on the Caribbean island of Martinique, in Saint-Pierre, it was interesting to read that it had been destroyed by the volcanic eruption in 1902, which devastated the town – the worst volcanic eruption of the 20th century. I wonder if this was what inspired Patrick Leigh-Fermor’s novel ‘The Violins of St. Jacques’, which in turn inspired Malcolm Williamson’s opera. Interestingly the plot has a number of elements in common with Ronald Firbank’s novel ‘Valmouth’ which in turn inspired Sandy Wilson’s musical Valmouth.

Eduardo Arnosi in his review of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea from Buenos Aires comments that he prefers a male Nerone (granted this was said in the context of great approbation for the convincingness of the female singer in the role, Evelyn Ramirez). He did not specify which octave the male singer would be singing at and left the impression that he’d be quite happy doing violence to Monteverdi’s score by using a tenor; I hope not.!

A new production of Dido and Aeneas in Vienna, directed by Deborah Warner; Christopher Norton-Welsh describes it as half-serious, half-guying. Sorry, but I’ve seen plenty of productions where the witches were serious and scary rather than funny and don’t see the need to introduce any more humour into the work.

Simon Rattle’s new Rheingold at the Aix en Provence festival is noted as running for 15 minutes under 3 hours. John Allison points out that Wagner noted that the opera lasted exactly 2 and a half hours; I wish more attention was paid to Wagner’s timings. He was often a careful noter of times; Roger Norrington used Wagner’s timings in his performances of the overtures to revelatory effect, notably Tristan and Die Meistersinger.

Jochen Kowalski cropped up as the Astrologer in Rimsky Korsakov’s Golden Cockerel in Berlin. Kowalski is a singer whose name seems to have dropped from the lime-light recently. But a long essay could be written about the voice type necessary for this role. I’ve heard both tenors and counter-tenors doing it (at Scottish Opera and with the Royal Opera) and it works far better with a tenor who is prepared to give us a head voice/falsetto extension. Most counter tenors seem to lack the incisiveness necessary for the lower register.

The cover photo was of the new Moses and Aaron in Munich. Produced by David Pountney, it was Peter Jonas’s swan song. What it swan song it seems to have been. John Allison liked the production and with John Daszak and John Tomlinson as the brothers, it had a strong cast. It is good to see Daszak finding international form in good roles.

A lovely comment from Rodney Milnes about an Athenian production of Don Carlos: He appeared to have brought his own flattering costumes and played the role mainly from the thighs


Minnesota seems to have been the place to be in America this year. Minnesota Opera offered Mercadante’s Orazi e Curiazi, enterprisingly moved to the American Civil War, as well as the first American performances of Laurent Petigirard’s Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. I reviewed a recording of this fascinating score and was not sure how well it would work on stage; I’d love to have seen the Minnesota performances.

Elsewhere in America, Francesca Zamballo is doing a Ring in Washington, mining American mythology for the iconography. Rhinemaidens in the underwear of disreputable salon ladies, Alberich panning for gold, gods dress as for a Scott Fitzgerald novel, Nibelheim full of slaves. It sounds fascinating and remarkably convincing. I’ll be interested to read about subsequent instalments in the cycle.

Ian Fox describes the Castleward Opera’s performances of Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl as probably the worst show ever presented here. They seem to have cut over an hour’s worth of music; this is a shame and makes nonsense of the piece, even though it is a long score. I thing a decent performance of the opera is long over due.

Patrick O’Connor’s review of the concert performance of Don Giovanni from the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Barbican includes the fascinating nugget of information that in the 19th century it was Zerlina that was considered to be the main role in the opera!

Iford Festival Opera produced Lucia di Lammermoor this year. Their venue is the Italianate cloister at Iford Manor, whose garden was laid out by the Edwardian garden designer Harold Peto. It sounds just the venue for the opera, even in a chamber version, especially as they managed to include a glass harmonica in the instrumental ensemble.

La Juive

Having investigated a later French rarity at Dorset Opera (Massenet's Herodiade), I'm looking forward to the forthcoming concert performance of Halevy's La Juive, a far earlier work. As anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, I keep hoping that someone will create the French equivalent of Opera Rara so that we can hear decent recordings of all the Grand Opera created for the Paris Opera in the 1820's, 1830's and 1840's. Still, this concert gives us the chance to hear Dennis O'Neil in the fabulous tenor role of Eleazar. Rachel is being played by one of the ROH's young artists, Marina Poplavskaya; I will be interested to hear her as Rachel is a Falcon role; Marie Cornelie Falcon created the role and her voice has given rise to a whole genre of dark soprano roles, betwixt and between mezzo and soprano. There is a good introduction to the opera here, in the Guardian

Leopold Simoneau

French-Canadian tenor Leopold Simoneau died recently, there is an obituary of him here, in the Guardian. Simoneau was posessed of a remarkably high, lyric tenor voice. It is a testament to his gifts that his recording of the French version of Gluck's Orfeo (Orphée et Euridice) has hardly been beaten by recent recordings, despite its age.

Edington Diary - Thursday

At Sung Eucharist on Thursday, the organ prelude and closing voluntary were 2 attractive pieces embarrassingly unknown to me, the Introit and Sortie from Malcolm Williamson’s Mass of a Medieval Saint. The mass setting was plainsong Mass I and the Nave choir performed For he shall give his angels from Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Quite apt for the theme of the service (I am the good shepherd) and the choir sang beautifully, but as ever I was not quite convinced by the organ replacing the originally orchestral accompaniment. The Nave choir also sang a lovely The Lord is my Shepherd by Sir Lennox Berkeley. The Consort sang a fabulous O Sacrum Convivium by Guerrero. They also did an amazing piece by Edward Naylor (1867 – 1934); he was evidently organist at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and studied at the Royal College of Music. His motet Vox dicentis: Clama was evidently written in 1911. (This information gleaned mainly from Wikipedia, apologies if its inaccurate). The motet is a setting of Isaiah chapter 40, it is a fascinating and it received a superb performance from the Consort, though I suspect it was written for a bigger choir. I can’t wait to get a recording!

Evening service was a sequence of music and readings given by the Schola and the Consort, the Nave choir had the evening off. Highlights included Sir John Tavener’s The Lamb and the Agnus Dei from Poulenc’s Mass. The plainchant hymn Congregati sunt was lovely, though the plainchant Ave Verum Corpus was taken so slowly, it was almost romantic (perhaps it is). After Compline the Festival said goodbye to Andrew Carwood, who had to dash off to another Festival and his place at the head of the Schola was taken by Matthew Martin who had been playing the Nave organ all week.

This was the last day at which we went to the 9.00am matins sung by the Schola as there was no service on Friday. This service took place in the chancel, the remainder of the services taking place in the Nave. We managed to have the same seats each time, in front of the screen next to the choir organ. This meant we had a good sight/sound of everything and even got to hear the clickety/clack of the organ mechanism – very authentic and atmospheric.

More displacement therapy

I took with me on holiday two books of poems (bought because I thought they might make interesting songs). One book is a group of translations of Japanese lyrics and the other is Tagore's Gitanjali newly translated into English poetry. I looked at neither.

I did manage to start re-re-reading Diarmaid Macculloch's biography of Cranmer with a view to creating a libretto for a full length oratorio, but quailed at the size of the task. Though I have made a list of around 50 quotes from Cranmer's own writings (and I'm not half way through yet).

I did though, make some sketches towards a Magnificat. No, I had no plans to write one, but hearing a sequence of such magnificent settings at Edington, gave me ideas.

So now I'm at home. Not writing songs, not putting the finishing touches to my setting of Isaiah 6 and not continuing with my new orchestral tone poem (which is rather languishing). I've started writing a Magnificat.

Ho hum, I'm sure there's a reason for all this skipping about that my unconscious does.

Edington Diary - Tuesday/Wednesday

Sung Eucharist on Wednesday included William Harris’s Holy is the true light; we’ve had Faire is the Heaven at previous festivals so it was good to hear one of Harris’s other works. The Consort did strong justice to Byrd’s lovely Nunc Dimittis from the Gradualia. In the evening Evensong was recorded by the BBC for broadcast on Dec 27th, this meant that we had to pretend it was Dec. 27th including singing vaguely Christmas themed hymns, besides putting up with the paraphenalia of recording. Still, the festival finds the BBC fees extremely useful in balancing the books, it receives no outside grants.

An interesting co-incidence was that the first reading was from Isaiah chapter 6; I’ve just finished my setting of the entire chapter (slightly edited) for unaccompanied chorus, so the reading somehow felt mine. The music was suitable impressive. Thomas Tomkins’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from the Fifth Service received a fine performance from the Nave choir with some excellent soloists drawn from the choir. The Consort combined with the Schola to perform John Sheppard’s magnificent 6-part motet Verbum caro factum est. The setting alternates polyphony with a fabulous high soprano part with plainchant – quite magical.

The consort and the nave choir combined to give a lively, crisp and infectiously rhythmical accuunt of William Walton carol (I said we had to pretend is was December 27th) All this time. The closing voluntary was a rather fun organ duet by SS Wesley.

Wednesday morning’s Sung Eucharist used Giovanni Croce’s Missa secunda: tertii toni sung by the Consort. It is an attractive, practical mass and its on the list of my suggestions for my church choir. (St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Cadogan St., Chelsea). The Nave choir sang Vittoria’s motet Lauda Sion with some excitingly rhythmic interplay between the two choirs. They also contributed Mozart’s Ave Verum.

The evening service was replaced by an afternoon one, broadcast live by Radio 3. This included the premiere of Antony Pitts’s Before Abraham was, I AM. Though we missed the service live, we did manage to catch up with it later thanks to the wonders of the BBC Radio 3 web-site.

Edington Diary - Sunday/Monday

We’ve just spent the last week at the Edington Festival of Music within the Liturgy. Held at the lovely 13th century priory church in Edington, Wiltshire, the Festival presents 4 services a day sung by 3 choirs. The day starts with the Schola Cantorum (director Andrew Carwood) singing plainchant Matins. Then at 11.30 the morning service (usually Sung Eucharist) is sung by the Schola Cantorum, the Nave Choir (men and boys directed by Robert Quinney) and the Consort (a mixed voice choir directed by Jeremy Summerley). Evening service is at 8.00pm (usually Evensong) again sung by all 3 choirs and then followed by the Schola doing Compline by candle light. This year we were staying in the next village to Edington so we were able to attend every service.

I kept a rough diary whilst at the festival, so am publishing it in instalments on the blog, there will probably be an entry each day for the next 5 days, covering the 6 days of the festival that we attended.

All the services were very popular and the church was full to bursting for the 2 main services each day. A surprising number of people came along at 9.00am for Matins.

Things started off on Sunday evening with Compline sung by all 3 choirs. The service included Tallis’s Te lucis ante terminum sung alternim with plainchant and John Sheppard’s In manus tuas which brought back memories of the eight:fifteen vocal ensemble performing the work at my birthday concert last year at the Barbican (co-incidentally 2 of the 8:15 singers were participating in the festival). The service finished with a lovely performance of Pierre Villette’s Hymne a la Vierge, closing with some fabulous bluesy chords.

At Sung Eucharist on Monday the mass setting was Vittoria’s Missa O Quam Gloriosum, with the boys of the nave choir producing a lovely line in the music. Juan Esquivel’s Ego sum panis vivus, beautifully sung by the Consort, was not known to me and I hope to encounter it again. The Hymn Thee we adore was sung to a new tune by John Barnard. The service concluded with a masterly performance of Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor; though it was perhaps slightly perverse to conclude a very long service with a 15 minute voluntary. The service was very, very popular partly because the preacher was Lord Carey.

Monday evening’s service was Evensong sung just by the Nave choir. Sydney Watson’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were interesting and sounded very practical; Watson (1903 – 1991) is a name that is new to me. Finzi’s Welcome sweet and sacred feast was fabulous and it is now very high on my list of works that I’d like to sing.

The organ prelude at Monday’s Compline was the Sanctus and Benedictus from an organ mass published in 1531 by Pierre Attaignant; the same source that we mined for our organ Magnificat at the FifteenB concert at this years Chelsea Festival.

Review of Herodiade

The plot of Massenet’s Herodiade makes the Strauss/Wilde Salome seem a model of common sense and compression. It was Massenet’s 2nd full length opera, coming after Le Roi de Lahore. The subject matter, combining as it does overheated eroticism, sex and biblical characters, meant that the Paris Opera rejected it. It was premiered at the Monnaie in Brussels in 1881. Massenet revised it as there were complaints about the incoherence of the plot. The revised version was performed in Paris at the Theatre des Italiens in 1884. The Paris Opera did not perform it until 1921.

The plot concerns the familiar pseudo-Biblical characters, but not as we know them. To make the piece work it must be performed with the utmost commitment. The slightest hint of send-up would be fatal. Dorset Opera, performing at the Coade Hall at Bryanston School on Saturday August 20th, gave the piece wholeheartedly without the slightest trace of a knowing smile. Much to their credit.

Salome (Christine Arand, soprano) is virginal and naïve (emphasised by her 1950’s sub-Dior costume, complete with white gloves and hat). She has been abandoned as a child and was taken under the wing of Jean (Ian Storey, tenor) and his followers. For some reason that is unclear, Salome has come to Jerusalem looking for her mother. She spends the whole opera in love with Jean, in a simple pure way. They have a love scene, when Jean admits he loves her, just before Jean’s death.

Both Jean and Salome seem to be able to wander in and out of the royal palace at will. Jean’s principal function seems to be to make pronouncements which either annoy Herodiade or inflame the populace.

Herodiade (Rosalind Plowright, mezzo-soprano, in superb disdainful mode) abandoned child Salome and first husband so she could marry Herod (Franco Pomponi, baritone). Apart from one brief moment when she considers what she has lost by denying herself as a mother, Herodiade is a full on bitch.

Herod is weak. He’s infatuated with Salome despite the fact he’s only glimpsed her. When not salivating about her, he’s agitating against the Roman occupiers. This he does very incompetently and has to be rescued by Herodiade, who seems a better political operator and the dominant figure in the partnership.

The extra characters are Vitellius (Jeffrey Carl), the Roman commander, and Phanuel (Bernard Deletre, bass) a sage and philosopher whose role seems to be to fill in gaps and further the plot. He is the only person in whom Herodiade has confided the truth of Salome’s birth.

The production, by William Relton, designed by Cordelia Chisholm used a basic neoclassical set which could be dressed in various ways helped by Paul Need’s atmospheric lighting. Into this set, the production was firmly set in the 1950’s. The results were remarkably convincing, allowing for the faults of Massenet’s dramaturgy.

.
Herodiade is not the largest of roles in the opera, but Plowright dominated whenever she was on stage. She is a singer with the gift of being able to project a character even when not singing. The role sounds like one of those high mezzo/low soprano French roles, as such it was perhaps a tad her for her. But she sang superbly and was wonderfully dramatic, oozing disdain at every pore.

As Herod, Franco Pomponi gave a fine, musical performance with a lovely account of Visions Fugitive, the opera’s best known number. He could probably have made more of the more overheated sections; at one point he even dreams of Salome in a drug induced stupor.

Arand’s Salome was successfully virginal and suitably passionate in her love scenes with Jean. All in all it was an attractive account of the role, but without ever sending a tingle down your spine.

Jean was Ian Storey, an English tenor of whom I am woefully lacking in knowledge. He proved to have a fine, heroic tone. Like Salome, Jean is a character who barely develops, spending most of the opera thundering his message. Storey had his foot in plaster but managed to make his use of a crutch seem a part of his character. Neither he nor Salome quite let go enough in their love scene, but perhaps Massenet’s music is not quite dramatic enough either.

Bernard Deletre made much of a character who was essentially superfluous. The production fudged his role as sage and astrologer and simply had him wandering around in white linen suite with a stick.Jeffrey Carl was excellent as Vitellius and Jan Garritsen made his mark as the high priest. It was this latter who led the remarkable, unaccompanied Jewish prayer.

Massenet’s music for the opera was remarkably varied, encompassing not only this prayer but a drinking song for the Roman soldiery.

William Relton’s production was remarkably effective in the way it used the 1950’s setting to effect. Relton proved adept at manipulating the chorus in the big scenes, though some of the staging of the principals seemed a little stiff.

The chorus were remarkably convincing and enthusiastic. Only occasionally did weakness reveal that they were a purely amateur group who had first come together 2 weeks previously. It is one of Dorset Opera’s wonders, the way they mix amateur and professional to such creditable effect.

The orchestra, a professional group, coped very well with the unfamiliar music but did not quite do justice to the loveliness of Massenet’s orchestration. The strings, particularly, lacked the requisite sheen.

This year Dorset Opera lost their Arts Council grant. So, despite giving fine performances in which amateur singers and back stage crew are given the chance to perform in professional standard opera, they must now go it alone.

Next year its Turandot

Recent CD Reviews

Whilst I was away (of that more later), the wonderful web carried on working and a couple of my CD reviews appeared on MusicWeb International.

My review of Handel's Rinaldo on Naxos is here.

A performance that fails to live up to its promise; enthusiasts might want to have it, for completeness but if you are unfamiliar with Handel’s opera
seria, save up and get a better recording ...

My review of Naxos's portrait of Peter Maxwell Davies is here.

An excellent introduction to Maxwell Davies's music...

Plans

Tomorrow night we are in Blandford Forum (at Bryanston School) for Dorset Opera's 2nd (and final) performance of Massenet's Herodiade, with Rosalind Plowright. Then we are staying in Steeple Ashton for the week and attending the Edington Festival. Perhaps this year, being as we are staying in the next village, we might acutally get to Matins, sung to plainchant each morning by the Schola Cantorum, directed by Andrew Carwood. The complete Festival programme is here.

As usual, I won't be travelling with a PC or laptop, so postings to this site will probably only resume on our return.

Wanted - One Poet

As I am currently chugging to the end of the first draft of my current project (the choral setting of Isaiah chapte 6), I've made one of my periodic resolutions to write more songs. This, of course, requires poetry to set - always a bit of a problem. So this lunch-time I spend a happy half-hour in Waterstones, leafing through the poetry books. I found some Paul Celan, in translation, which was very tempting but Celan has been set by a number of well-known contemporary composers, so I don't think I will try and compete. But I did find a book of Japanese Ko-Uta, short and rather haunting - just the thing for my songs. AND, Rabrindranath Tagore's Gitanjali in a new poetic translation, rather than his own poetic prose. These look very tempting.

The problem with contemporary poetry is that before songs can be used or printed, you need to address the copyright issues. But I find that it is a certain type of contemporary voice to which I am attracted, I have great difficulties find much pre-1900 poetry which I feel I want to set. I'm not sure why. So I've decided to set the poems I fancy and worry about copyright later, if I can't get permission then they can sit in the draw with all the other unperformed songs!

I'm currently working on a setting of Isaiah Chapter 6, for unaccompanied chorus (mainly SATTBB). Even edited down slightly, there is quite a lot of text; but in in the King James Bible version, the words are completely wonderful. I heard the opening verses being read at church one morning, in a modern version, and remained struck how well they'd lend themselves to music.

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

The whole earth is full of His glory!

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said:

Woe is me, for I am undone!

Because I am a man of unclean lips,

And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;

For my eyes have seen the King,

The LORD of hosts.

I've been successfully motoring through this but this week came to a grinding halt. This can often happen in long pieces, somehow my unconscious (or whatever comes up with the music in the first place) needs to catch up with itself. I messed about with it for a bit but could not get an further forward.

When this happens I can either wait, move to another section of the work or write any gibberish and keep going, knowing that I must come back to the relevant section. This latter is what I did here, this morning I wrote the 3 troublesome bars knowing that I must re-work them, but it got me going and I have now reached the last section, hurrah!

My new mass is finished and preview copies sent out to a few people. I decided to make the best of it not having a name and keep it as Missa Sine Nomine. I hope to have the opening of the Kyrie up on my web-site soon. Now that I can produce PDF's of piece, this makes life far easier, I've even been able to email PDF's of the Kyrie to people. The wonders of modern technology.

Classical Music, Contemporary Classical Music

Recent CD Review

My review of Meyerbeer's Semiramide is here here on MusicWeb International.

A creditable, dramatic live performance; if you are interested in early Meyerbeer or influences on Rossini, then buy it. ...

Technorati Tags: Classical Music, CD Review, Opera

Snetzler in Cobham

On Sunday afternoon we took a trip out to Kent to see Cobham Hall. The home of the Earls of Darnley up to 1957 and now a well known girls school. Out of term time they arrange tours of the historic parts of the house on Sundays. One of the major attractions is the late 17th century gilt hall in a wing attributed to Inigo Jones or John Webb. The hall was re-configured as a music room in the 18th century and acquired a Snetzler organ. This organ remains, sitting high up on a balcony and was restored in 2002.

Snetzler (born Johannes Schnetzler) was Swiss. He seems to have come to England in the 1730's; his first documented English organ dates from 1741 though there may be one from 1731. Initially he built organs for the immigrant community. But then built 27 stop organ with a Roccoco case for St. Margaret's Church, King's Lynn. This made his reputation. From then on he made chamber/house organs and church organs, becoming an English citizen in 1760 and retiring back to Switzerland in 1781.

Few of his church organs survive in anything like their original state. Whilst his chamber organs are rather better preserved, only 2 survive in their original location. That at Lodge Canongate, Edinburgh, which dates from 1756 and has been altered and that at Cobham Hall which is rather larger (its a house organ rather than a chamber organ) and is uniquely well preserved mechanically. A very similar organ is now owned by the National Museums of Wales having been commission by Sir Watkin Willams Wynn and having a case designed by Robert Adam. This organ, dating from 1774, was rebuilt in 1864 but has been put back to its original state.

The Cobham Hall organ is played occasionally. The Friends of Cobham Hall arrange Events which include organ recitals. Though I think it deserves to be better known. Can't someone organise a CD of a recital there please!

Handelcina

I was catching up with my reading at the weekend and so was reading the latest newsletter from the London Handel Society. This included a potted biography of one of Handel's female friends. She attended on of the early rehearsals for Alcina and wrote the following to a friend:-

"Yesterday morning I went to hear the first rehearsal of the new opera Alcina and, whilst Mr Handel was playing his part, I could not help thinking him a necromancer in the midst of his own enchantments."

It set me thinking about productions of the opera. At ENO their production, by David McVicar, uses references to the theatre and to music; Alcina's enchantment is the magic of the theatre. When her magic fails, we see her sitting despondently at a harpsichord and the glorious setting of Act 1 is revealed as being nothing more than a stage set.

But I wonder whether you could go further, setting the opera in the London of Handel's day and dressing Alcina as a man in a full bottom wig, a Handel clone. Thus Alcina's enchantment of young men would have interesting resonances with the suggestions about Handel's own sexuality. I'm not quite sure how this scenario would quite play out, I'm no producer. Certainly the dressing of Alcina as a man would raise whole issues as to whether the young men Alcina enchants see him/her as a man or as a woman. But it certainly sounds an interesting area to speculate on.

Technorati tags: Classical Music, Opera

Weekend Fun

Saturday morning was the annual mass in the Tridentine mass at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Cadogan Street, Chelsea. Father Peter Gee and 2 others celebrated a Solemn Mass in the Tridentine Rite. The choir came back from their holidays (no choral services on Sundays in August) and we had a good turn out, 12 people singing. Besides the extensive Gregorian chant needed, we sang Victoria's Missa Simile est Regnum Coelorum. The mass is basically in 4 parts but Agnus Dei 3 is a canon for 2 SATB choirs, which sounded lovely. For motets we did Palestrina's Ave Maria and Morales's Simile est Regnum Coelorum (not the motet on which the mass is based, but a lovely motet nonetheless.

It was a tiring morning as we rehearsed from 10am to 11.30pm or so and mass was from 12.00am to 1.15pm. Still there was a good congregational turnout including a number of people coming to St. Mary's especially for the mass.

Then in the evening, I had a group of singing friends round to try out one or two new pieces. I've just finished an unnamed 4-part mass and wanted to check it out before I print copies to send to people. Having canvassed the singers about a possible name, I think it will be Missa Sine Nomine, which just about says it all. I was very pleased with the sound of the mass, these things come over far better when sung than on the computer. I think the singers enjoyed it as well, which is a bonus.

We also tried through the new piece (3 movements) which I've written for London Concord Singers anniversary concert in November. Its for unaccompanied 8-part choir so we could only really try the piece out with piano, but it was useful to check what people thought of the pieces (tricky, but fun I'd like to think) and iron out any errors.

Recent CD Review

My review of the Avison Ensemble's disc of concerti grossi by Charles Avison is here, on MusicWeb International.

Stylish performances of some of Avison's lesser-known works ...

Evidently Craig Raine said that librettists are to opera what toilets are to theatres, at least according to Simon Armitage in his article in the Guardian about writing a libretto for Stuart MacRae (for the opera which became The Assassin Tree, and which opened to plaudits recently.

Armitage writes interestingly about his view of the librettists task and how the librettist can become disengaged from the project once the libretto is written, even though the text itself is a collaboration. I suppose this is inevitable. Most composers write opera by setting a text and once given the text, they set it alone. Though of course there are lots of tweaks along the way.

Amanda Holden wrote an article about her experiences writing the libretto for Turnage's Silver Tassie which included the composer turning up on her doorstep at odd hours with ideas for changes and new sections/arias.

It helps, I suppose, if the librettist has a clear idea of his/her position in the food chain. I once had tea with Alan Bush and his wife, Nancy, and conversation wandered from Hanns Eisler, the ostensible reason for the visit, to Bush's operas. These mainly had libretto's by his wife but Joe Hill, the man who never died had a libretto by American playwright Barry Stavis. Evidently, on first hearing the work Stavis moaned to Nancy Bush that you could not hear his words.

---

A post-script to the above is that whilst I was at Manchester University in the 1970's the Royal Northern College of Music put Bush's Watt Tyler on at Sadlers Wells Theatre (I presume there must have been performances in Manchester but if so, they were before I arrived). I missed it and have bemoaned the lack ever since. Interestingly the lead tenor role was played by Robin Leggate`

Tallinn diary

Finally, here's a summary of what London Concord Singers got up to on their recent trip to Tallinn, Estonia.

The advanced party from the choir arrived in Tallinn on Thursday 27th July to find the old town delightful but full of tourists (at least we’d have a potential audience). The scene of our Saturday evening concert, the Lutheran Cathedral on the top of Toompea hill, proved to be even more fascinating and delightful than appeared in the website. The walls are covered in the coats of arms of the German merchants for whom it was built, but the high boxed pews made us wonder whether we’d see anything of our audience apart from the tops of our heads.

More of the choir arrived on Friday, coming by various means. Whereas the Thursday crowd all came on the same Estonian Air plane, the Friday arrivals came by various means including bus from Riga, plane from Helsinki and ferry from Helsinki. One had even managed a quick trip to the Savolinna opera festival to see the Bologna opera company doing Donizetti’s ‘La Fille du Regiment’. Friday was free time and then in the evening we all went out for a communal meal. Wandering around town we were please to note that a number of our flyers were up in the churches and the tourist office.

Come Saturday afternoon we had to stop feeling like tourists and start being choristers again. Its always tricky getting back into rehearsal mode when away on these trips. Our rehearsal in the Lutheran Cathedral was enlivened by the presence of large numbers of tourists, but the building is big enough to accommodate both us and the sight-seers, we might even have got some extra audience.

As it turned out, we need not have worried, we got an excellent audience both in terms of attentiveness and size. The programme was a typical London Concord Singers one, motets by Parsons, Bassano, Merulo, Byrd plus Britten, Richard Rodney Bennett and Urmas Sisask. It lasted about an hour and was well received. Afterwards the organist of the church presented the choir with a commemoration plate.

Afterwards we retired to a neighbouring hostelry to celebrate; but not for tool long, because we had to be up and about next morning.

Sunday morning we sang at the huge Charles XI church. Built in the late 19th century it was the centre of the Estonian National Lutheran church. Impressive and classically plain inside with just a fresco over the alter, we sat in the balcony in front of the organ. Communication was tricky, as we had to speak German to the organist and the service sheets were only in Estonian. Still, we managed to fit 5 motets into the service and the church was most helpful arranging for us to fit in as much music as possible. We managed to join in the service with the help of hymn books, service sheets (both in Estonian) and a rudimentary knowledge of Estonian gained in order to sing Tormis’s ‘St. John’s Day Songs’ in our London concert.

Most of the choir were familiar with Anglican and Roman Catholic services, quite a number of us sing at them. But it was fascinating to participate in a Lutheran service; much of it similar in structure but much of it not. Not speaking the language, we missed out completely on the Sermon.

Service once over, the formal part of the weekend was over. We concluded with a group meal in the evening at a Russian restaurant and then went our various ways.

Recent CD Review

My review of Naxos's 2nd volume of Vivaldi Sacred Music is included here, along with a review of the same disc by a different reviewer.

Creditable performances but there are finer performances and I would
advise you to save up for one of these...

Country Life in the Barn

I've been catching up reading the copies of Country Life which arrived whilst we were away. In her column for 27th July, Carla Carlisle talks about her growing disenchantment with travelling far to listen to music (she lifes on a farming estate near Bury St. Edmunds and runs a restaurant there). Her column struck a chord with me, especially in the light of my posting on this site yesterday.

Interestingly, one of her solutions was the Summer Music festival in Blackthorpe Barn, which is close to her home. This is a festival which has been enjoyed by other friends who have a weekend place in Norfolk. They came back singing the praises of the concert which they attended at the Barn. The festivals are run, on a shoe string, by the Barn's owner, George Agnew. Evidently he eschews the red tape required to get a grant from the Arts Council, something that I can sympathise with (FifteenB haven't managed to get a grant since 1998).

So next year in July, perhaps we'll have to make room for a trip to Norfolk.

Money up front

There's a fascinating piece here about Fanfare Magazine allegedly telling someone that they'd review his CD if he bought advertising and the more he bought the better his coverage would be. The story has evidently got quite a bit of coverage in the blogosphere (inevitably), but it does make you think. Luckily I review for web-sites that are free (http://www.musicweb-international.com, and http://www.mvdaily.com)

Here's something we missed

The Julian Anderson Prom premiere WAS something I'd like to have heard, but unfortunately we were travelling back from Estonia at the time. Shame. It's nice to read in The Times article about Anderson joining the London Philharmonic Chorus before writing the choral piece. There are too many piece that I've done where the composer has patently never listened to how a chorus works. Obviously we can't all learn every instrument that we want to write for, but there should be the world of a difference between pushing boundaries and simply writing stuff that is unnecessarily difficult.

Gaps

I am rather aware that there are significant gaps in my summer concert going (what summer concert going you might ask?). Some how the Proms that I really want to hear are on days when we're unavailable or out of town on holiday, though we usually manage one or two. This year, I'm afraid that there was not very much on offer which really tempted me. The other problem with Proms is that unless you promenade (my knees won't cope with all the standing nowadays) or sit in the good seats, you can often come away feeling that you would have heard the concert better on the radio. But, of course, if you listen on the radio then other things get in the way. You start doing the dishes , the phone goes or your attention wanders (mind does all the time). Listening at home, you simply lack the enforced concentration that a concert environment brings, and I need this sort of confinement to force me to concentrate on the music at hand. So it comes back to money; picking the concerts that you feel are really worth paying top price for.

Perhaps its an age thing; now I'm in my 50's I feel less inclined to put up with discomfort and mid-week after a day at work I don't often feel so inclined to go to a concert. But its also a feature of the Albert Hall itself.

The thing that makes the concerts so accessible, the Hall's very size, means that it is one size fits none, really. Or is that me being a pessimist? Still, the Hall's owners have done a wonderful job of sprucing it up in the last few years. It makes the concert going experience a please (apart from the scarcity of mens loos).

Of course, the Proms is not the only thing going on at the moment. There are also visits from 2 great Russian opera companies. Now here I music exhibit one of my many achilles heels, I have a rather take-it-or-leave-it attitude to much Russian opera. I have a soft spot for the odd Rimsky-Korsakov extravaganza and Boris Goudonov is an opera that I have loved in the past. But the repertoire as a whole does not make me shout, Oh, Goody!. And, of course, the prices are greater than for our own opera companies.

So we come to money again, do I want to pay the prices necessary to see these pieces or not? This year the answer has been not, I'm afraid.

But there is one final issue. I rather like having a holiday from the regular round. The month of August is one where I have no regular evening choir rehearsals, no Sunday morning commitments at church choir and if there is little concert or opera going then it gives us a bit of space. Not a lot, we're away twice this summer and we are going to the Edington Festival for a week. But that is definitely outside the regular round of things.

So I'll happily browse the reviews of Proms and various visiting companies, but I rarely feel a twinge of regret. There'll always be another time!

Plans

Having managed to negotiate the all German language site of Dresden's Semper Oper we now have tickets to see their new (ish) production of Weber's Euryanthe in March next year. It premiered relatively recently and is not un-controversial (the director has Euryanthe and Adolar singing their roles from the pit in the final scene and gives the triumph to Eglantine and Lysiart). But the opera is one that I've always had a fascination with and have only seen it twice before. Once in concert with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with Elizabeth Connell as a thrilling Eglantine. And at Glyndebourne with a fascinatingly spooky production by Richard Jones. I'm still waiting to acquire the old recording of the opera with Jessie Norman and Rita Hunter in the 2 main female roles. Last time I looked it was only available as an expensive import. But the cast sounds great and I've always had great fun imagining the pair of them on stage together!!!

Nearer in time, on Saturday 19th August we're off to see Dorset Opera's new production of Massenet's Herodiade with Rosalind Plowright. Bliss.

And I've bought the first tranche of tickets for English Touring Opera's Baroque Tour. We're seeing Dido and Aeneas and Carissimi's Jephte (not an opera and rather short to boot, but an interesting pairing nonetheless> at The Hackney Empire. Not an ideal venue for these operas but we have not been to the theatre since it was refurbished (shame!). The theatre's web site must win awards for being one of the most annoying and awkward to use.We hope to catch up with more of the ETO Baroque Tour and should be aiming to see Monteverdi's Orfeo in Cambridge.

PS. If you are wondering how we got on singing in Tallinn, a full report follows shortly.

MyCulturallife.co.uk

A new web-site has come on line, http://www.myculturallife.co.uk/, dedicated to London based arts. I've a couple of articles on the site and will be contributing more, do support it.

Recent CD Reviews

I've been away, but the web never stops, so a couple of my CD reviews appeared in my absence.

My review of Berlioz La Damnation de Faust from Naxos is here on MusicWeb International.

A creditable and convincing performance by predominantly French forces;
as such it is worth finding room for on the library shelves...

My review of the Tallis Scholars re-issue of early performances of Palestrina masses, is here, also on MusicWeb International.

Other, more intensely passionate styles might appeal, but if you want a
performance of Missa Benedicta es then you can’t go wrong with the
stylish perfection of The Tallis Scholars. ...

Tallinn Bound

So tomorrow morning, the first contingent of our choir travels out to Tallinn in preparation for our concert on Saturday evening at the Lutheran Cathedral then on Sunday morning we'll be singing at morning service at the Charles XI Church. The repertoire is basically that of our recent London concert (Sisask, Britten, R.R. Bennett, Byrd, Parsons, Merulo, Bassano) with the addition of some extra pieces (Bruckner:Os Justi, Vagn Holmboe:Liber Canticorum Vol 5, Purcell/Sandstrom:Hear my Prayer).

I'll report further when we get back.

This month's Opera magazine

Some gleanings for this month's opera magazine:-

Charles Osborne's article on George Bernard Shaw's music reviewing has some rather nice one-liners. My favourite was:-

Miss Nordica turned Elsa of Brabant into Elsa of Bond Street by appearing in a corset.

But it is also interesting where Osborne compares Shaw's comments on singers to their recorded legacy. But other singers did not leave a record to compare to Shaw's criticism. So we are left wondering whether Ilma de Murska's voice 'was not unjustly compared to an old tin kettle' or Tamberlik has 'certain traditional phrasings which the old fashioned training used to knock into singers, usually knocking the voice out of them at the same time.

There was some discussion in the letter pages about interval length. We have noticed that the intervals at Covent Garden seem to have got longer since the rebuild.
I rather agree with the correspondents who would prefer the minimum of intervals. Given the cost of the catering at Covent Garden, I don't see why we should feel confined to the theatre for interminable intervals when there is no need.

Another subject of correspondence is the use of Sign Language interpreters simultaneously with sur-titles. Wendy Ebsworth, who signs for ENO and Covent Garden
makes the valid point that at Sign Language interpreter tries to include far more information than simply summarising the text, they also try to include info relating to more subjective things. A rather interesting point. Its easy for those of us that hear to dismiss the subject of signing, I'd like to hear from someone who actually uses the signing information to find out their views.

In Paris, the Opera-Comique cast Laurence Janot as the heroinhe in their new production of Oscar Straus's Drei Walzer/Les Trois Valses.
She seems to be quite a find, because she started out life as a ballerina before going on to become a soprano. Now that sounds like a brilliant combination for a lot of modern stagings.

And in Cologne, they've just done the Ring in 2 days, complete! The first 2 operas on the first day and the 2nd 2 operas on the next day. Sounds like a rather intense experience. I've always rather fancied the opposite, spreading the longer operas over multiple days with lots of dinner intervals. Rather than starting Götterdammerung at 4.30pm, why not start it at 2.00pm.

At Karlsruhe they gave the first European staging of Handel's Lotario, 277 years after its premiere! And in Mannheim, the opera are reviving a number of operas which lead to Gluck's reform opera. We tend to remember, just, Gluck and Calzabagi's reform operas but conveniently forget that other, lesser, masters did experiments which lead to that goal. The latest to be staged is Traetta's Sofonisba,
complete with the heroine's suicide on stage. Interestingly, the Mannheim stage also saw the premiere of Schiller's play, Die Räuber, which was the basis for Verdi's I Masnadieri.

Houston have done a new production of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Whilst I can understand that to do this opera on a large scale stage requires some compromise, I feel that in this day and age replacing Nerone by a tenor (rather than a mezzo-soprano) is completely unforgivable. Is sends out all the wrong signals, saying that the look of the piece with a male protagonist is more important than the composer's musical lines. Its one of my betes noire, this use of tenors in roles like Nerone. I have seen a number of truly impressive productions with either a mezzo or a counter-tenor in the role of Nerone, so I see no need to re-write
Monteverdi unnecessarily.

Rodney Milnes's review of Thais at Grange Park Opera is one of those occasions when you wonder whether we were at the same performance. It is fascinating how some productions seem to bring out contrasting points of view in critics, whereas others get them all agreeing. Mind you, there have been occasions where all the print critics seem to have agreed and I have found myself in a minority of 1 (well 2 actually, as my partner and I usually seem to agree on our general view of a production).

Michael Kenndy's review of Show Boat at the Albert Hall is the sort of review which makes me long to have seen the production. I'm no great lover of opera in the round, but I think that we'll be booking for Showboat if they do it again (they must!) at the Albert Hall.

In the CD reviews there is a review of an opera by Gossec, someone I've heard of, but whose music is not familiar to me. Amazingly, he was a protege of Rameau AND was on the panel that failed to give the Prix de Rome to Berlioz in 1826, how's that for longevity.

On the back page Peter Alward remembers Rita Hunter in exactly the same way that I remember her. Interestingly he notes that whilst her voice was not over-large it had a focus which meant that her tone could be heard over the heaviest of orchestrations. One of my abiding memories of her is the wonderful gleaming quality of her voice. She is still sorely missed and it is difficult to see that any particular singer nowadays can sing the repertoire with the same sense of line and lack of struggle.

Something Old, Something new

I've been working on my new choral setting of Isaiah chapter 6 (the piece is still without a name) and started to realised that parts are starting to sound a bit like The Testament of Dr. Cranmer. I'm not quite half way through the Isaiah piece and its the sort of time when all sorts of doubts occur and you can become convinced that you are writting complete drivel. All you can do is continue and then revise later, in the clear light of day. So I'm going to assume that this is another aspect of this problem and now worry too much about pieces sounding alike. After all, I can hardly create a brand new sound world for each piece, can I?????

Recent CD Review

My review of Emma Kirkby's recital (with Fretwork) of Byrd consort songs is here on MusicWeb International.

A varied well-chosen programme, beautifully sung and played. Lovers of
this repertoire will want to buy Robin Blaze’s fine Hyperion disc as well,
but if you just choose one then you won’t go far wrong with this. ...

Toilers at the coal-face of music

An interesting article in The Times here about the work of the BBC Symphony Chorus. The hook for the article is the musically inexperienced hack joining the chorus for the performance of the Dvorak Te Deum (rightly termed tedium by chorus members, I did it myself whilst in the London Philharmonic Choir). But still, at least he (Neil Fisher) does make it clear how much work and committment is required of the singers in such choirs. One of the reasons why I dropped out of the London Philharmonic Choir was the fact that a Sunday evening performance effectively required almost the entire weekend to be devoted to rehearsal, fun but hard work.

One thing that Neil Fisher fails to note, in the Dvorak the choruses repeated use of the word fac on its own caused a great deal of ribald hilarity.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Alan Davis's disc of Handel's recorder sonatas is here.

And my review of Roberto Alagna's recital of French operatic arias is here.
Both on Music Web International.

Alagna brings to each aria his familiar intelligence and musicality. Don’t
throw out your Georges Thill recitals, but definitely buy this one as well. ...

Displacement activity

I've finished the piano reductions for my 2 new works, the new mass and the new piece for London Concord Singers 40th Anniversary, Ursi Carmina. So these pieces are now to the side, awaiting a trial sing through which I have planned . (I've managed to bribe a number of friends with the promise of food and we're getting together in August to try the new mass out and whatever else we can fit in.)

So I really ought to be getting back to writing the motets for Volume 2 of Tempus per Annum; I've just finished the 3rd Sunday after Easter but have plenty of Sundays to get through until I reach Pentecost (the planned terminus of this volume). Also, I've still got my tone poem based on the Sylvia Townsend Warner's short story.

But of course, I'm not doing either of these. Having had terrible toothache for the last week I have been indulging myself and now have started yet another piece, this one is a choral setting of Isaiah Chapter 6, King James Version but in my own stripped down version. I heard a chunk of it at church some time ago and was struck by the possibility of the Holy, Holy, Holy calls etc. All I have to do, of course, is get it finished before I have another bright idea.

What's in a name

I've just been listening to a disc of Charles Avison's Concerti Grossi. He's a composer who is only just really coming into his own with a large repertoire of unrecorded pieces. But it's not his pieces that concern me here, its his name. Avison was born and brought up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Though he met and had lessons with Geminiani in London, Avison spent most of his working life in Newcastle.

Ever since I first came across his work, many years ago, I have been perturbed by the standard pronunciation that his name receives in the English musical establishment. It is de rigeur to pronounce his name with a long ay sound, so that the A of Avison rhymes with bay, literally Ay-vis-son. But as a Northerner (albeit one further south than Newcastle) I have always felt that the first A should be short as in cat. I have tried this out on various friends who were born in the area and they all agree with me. But of course I might be wrong. What is strange, is that there is no discussion of the issue anywhere. Is this another manifestation Southern English cultural Imperialism or am I just plain wrong?

Herodiade

Well, we have discovered an unexpected pleasure to start our week's holiday in August. We will be spending the last week in August exploring the pleasures of the Edington Festival of Music in the Liturgy, but on the Saturday we arrive Dorset Opera are performing Herodiade at Bryanston School in Blandford Forum, which is not a million miles from where we are staying.

Dorset Opera use professional soloists and orchestra but the back-stage crew and chorus are made up of volunteers, all of whom have undergone a 2 week summer-school to train them. They have a track record for doing interesting things and this year is no different, Massenet's pseudo-Biblical opera Herodiade with Rosalind Plowright in the title role, directed by William Relton.

It sounds like a grand start to the holiday and a remarkably contrast to the musical repertoire for the rest of the week.

Concord

Now is the time of year when choral activities tend to start winding down. Mid-July is usually the last London concert of the season for my choir, London Concord Singers. But now that we go off abroad each year, things continue. So having had a successful concert on Thursday at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Chelsea, we are continuing to rehearse for our trip to Tallinn at the end of this month.

Thursday's concert went very well, I even sang the solo tenor part in the solo quartet in Britten's Hymn to the Virgin. It was rather too hot and contrary to the usual expectation, the church seemed to retain the heat. But now, a slightly smaller group of up will be rehearsing a slightly revised version of the concert to take to Estonia.

Tidying up

I'm always a bit lax when it come to keeping my web-site www.hugill.demon.co.uk up to date, especially when referring to the lists of forthcoming and past performances. Anyway I've just done all my house-work and the site is now fully up to date. There are one or two projects coming up which are not finalised so no doubt the site will be out of date again soon. All we have to do now is make sure that my most recently premiered works are now uploaded onto my publisher's site www.sphericaleditions.co.uk; for this I have to produce copy and images of the printed music to go with the works, so its yet more work. Perhaps next week.

Covent Garden Ring Cycle

Covent Garden have announced details of their Ring Cycles for 2007, the first time the new Keith Warner production will have been done complete. They are doing 3 cycles (starting on 2nd October, 17th October, 26th October). Lisa Gasteen and John Treleaven return as Brunnhilde and Siegfried with Philip Langridge as Loge and Rosalind Plowright as Fricka. Bryn Terfel does Wotan in Cycles 1 and 3 with John Tomlinson as Wotan in Cycle 2. Placido Domingo is doing Siegmund in Cycles 2 and 3 with Simon O'Neil in the role in Cycle 1; Eve-Maria Westbroek is Sieglinde; Peter Sidhom, Alberich.

We have until November to decide whether to go or not. Having seen the production in parts I am in 2 minds about seeing it, but doing a complete Ring cycle in a week is a very special sort of event which can transcend the problems of the individual production. Even so, my disappointment with the last Act of Gotterdammerung has rather coloured my view of the work.

More Queering the Pitch

Apart from the 2 articles I've already mentionned (on Handel and Schubert), "Queering the Pitch", edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood and Gary C. Thomas, has a rather diverse collection of material.

Philip Brett's Musicality, Essentialism and the Closet has, I think, some interesting things to say but is rather densely written. Elizabeth Wood's Sapphonics makes some interesting links between lesbian interest and singers with high mezzo-soprano voices. But the article seems more an assemblage of ideas, a sketch for something more concrete to come. This is not helped by some glaring errors; Salome was not a French opera comique. And her discussion of Ethel Smyth conveniently forgets that Smyth actually did have a passionate affair with Henry Brewster, it was this which informed their opera Les Naufrageurs, (The Wreckers).

There is an interview with Ned Rorem which has some good things to say, though I wish the author, Lawrence D. Mass, had worked it up into a proper essay rather than printing it in question and answer format.

Lydia Hammessly tried to shed light on the reasons why Henry Lawes might have set some of Katherine Philip's woman-centric (proto-lesbian?) poetry in the 17th century. One of those curious little side-lights which can easily get forgotten and which help fill in background and show how little we know. Philip Brett crops up again with an examination of orientalism in Britten's operas.

The article Unveiled Voces:Sexual Difference and the Castrato has some interesting nuggets, but is again rather densely written. It is also written under a pseudonym, Joke Dame, which sounds too jokey in what purports to be a serious publication

These are the more interesting articles, there are also a group which seem to be more about being Gay or Lesbian than real musicology, or what I'd think of as musicology; personal chronicles and attempts to fit the musical world into the gay/lesbian world, or vice versa. Not to mention the article about the music of k.d.lang (or am I being a little too po faced).

Castrati again

Well, castratos are certainly in the news at the moment. First the Exhibition at the Handel House Museum, then the TV programme, presumably there's a book on its way somewhere, but now we have the Exhumation.
By a curious chance, or peculiar sense of timing, the news has just been released about the exhumation of Farinelli's body for study as part of a year long project. I just hope that the body is not too decomposed and that the findings, when they are finally published are not just a damp squib.

The Sound of Silence - 3

This part 3 of the article, part 1 is here and part 2 here.

Ellen Harris does not attempt to fathom Handel’s sexuality. Her book covers all of the Italian chamber cantatas but she prefixes each period with a summary of what we know. Her main discoveries have been about the fascinatingly homosexual/homosocial aristocratic milieu in which Handel wrote his cantatas. Interestingly, when he ceased living with aristocratic patrons and moved into his own house in Brook Street, he stopped writing cantatas. Interestingly, also, Harris argues that when the London Handel re-edited his cantatas composed in Italy for use in London had made a number of subtle changes which removed or obfuscated any possible homosexual/homosocial reading of the cantata or its text.

Harris’s book is pretty substantial, she covers every single one of the Italian continuo cantatas along with many other. Besides discussion the works in context she provides a good chronology for the cantatas along with the texts and translations of the continuo cantatas. But it her attempts to elucidate the background to the composing of the works that stay in the mind, her discovery of the apparently highly sexual milieu in which Handel wrote them.

There are times when Harris attempts to read too much into the subject matter and background to the cantatas. But with such a careful author as Harris, you come away thinking that there are so many small pointers that there must be something in it.

One final point, we have a tendency to think of Handel as the middle-aged bon viveur of legend. This is the image that most commentators project onto their reconstructions of his personality. But there is another Handel, the young attractive Saxon. Harris includes in her book a reproduction of a now lost image of the twenty year old, Handel. The image of a slim, attractive young man; just the person to capture the hearts and imaginations of randy Cardinals.

Like Handel, with Schubert we are reduced to close readings of small gestures. Granted there are more pointers, such as his close male relationships. And we do have more information than we did for Handel. Most of these issues are covered by Maynard Solomons in his paper “Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini” (published in 19th Century Music in 1989(. The title is a reference to an entry in his by Eduard von Baurenfeld that Schubert “Schubert somewhat ailing (he needs "young peacocks" like Benvenuto Cellini”. We have never fully elucidated this and Solomons takes is to be a double-entendre and that the peacocks refers to young male sexual partners. This issue of Schubert’s sexuality is one that troubles commentators, despite the increasing consensus. There has even been an article in Early Music which attempts to cast doubt on Solomons paper by denigrating his understanding of Benvenuto Cellini’s Peacocks, but the argument goes far beyond that.

So a recent biography of Schubert went so far as to grudgingly accept that Schubert was at least bisexual, but there has never been a study of how this might affect our view of his music. This is where Susan McClary’s article in “Queering the Pitch” sheds some light on the issue. She does not rehearse the pro’s and cons of the argument, instead she considers things from a musical point of view, examining the musical construction of some of the later works.

We cannot now know for certain what Handel or Schubert’s sexual proclivities were. But I think that it is important for us to accept that the record is silent on the subject and not to try and fill the silence with noise of our own making. That the vision of Handel as a vigorous, heterosexual man must be just as much a figment of a biographer’s imagination as the image of him pursuing choirboys under the watchful eye of an Italian Cardinal.

The Sound of Silence - 2

The first part of this article is here.

If we turn to the evidence on Handel, there is little detail and the musicologist must try any read much into little. I had always assumed that Handel was heterosexual on the basis of the 2 surviving comments about his affairs. The Electress of Hanover’s comment, in a letter to her daughter, that Handel was coming to town with Vittoria Tarquini and that they were in a liaison. Unfortunately there is little else to link Handel and Vittoria, it is not even certain whether she was even in his opera, Rodrigo, in Venice at the time. The 2nd comment is a marginal note by George III in his copy of Mainwaring’s biography, to the effect that Handel tended to have affairs within his own circle of musicians.

Both the early books on Handel, Mainwaring’s biography and Hawkins’s A General History of the Science and Practice of Music treat the subject with some curious circumlocutions which Gary C. Thomas convincingly argues were being used to cover up Handel’s real sexual preferences. But of course this is all subjective.

What is possibly more telling is the resounding silence in the rest of the evidence? Though Handel’s autographs survive in large quantities, indicating that he took a degree of care of his papers, we have hardly any personal effects. The lack is so considerable that it would seem to indicate a definitive removal of material rather than sheer carelessness.

We must be careful, at this stage, not to read too much into the silence; not to rush in with sounds of our own making. After all, there are examples of other figures who chose to ensure that their personal papers were destroyed simply out of a sense of privacy. Elizabeth Gaskell was one of these, she requested that her daughters destroy all of her letters and papers – and she had nothing particular to hide.

In Handel’s case, we are reduced to close readings of various statements of his biographers. This is the nub of Gary C Thomas’s essay in “Queering the Pitch”

These are subtle readings and it is difficult to be sure, but the most interesting aspect remains the determination of commentators to project their own concerns into the silence.


To be concluded tomorrow

Recent CD Review

My review of Roberto Alagna's Berlioz recital is here on Music Web International.

Berlioz sung by a singer of great musicality but this recital is a little too
bitty for comfort. ...

The Sound of Silence - 1

I’ve recently been reading 2 books that shed some interesting side-lights on the subject of composers and their sexuality. The first is new, Ellen Harris’s "Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas" and the second is quite old, but was ground breaking, "Queering the Pitch", edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood and Gary C. Thomas.

The first is essentially a survey of Handel’s Italian chamber cantatas but Harris has found some interesting links between the cantatas and their begetters which seem to derive from a homosexual mileu. The second book is an assembly of essays by gay musicologists and whilst many of them are ephemeral, two in particular strike resonances, Gary Thomas’s essay on Handel’s sexuality ("Was George Frideric Handel Gay?": On Closet Questions and Cultural Politics) and Susan McClary’s essay "Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music" on Schubert’s music and his possible sexuality.

The first question that you might ask is does all this matter? To many commentators, the dwelling on the possibility that a composer such as Handel or Schubert might be gay or re-assessing Beethoven’s attitude to women, says more about the writer’s attitude to sexuality than to informed opinion about the relevant composer.

Unfortunately there is a resounding silence in the archives when it comes to detailed information about the sexuality of many 18th century figures. Not only this, but 18th / 19th century habits are not 21st century ones and close male friendships can be read in a variety of ways (see Alan Bray’s books on these matters, "The Friend" and "Homosexuality in Renaissance England"). The fact that Schubert lived for most of his life with a close male friend can be read as proof of his being gay, but against this another commentator can provide examples of how men did develop close, non-sexual relationships. A further area of dispute is the tendency of heterosexually inclined commentators to take the example of one relationship with a woman to be proof that the person in question was heterosexual.

The hetero/homo-sexual identities really only developed in the mid 19th century though they were starting to in the 18th. For many people in Handel and Schubert’s times, there was no such thing as sexual identity, simply sexual acts. And acts with persons of one sex did not preclude acts with persons of another.

What we end up with is defining relationships according to that dread word, homosocial. A word coined to enable us to say that someone’s relationships are predominantly male orientated and could possibly involve sexual relations, but they might not. (see the Wikipedia entry)

Though modern commentators might regard themselves are balanced and enlightened, it is unfortunately true that most, when writing on their chosen subject, fill the resounding silence of the subject’s sexual identity with detail of the commentators own imagining.

To answer the question, does it matter? The answer is yes, because the issue seems to matter so much to other commentators. If everyone would let well alone, perhaps it would be different. But they don’t. Paul Henry Lang in his biography of Handel invented a whole series of female liaisons for Handel, apparently because he could not be content with the speaking quality of the silence around Handel’s sexuality. Similarly, Donald Burrows in the recent biography refers to Handel’s possible relationship with Vittoria Tarquini as "the only rumour of a sexual liaison during Handel’s career for which there is sufficient evidence to deserve serious consideration". The fact that this biography was written after Brett’s article would seem to indicate a side-swipe at the article. But apart from this comment Burrows keeps a magnificent silence on Handel’s relationships. Whereas Jonathan Keates says "The assumption that as a lifelong bachelor must perforce have been homosexual is untenable in an eighteenth century context, when the vagabond life of so many musicians made marriage a hindrance."

Perhaps even more tellingly, Susan McClary in her essay on Schubert in "Queering the Pitch" tells of her presentation of her paper about Schubert’s sexuality to the 1991 annual Schubertiade at the 92nd Street Y in New York The audience were just unable to accept even the possibility of Schubert’s being gay.

Part 2 to follow tomorrow.

Final Run

Tomorrow is the final rehearsal for the London Concord Singers concert on Thursday, at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Cadogan Street, Chelsea. We're doing a rather interesting (singers code for challenging) programme of music by R.R.Bennett, Sisask and Tormis plus a selection of early motets. Usually with such a programme you get one chance only to get things right, but this time we get more than one as we're taking many of the works to Tallinn at the end of July.

It never stops

Having vowed I was going to have a rest from planning concerts, after my recent Chelsea Festival Concert coming on top of the concerts we did in March, I am already having ideas about possible future concerts. But I'm going to try very hard to not act on any of the ideas. At least just yet. Its just that events and things conspire against me.

I've been thinking of doing a programme, with a small group of people and wanted a hook to hang the programme on. This got me thinking about verse anthems and Orlando Gibbons. It turns out that a friend as access to a selection of Gibbons anthems and recently gave me scores to 3 of them, they'd been edited by a friend of hers. So now I've got no excuse. Prior to that, we'd recently done This is the Record of John at church and it has set me thinking about doing these verse anthems with voices singing the viol parts worldlessly - probably sacrilege I know, but I rather fancy having a go.

Then yesterday at church (St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Cadogan St. Chelsea), we sang Palestrina's Mass Aeterna Christi Munera, one of my favourites and I happened to read the editor's introduction in our vocal score. It talked about the possibility of transposing the work down and singing it with ATBaB, which chimes in with another idea I'd had. I've been rather taken with Andrew Carwood and the Cardinall's Musick's recording of the Byrd Masses with the 4-part mass transposed down. This had set me thinking about doing a concert with no sopranos, just alto, tenor, baritone and bass. Familiar music but heard in an unfamiliar way. Another staple at St. Mary's is Gascogne's lovely motet Caro Mea and this is another work which I think would take to downward transposition. Not sure if either of these concerts will come off, but at the moment its fun to plan.

Of course, I'd like to do Crossing again soon, having premiered it at the Chelsea Festival. That performance was rather limited by the logistics of performing with organ at St. Mary's Cadogan Street (the sight lines are less than ideal and the distance between console and conductor rather large). So it would be nice to do it again soon in a venue more conducive to performance with organ accompaniment. Then again, I'd like to revive my Requiem, this time performing it alternating movements with organ music by Messaien or Dupre. The list is endless.

I am also starting to assemble the libretto for a work based on Isaiah Chapter 6, mainly because I was rather taken with its language. I'm probably going to set the King James Version, but I need to read a couple of others first, just in case.

One final thing that's bubbling around is a work based on the idea of the resurrection. But I need to try and come up with an interesting selection of texts, so that might have to wait.

Photograph of Constanze Mozart

Rather amazingly the Guardian carries a story about a photograph of Mozart's widow Constanze. Apparently taken in 1840, it shows her with a friend and his family. She was born in 1762 so would have been 78 when the picture was taken. The picture does not really tell you much about her, she looks amazingly severe and is looking down. But of course, all early pictures are a miracle because of the long exposure time, sitters rarely look natural. But there is something haunting about looking at a photograph rather than a drawing or painting. And to see a photograph of the wife of someone who is so associated with the 18th century is just amazing.

Chicago

We finally got around to watching the movie version of Chicago the other night. I was surprised at how successful it was and how much I enjoyed it. I know that, nowadays, actors can get a lot of technical help when it comes to singing but Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere impressed me with the confidence of their singing and the way they seemed to be able to do something with the song.

But the element of the film that I enjoyed the most was the way that it returned the staging of the musical numbers to their Vaudeville roots. Kander and Ebb's original songs are each cast in the form of a particular genre of Vaudeville song, right through to Roxy Hart's husband's soft shoe shuffle, Mr Cellophane This is something that is completely ignored in the stage version current in London (originally staged by Bob Fosse I think) with its emphasis on what it likes to think is sexy choreography.

The film is not perfect, but I loved the way Rob Marshall blended the Vaudeville with the more naturalistic bits. It was pure film and would be impossible to do on stage, which was brilliant as a more stage bound production would not have worked so well.

King Arthur

Mark Morris's production of King Arthur on Friday, at ENO was more enjoyable than some reviews had led me to believe but also less than it might have been.

The set was very plaing, just consisting of a few drop curtains, the odd platform, free-standing doors and a selection of props. It opened with the cast coming in and sitting in a circle. Some had partial costumes as if rehearsing for King Arthur. Whilst they sang the solos in the opening choruses to Woden, the dancers filed past as if creating a processing of warriors, but in rehearsal costume. The chorus were in the pit.

Each scene was staged like this, the dancers in rehearsal costumes, the singers in a variety of wigs and partial costumes. Each episode was staged appropriately but there was no dramatic linkage between them, no connective tissue. It was almost as it we were watching a the movements of a ballet where the linkage between movements was the dance itself. This was emphasised by the banishing of the chorus to the pit.

This was a shame, because in the production of Rameau's Les Paladins which came to the Barbican, dance was to the fore and the chorus was integrated with the dancers. I was not too keen on the production of Les Paladins but far prefer their method to Mark Morris's banishment of the chorus.

The treatment of the chorus is understandable, perhaps, because the production is a co-production between ENO, New York City Opera and others so must be mountable in a variety of different companies. Economics probably mean that it is impossible to do the work to integrate each different opera chorus into the production.

The result, though billed as opera and organised by ENO, was to make it seem as if we were watching a dance work which happened to have singers in it as well.

This was a great shame because an opportunity was missed. Mark Morris's choreography can at times seem obvious and trite but there were moments in King Arthur where he matched Purcell's rhythms beautifully. In the long chorus about lovers for instance, the singers (in a variety of deshabille) were on a platform and turned the the audience in groups as the dancers moved around them. The result was satisfying and rather moving. I began to wish that someone had had the guts (and the money) to stage the semi-opera properly with suitable regard for the dramatic scene changes necessary with Mark Morris doing the movement. The result could have been stunning rather than just satisfying.

In the Cold-Genius section, Andrew Foster-Williams sang from inside a fridge freezer, which was an amusing wheeze. My main complaint was the Foster-Williams was encouraged to force his tone in the opening, cold bits, which affected his tuning and destroyed the sense of line in Purcell's music.

For the final section of the work, after the plot has finished and the celebrations start, where Purcell and Dryden create a celebration of England, Morris (and costume designer Issac Misrahi) place the set pieces in the context of a circus. I think this was just a decision, just a way of presenting the disparate elements but it did contain an element of send-up. The dancerscostumes themselves were rather imaginative and had an element of nostalgia. For Fairest Isle Morris calmed down and had Mhairi Lawson just sitting on a plaform in front of a tree, the result looked very Jackanory! For the final, glorious Chaconne, Morris again hit on the perfect complement (and compliment) to Purcell's music and produced a bold and complex Maypole dance.

The singing was uniformly excellent and the cast, especially James Gilchrist, had to put up with some pretty odd wigs and costumes. Gilchrist had a wonderful knack of making his tenor ring round the Coliseum without it ever seeming forced; the perfect way to sing Purcell in this big house. The other stand-out singers was Mhairi Lawson who managed to project perfect Purcell singing whilst chaos went on around her; though there were moments when her smile seemed to become rather too fixed.

Jane Glover was in charge in the pit and musically this was a superb evening. Chorus, Orchestra and Soloists gave us a fine version of Purcell's music, if you closed your eyes you could be in heaven. It was only Dryden who was turning in his grave.

An interesting article in the Guardian by Robert Thicknesse about his attempt to reconstruct what a Greek chorus would sound like by getting Roxana Panufnik to write something using the reconstructed rules of Ancient Greek composition. Unfortunately, its being broadcast on Tuesday July 11th at 1.30pm (on BBC Radio 4) which precludes listening for many of us.

We're off to ENO tonight for our last opera of the season, Purcell's King Arthur in the new production by choreographer Mark Morris. He's dumped the Dryden text and reviews have been many and varied. I look forward with interest, but I'm not holding my breath.

Recent CD Review

My review of Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion is here on MusicWeb International.

Very much a mixed bag, but certainly a worthwhile attempt. ...

Decisions, decisions

The booking form has arrived for the Royal Opera House Winter season. This includes the new production of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment, starring Juan Diego Florez and Natalie Dessay. Colin Lee is singing one performance and having seen him do an aria from it at the concert at Grange Park last Sunday, we are very tempted to hear him do the role live. But we also want to see Florez and I don't thing the budget runs to both (front Amphitheatre seats are £61.

Castrati

I've not yet managed to get to the exhibition on Castrati at the Handel House Museum but last night's TV programme on BBC4 gave an excellent preview of the subject. Presented by counter-tenor Nicholas Clapton (who has curated the exhibition), gave a fine over-view of the subject but was prevented from being rather dry by the more gruesome aspects of the subject. We had a detailed description from Clapton about exactly how the op. could be done. A segment where Clapton visited Farinelli's grave was a bit unnecessary.

What made the programme fascinating though, was the inclusion of quite a bit of technical detail about the castrato voice. First they played the same piece of Handel sung by a treble, a mezzo-soprano and by Clapton himself. This was interesting, though throughout the programme the recording seemed to do Clapton's voice no favours, which was a shame. He has a warm voice, with a pronounced vibrato and it was this latter which came to the fore in the TV programme, though I'm sure heard live he sounds more relaxed.

The programme used a technical specialist from York University to describe the mechanism of the castrato voice and to attempt to synthesize the voice by combining recordings of existing singers.The recordings for these involved a treble and a tenor singing the same aria. The tenor first sang an octave lower and then bravely managed to sing the aria at pitch in full voice, no falsetto.

One interesting curiosity was a young American male singer whose voice did not fully develop at puberty so his vocal chords are not as thick or as long as an ordinary adult male. The resulting sound is rather feminine sounding, due to his training I expect, but he has rather more depth of colour at the higher end of his range than a falsettist.

At the end of the programme they played the synthesized voice, it did not quite sound like a live voice but it successfully sounded other worldly and strange, though a combination of tenor and treble it did not quite sound like either.

The subject of Moreschi, the only castrato to be recorded, came up during the programme and they played one of his recordings. He was quite old when the recording was made and his technique owed much to the 19th century way of doing things, so his recordings sound a little strange to us. One point they did not raise, which came up once in a BBC Radio 3 programme was that he could actually have been a falsettist, specialising in singing high; masquerading as a castrato as at the time of his youth this had more kudos in the Sistine Chapel Choir. I've no idea whether this theory is valid or not.

Recent CD Review

My review of George Malcolm's recording of the Handel Concerti Grossi is here on MusicWeb International.

Not too many modern instrument performances of these concertos in the
repertoire … this one has been re-issued at an attractive price. If in doubt,
do try it. ...

Reductio ad absurdam

I seem to be in piano reduction mode at the moment. I'm doing one for my new piece Ursi Carmina which is going to be premiered on Nov. 18th at the London Concord Singers 40th anniversary concert. I am also scheduled to do one for my new mass (now complete, hurrah). I find it is useful therapy doing these as playing through the resulting part can result in all sorts of interesting ideas cropping up. I also provides an alternative view of the shape of the piece.

Now that the new Mass is complete (well, in the first draft) I need to find a name for it. Calling it Mass in A minor seems rather a cop out, especially as though each movement starts in A minor, they very rarely stay in that key very long. The Mass is built round the renaissance idea of each movement starting from the same incipit. So perhaps, Incipit Mass (????), or even Mass which starts in A minor - this might sound better in Latin, I suppose.

Despite the wonders of modern technology, I'm curious to hear the new mass sung by real voices so hope to have a sing through in August. I'll report back!

On Sunday we made our final visit to Grange Park Opera, this time for a recital rather than an opera. Using the set for their production of L'Elisir d'Amore, complete with tea waggon, Bruce Ford, accompanist Ian Burnside and sundry Friends gave the first recital to be hosted on the Grange Park stage.

Bruce Ford started with a group of Italian salon songs, 3 by Mercadante and 1 each by Gomes, Donizetti and Rossini. I must confess that I have a rather small appetite for these songs and was rather impatient for the bigger fare. It was perhaps not helped that Ford's voice has developed a pronounced vibrato which, though not unattractive, was more suitable to the larger scale items than the more intimate songs.

Janis Kelly, as the first friend sang Elizabetta's opening aria from Donizetti's Maria Stuarda. This is a role that she sang at Grange Park last year and her command of the genre was impressive. She projected a real image of the regal Elizabeth. Though her voice lacks the ideal warmth for this style of music, her command of musical line and fioriture were impressive. Kelly and Ford then followed this with a touching performance of Parigi, O Cara the Act 3 duet from La Traviata.

David Stout was a new fact at Glyndebourne. He has only recently finished on the opera course at the Guildhall. He is singing Papageno in next year's Magic Flute at Grange Park. As a taster of his Mozart he gave us a fine rendition of the Count's aria from Le Nozze de Figaro. I look forward to his Mozart as he has a good sense of line and an appealing stage presence. Finally he and Bruce Ford sang Au fond du Temple saint from Bizet's Les Pecheurs de Perles.

Ford opened the 2nd half with Where'er you walk from Semele and an aria from Kalman's Countess Maritza. Ford displayed his customary elegance in the Handel, but I was did find his vibrato a little intrusive. He managed the switch to operetta very well and sang the Kalman with consumate elegance and style, moving from English to German.

Then Rebecca von Lipinski, who sang the Countess in the current Grange Park Le Nozze de Figaro and who will be singing the First Lady in next year's Magic Flute, gave a rather careful rendition of Come Scoglio from Cosi van Tutte. Whilst it was not the most idiomatic performance, it is much to her credit that she did not come to grief in this most taxing aria.

Then Colin Lee made his single appearance in the evening. Lee is singing Nemorino in the current Grange Park production of L'Elisir d'Amore but in the new year he will be sharing the role of Tonio in La Fille du Regiment with Juan Diego Florez at Covent Garden. As a taster for this he sang Ah, mes ami, Tonio's stunningly taxing aria complete with its row of 6 top C's. Lee's performance was truly brilliant and appeared quite effortless. I look forward to seeing him at Covent Garden next year. I must confess that, even though it was supposed to have been Ford's evening, I would love to have heard much more of Colin Lee in this type of repertoire.

The remaining 4 singers then concluded with 4 party pieces. All seemed far more relaxed than previously. Rebecca von Lipinski managed something almost as difficult as singing Mozart, bringing off a Noel Coward song. She sang Zigeuner quite beautifully, without ever seeming to overwhelm the song with her trained operatic voice, quite a skill. Bruce Ford the gave us Britten's Ploughboy, Janis Kelly did a lovely version of Paris from Sondheim's Follies, the words altered to fit the occasion with many Grange Park references. Then finally David Stout, who did a degree in Zoology, sang The Bird and the Beast by Celius Dougherty, a composer I had not come across before. Its hilarious text apparently written by a 10 year old boy. Stout proved a very apt performer, again showing an appealing stage presence.

There was one encore, when Stout and Kelly left the audience clamouring for more after there rendition of a Victoria Wood song. The evening was nothing if not eclectic!

The songs were introduced by Ian Burnside and the performers. Whilst this gave a charming intimacy to the evening, it meant we did not have the words. Which was a lack in the foreign language songs. Still,the evening was a charming success and I hope that Grange Park repeat it.

Recent CD Review

My review of Tavener's Lament for Jerusalem is here on MusicWeb International.

While I did not quite believe the extravagant claims made for the piece in
the CD booklet, I enjoyed this performance immensely. If you are
interested in Tavener’s music and like fine singing, then buy this disc. ...

Its our final visit of the season to Grange Park Opera today. Instead of an opera its a recital from Bruce Ford, which should be interesting. He's not someone that I've ever heard in recital.

Review of Nixon in China

My review of John Adams's Nixon in China at the ENO is here on Music and Vision.