Inspired by the Sea: composer Ed Bennett on the ideas behind 'Strange Waves', his large-scale immersive work eight-part multitracked cello & field recordings

Kate Ellis performing Ed Bennett's Strange Waves at Cafe Oto with image from Laura Sheeran

Irish composer Ed Bennett has just released a new album, Strange Waves on the Irish label Ergodos. A collaboration with cellist Kate Ellis, Strange Waves includes field recordings, made on the County Down coast and on Ireland’s northernmost island, Rathlin, in the North Atlantic, mixed in with a hypnotic eight-part multitracked cello to create a large-scale immersive work inspired by the sea. 

Earlier this month, Ed Bennett and Kate Ellis launched the album with a performance in London at Cafe Oto, where it was performed with a film by Laura Sheeran that went with the music. Ed's work has featured on this blog before as I reviewed Psychedelia, the 2020 disc of his music on the NMC Records label [see my review].

Ed Bennett (Photo: Rachel McCarthy)

Strange Waves came about partly because of Lockdown in 2020, with Ed wondering whether live performance would ever return and thinking about ways to keep doing things. The idea for Strange Waves was to work with a single performer; having Kate Ellis recording all eight tracks, it was a way to make a piece long distance and create a substantial work with on performer. They recorded it, intending to perform it live when that would be possible. Whilst the performance at Cafe Oto featured just one performer, Kate Ellis, there is an option to perform the work with a live cello octet, though a live version of this remains just a gleam in Ed's eye at the moment. To perform it with eight live performers will take more resources, as the tuning required in the work is quite specific, but Ed feels that surrounding the audience with the eight cellists would be wonderfully effective.

Awake, my soul! World premiere of my new anthem at Triptych Singers' 50th anniversary concert

The Triptych Singers are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, and the choir, conductor Jim Jellie is giving a celebratory concert at St Mildred's Church, Croydon CR0 7ED on 4 November 2023.  

The concert will include the premiere of my anthem, Awake, my soul. The anthem is a celebratory piece, setting words from Psalms 57 and 98, and it was commissioned in celebration of the choir's 50th anniversary.

The concert also includes music by the contemporary composer Jamie Milford, along with Palestrina, Byrd, and Victoria. Admission is free and there is a retiring collection in aid of St Mildred's Organ Fund.

Full details from St Mildred's website.

JW3 celebrates its 10th anniversary with its first classical concert series

Founded in 2013, JW3, the Jewish Community Centre London, is celebrating its 10th anniversary as the only such public venue for Jewish arts, culture, learning and community of its kind in the country. The Classical Series, the venue's first classical concerts season has just been announced, curated by David Waterman (former cellist with the Endellion String Quartet) and taking place in JW3's 220-seater Howard Hall.

Things kick off on 15 November with the Jerusalem Quartet in Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, then tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen perform Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann's Dichterliebe including the extra four songs that Schumann removed from the cycle (12 December 2023).

The first concert of the new year features the trio, Alasdair Beatson (piano), Sini Simonen (violin), and David Waterman (cello), in Beethoven, Bloch and Brahms. Other artists performing include cellist Steven Isserlis in Bach's Cello Suites, with readings from Janet Suzman, the Castalian Quartet with cellist David Waterman, and the series ends with pianist Angela Hewitt in Bach's Goldberg Variations.

In NW3, near Finchley Road tube station, JW3 is well-placed to expand London's cultural offering and the 220-seater Howard Hall, where the concerts take place, seems set to be a lovely intimate venue. But I did wonder whether The Classical Series was daring enough, whether it couldn't have tried to investigate themes and composers that would fit the venue's mission as a centre for Jewish arts and culture, and explore musical ideas that are often absent from the concert world.

Full details from the JW3 website.

London Oriana Choir celebrates 50 years of music making

London Oriana Choir and Dominic Peckham

London Oriana Choir, music director Dominic Peckham, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a season packed with goodies. The choir's first ever rehearsal was on 14 November 1973; it was founded by Leon Lovett, starting life as an evening class under the auspices of the Inner London Education Authority. David Drummond took over as musical director in 1997 and will be returning to conduct the choir as part of the gala concert in March 2024. The current MD, Dominic Ellis-Peckham, joined in 2013.

The season launches with Choral Icons at St Paul's Covent Garden on 4 November 2023, a concert in aid of Music for Dementia featuring works by Benjamin Britten, Cecilia McDowall, Sir John Tavener, Sir James MacMillan, Eriks Esenvalds, Felix Mendelssohn, Dobrinka Tabakova and more. 

Cecilia McDowall, the choir's patron, has written a new commission for them, whilst singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman will be making a special appearance at the gala concert in March, recreating part of a seminal 2006 performance with the choir. The Gesualdo Six will be joining with the choir to perform Eric Whitacre’s seminal multi-choir work, The Stolen Child, at Union Chapel in July.

Full details from the choir's website.

A lovely artist portrait: Dobrinka Tabakova's orchestral works featured on a new disc from the Hallé & Delyana Lazarova

Dobrinka Tabakova: Orpheus’ Comet, Concerto for Viola and Strings, Earth Suite, Concerto for Cello and Strings; Maxim Rysanov, Guy Johnston, Hallé, Delyana Lazarova; Hallé

Two large-scale orchestral works alongside more intimate concertos for soloist and strings on this lovely artist portrait disc from the Hallé

This new album on the Hallé's own label represents the culmination of two Hallé collaborations, with Delyana Lazarova (Hallé Assistant Conductor 2020-23) and composer Dobrinka Tabakova (Hallé Artist in Residence 2022-23). Both were both born in the historic city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria and worked together for the first time during their time with the orchestra. The disc features two of Tabakova's major orchestral works, Orpheus' Comet and Earth Suite, along with two concertos for soloist and strings, the Concerto for Viola and Strings with soloist Ukrainian-British viola player Maxim Rysanov who premiered the work in 2004, and the Concerto for Cello and Strings with cellist Guy Johnston.

London Philharmonic Orchestra: Conducting Fellowship returns, & Under 30s scheme launched

The London Philharmonic Orchestra with principal conductor Edward Gardner (Photo Mark Allan)

The London Philharmonic Orchestra's Conducting Fellowship is open for applications for a new season, whilst the orchestra has launched its LPO Under 30s scheme offering seats for less for those under 30.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has opened applications for its Conducting Fellowship 2024/25. Now in its second year, the fellowship has been specifically created to promote diversity and inclusivity in the classical music industry by developing two outstanding early-career conductors from backgrounds currently under-represented in the profession. 

The inaugural Fellow Conductors, Luis Castillo-Briceño and Charlotte Politi, were selected from around 200 applications from around the world, and are working with the Orchestra during its 2023/24 season. The two successful new applicants will be Fellow Conductors for the 2024/25 season and be guided by the LPO’s Principal Conductor, Edward Gardner. They will become fully immersed in the life of the LPO, working intensively with the Orchestra over a period of 6–8 non-consecutive weeks.

Further information from the LPO's website.

The orchestra also recently launched LPO Under 30s which offers anyone aged 30 and under the chance to experience the magic of live orchestral music from some of the best seats in the house for less. Offers will vary each month but participants will never pay more than £20 per ticket and there is no booking fee for LPO Under 30s. There will also be drinks offers at selected concerts, and behind the scenes peeks, plus a free LPO tote bag when you book your first ticket.

Further information from the LPO's website

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra's Music and Health Programme celebrates and its Emerging Musicians Fellowship returns

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is now accepting applications for its 2024/25 Emerging Musicians Fellowship, whilst the orchestra's Music and Health Programme has just celebrated its 15th anniversary 

 The fellowship is a paid development opportunity for emerging orchestral musicians, offering early-career orchestral musicians an immersive experience of professional orchestral life, on and off the concert platform. It has been designed to attract the widest talent pool possible and there is no upper age limit for applicants. 

This opportunity will culminate in a final wrap week including an exit audition, an intimate chamber performance programmed and performed alongside other Fellowship Musicians, and sessions around ongoing musical and professional development. The wrap week is also an opportunity to welcome the next cohort of Fellowship Musician to the programme and grow the Alumni network.

There are four places available for the 2024/25 Fellowship. Applications are welcome from the following instruments: 

• Strings: Violin, Viola
•  Woodwind: Flute, Piccolo with Flute, Bassoon, Contrabassoon with Bassoon 
•  Brass: Trumpet, French Horn, Percussion & Timpani

Full details from the orchestra's website.

The orchestra is also celebrating 15 years of its Music and Health Programme. The programme is now the longest-running and largest of its kind. It is an initiative that harnesses the power of music to promote well-being and improve the mental and physical health of participants. 

Working across 27 wards in 4 partner NHS trusts the programme has:

• Supported 18,000 patients and participants living with mental and physical ill-health across the Liverpool City Region
•  Conducted 15,000 hours of music-making
•  Presented sessions in 50 health, social care and community settings
•  Hosted 35 participant-led celebration events at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

The 15th anniversary celebrations will see current and past participants from across the programme take part in special performances both on the stage and in hospital wards.

Further information from the orchestra's website.

First Person: Sholto Kynoch, artistic director of Oxford International Song Festival

Sholto Kynoch

As the Oxford International Song Festival (formerly the Oxford Lieder Festival) opens tomorrow, artistic director and founder Sholto Kynoch reflects on 22 years of festival making.

It might be the first time it’s been the Oxford International Song Festival, as we change from Oxford Lieder, but for the 22nd time in my life, I am sat at home waiting for the Festival to begin tomorrow. I reflect that, as of this year, I’ve now been doing this for more than half my life! Some things have changed significantly since the early days, when a group of student friends started a little festival. Some things remain very much the same.

Tonight is what I might call uncomfortably calm. I know that the brilliant Festival team have everything under control, I’m more or less on top of my own preparations, and there’s really nothing more to be done. And yet it’s hard to relax, even with takeaway fish and chips and a glass of wine. There’s always that feeling that I’ve surely missed something, coupled with a childlike excitement that will probably keep me awake all night. My requisite three annual anxiety dreams are long done and dusted: it’s all real now.

That sense of anticipation has been a consistent eve-of-Festival feature over the years. Though there are plenty of demanding and stressful elements to running an event like this, this is my favourite time of the year. When else do I get to perform what I want, with who I want, where I want? When else do I get to immerse myself in other people’s wonderful music-making multiple times every day for sixteen days? And when else do so many friends, both musicians and attendees, fly in from all over the world – or just pop round the corner – for this celebratory fortnight of song?

There are some things I don’t have to worry about anymore. Twenty years ago, I’d have been up half the night formatting, printing and folding programmes. I’d have been fielding questions from artists who’d not been given any advance information on their rehearsals, and probably making up last-minute posters and the like. Friends would help out, but we were learning on the job. Today, we have an exceptional team, led by our brilliant Director of Administration Taya Smith, who make everything run like clockwork. So at least I won’t be worrying about those things.

The Festival programme is very personal, something I’ve spent at least a year thinking about in detail, and longer than that planning in concept. Unveiling it – earlier in the year – is always a tense moment (will people like it?) but now I’ll be worrying all night how people will actually experience it. Feedback this year has been great, but I don’t believe it until I see it. There’s no point doing this if people aren’t enjoying it, and something I’ve learnt over the years is also what a profound experience the Festival, at its best, can be for people. It’s not the happy-go-lucky approach of those early years: it’s much more important, and the pressure has grown proportionally.

We may have ‘professionalised’, but the essence of the Festival is the same. Whenever I’m not playing, I like to be standing at the door greeting everyone personally. The atmosphere is welcoming, fun and informal. We’ve seen many friendships made (and the Festival has even been an unwitting matchmaker on more than one occasion!) and it’s always wonderful seeing the mix of new and familiar faces arriving for concerts.

So, I think I won’t sleep well tonight, but I will wake up tomorrow bursting with energy and eager for the day ahead. With any luck, enough energy to see me through sixteen days and then I can collapse. It’s a fortnight like no other, and I can’t wait.

The Oxford International Song Festival ART:SONG Images / Words / Music’ runs from 13 to 28 October in venues across Oxford. More information from the Festival website. 

One of the 2022 Voices of Black Opera, Thando Mjandana, premieres a Daniel Kidane work with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

South African tenor Thando Mjandana won the Samuel Coleridge Taylor Award at the Voice of Black Opera competition in Birmingham in 2022 [see my article] and there is a chance to hear Mjandana in action back in Birmingham later this month when he joins Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) and conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni for the world premiere of Daniel Kidane's Cradle Song (setting text by Blake) on 18 October 2023 at The Elgar Concert Hall, University of Birmingham, and the programme is repeated in Bristol on 29 October.

Entitled Songs at Day, Songs at Night, the concert also features soprano Mimi Doulton, and features Daniel Kidane's Primitive Blaze, the UK premiere of Julian Anderson's Mitternachtslied (setting texts by Nietsche and Longfellow), the world premiere of Anderson's Thus, and music by Harrison Birtwistle.

Kidane's Cradle Song is one of BCMG's Sound Investment scheme commissions, as was Harrison Birtwistle's 2018 work, … when falling asleep which is included in the programme.

Full details from BCMG's website.

Lili Elbe: Tobias Picker's new opera based on the life of the painter who had the first gender confirmation surgery in the 1930s

Lili Elbe by Gerda Wegener

The premiere of  American composer Tobias Picker's new opera, Lili Elbe will open at Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland on 22 October 2023, reopening the newly renovated art-brut style Konzert und Theater St. Gallen building. 

With a libretto by Aryeh Lev Stollman (Picker's husband), the opera tells the story of the painter Lili Elbe (1882-1931), who had the first gender confirmation surgery in the 1930s and features transgender baritone Lucia Lucas in the title role. The performances are conducted by Modestas Pitrénas, chief conductor and artistic director of the Theater St. Gallen, and directed by Krystian Lada, with choreography by Frank Fannar Pedersen. 

Unlike the 2015 film The Danish Girl, the opera is not based on the novel, but on historical sources, including Lili Elbe's own writings. Lili Elbe is the story of a love overcoming all obstacles. The opera allows a glimpse into the life of Lili Elbe and her wife Gerda Wegener, both famous painters. The opera explores Lili’s coming out and transition at a time when gender confirmation surgery was still completely uncharted territory.

Lili Elbe is Tobias Picker's seventh opera and his second to a libretto by Aryeh Lev Stollman; the two wrote Awakening, Picker's 2022 opera based on Oliver Sacks book. Picker's operas have varied between is 1998 work, The Fantastic Mr Fox based on the Roald Dahl story, to An American Tragedy based on the novel by Theodor Dreiser and premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2005, to Dolores Clairborn based on the Stephen King's novel and premiered at San Francisco Opera in 2013.

Full details from Theater St Gallen

English song and a pizza! Kitty Whately and William Vann at Pizza Express Live at The Pheasantry in Chelsea

Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Herbert Howells, Rebecca Clarke, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, Madeleine Dring; Kitty Whately, William Vann; Pizza Express Live at The Pheasantry, Chelsea

A wonderfully immersive experience, 20th English song in superb performances in the intimate confines of Pizza Express' Chelsea cabaret venue

Pianist William Vann has curated another Classical Song Series for Pizza Express Live at The Pheasantry in Chelsea. Taking place in the cabaret venue in the basement of The Pheasantry, the concerts have a relaxed feel with the audience able to eat and drink, and the results are slightly surprising for a classical concert. On Tuesday 10 October 2023, William Vann was joined by mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately for an evening of English song with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Herbert Howells, Rebecca Clarke, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams and Madeleine Dring.

The Pheasantry's basement venue is an intimate one, yet with a pleasing acoustic for live performance. The results are remarkably immersive, the effect of hearing John Ireland's gloriously rhapsodic Earth's Call (setting a significant John Masefield poem) was wonderfully all-enveloping when sitting only a few feet from singer and piano. Kitty Whately's fine diction meant that we never needed the printed words, and her manner of creating a song as a sung story often meant it felt as if she was telling the story directly to us.

The National Youth Orchestra is coming to Lancaster and seeking young musicians to join in

The National Youth Orchestra's free NYO Inspire programme is for teenagers who want to make music, and playing with others, a bigger part of their lives and is aimed at promoting equality in music education, prioritising those with the greatest need for a place.

This October, the National Youth Orchestra is bringing together the musicians from NYO Inspire and the NYO orchestra for NYO Unite, a series of day long music making activities across the UK. On 28 October, they are heading to Lancaster to work with NYO tutors and conductor, Constança Simas to explor. Aaron Copland’s Rodeo. 

In partnership with the Lancashire Music Hub, The National Youth Orchestra is also inviting local musicians to get creative and discover new sounds together at an NYO Open event on 28 October. Local musicians aged 11-18 (KS3 or above) and who play an instrument at Grade 3 level or above, will have the chance to explore music and have fun playing together. With the NYO creative team and alumni, they will take inspiration from Copland's Rodeo and play their part in creating a new piece with other teenagers.

The day will culminate in a sharing performance to friends and family, featuring NYO Unite musicians performing Rodeo and the premiere of the new piece created by the young people participating in the NYO Inspire open event.

Full details from the NYO website.

Developing an individual practice after many years of collaborative composition, a recital by composer/performer Edward Henderson showcasing composition at Morley College

Edward Henderson

Composer Edward Henderson, who is part of the composer-performer group Bastard Assignments (described as "one of the most exciting forces in contemporary music" by the Financial Times) also teaches composition at Morley College. Composition has a long history at Morley with Vaughan Williams, Holst, Tippett and Cardew either teaching composition or being head of music, and Henderson is now putting himself in the spotlight. In a concert intended to showcase Henderson's recent works and highlight the role of composition at Morley, he will be performing his own compositions at Morley College on 1 December 2023, alongside composer/performer Francesca Fargion.

Henderson is performing two works for piano, and for piano and playback, which are the results of an impulse he had to develop an individual practice after many years of collaborative composition and group performance; he wanted to make pieces that he could perform on the piano. He is being joined by Francesca Fargion who is currently doing a PhD at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, having studied the piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, before doing a Masters in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths University.

Further details from EventBrite.

John Findon takes the title role in ENO's magnificent revival of David Alden's production of Britten's Peter Grimes

Britten: Peter Grimes - English National Opera (Photo: Tom Bowles)

Britten:Peter Grimes; John Findon, Elizabeth Llewellyn, Simon Bailey, Christine Rice, director: David Alden, Martyn Brabbins; English National Opera
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 6 October 2023

David Alden’s production of Britten’s Peter Grimes has been a big success for English National Opera. A five-star job, really, long may it stay in the repertoire

Due to the unavailability of Gwyn Hughes Jones, the pivotal role of Peter Grimes fell to British tenor, John Findon, who fitted so well the sea boots of this lone and anguished fisherman.

Partly written in America during the Second World War where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears were escaping war-torn Britain on a pacifist ticket, Peter Grimes was premièred by Sadler’s Wells Opera (later to become English National Opera) at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Islington, on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall with Peter Pears in the title-role.

First seen in St Martin’s Lane in 2009, revived in 2014 with Edward Gardner in the pit, David Alden’s realization of Peter Grimes (assistant: Ian Rutherford) originally featured Stuart Skelton in the title-role who delivered a brilliant performance while this fine production won a South Bank Sky Arts Award shortly after its première.  

Now with this second (and welcome) revival, opening English National Opera’s 2023/24 season, conducted by Martyn Brabbins (ENO’s musical director), the role of Peter Grimes fell to British tenor, John Findon (replacing Gwyn Hughes Jones due to illness) plunging himself wholeheartedly into this lonesome and anguished character in a telling and surefooted performance, with Elizabeth Llewellyn as Ellen Orford, and Simon Bailey as Captain Balstrode.

Britten: Peter Grimes - Rudy Williams, Elizabeth Llewellyn - English National Opera (Photo: Tom Bowles)

9th Windsor Festival International String Competition

Applications are now open for the 9th Windsor Festival International String Competition. String players are invited for the preliminary video submission round, 12 semi-finalists will then be selected and the finals take place in Windsor in March 2024. The winner will return to Windsor in September 2024 for a concerto performance in Windsor Castle.

The competition, founded in 2008 in memory of Yehudi Menuhin, is a biennial competition that seeks out the star performer of a generation, and launches the career of an exceptional violinist, violist or cellist. Prizes for the 2024 competition include a solo recording with Champs Hill Records, a concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Windsor and further opportunities with the orchestra, a London Concerto performance with Orpheus Sinfonia and much more.

Full details from the competition website.

Brabbins, Ben Haim & Elgar: the Salomon Orchestra celebrates its 60th birthday at St John's Smith Square

The Salomon Orchestra at St John's Smith Square

One of London's finest non-professional orchestras, the Salomon Orchestra, is celebrating its 60th birthday this year. Conceived in 1963 by the conductor Nicholas Braithwaite and a group of his contemporaries, the orchestra gives three main concerts per year in London, each with a different conductor. The orchestra's 2023-2024 season opens on Saturday 14 October 2023 with a celebratory concert at St John's Smith Square where the orchestra will be conducted by Martyn Brabbins and Michal Oren. 

The concert opens with Michal Oren conducting Martyn Brabbins' A Birthday Greeting, written to celebrate the orchestra's birthday, then Oren conducts Paul Ben Haim's Symphony No 1. Written in 1940, seven years after Paul Ben Haim had escaped Germany and fled to the then British Mandate of Palestine, the work was written for the Palestine Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) which had been established in 1936. The symphony reflects both the dark forces present in Europe at the time, and the weight of being the first Israeli symphony.

In the second half of the concert, Martyn Brabbins conducts the orchestra in Elgar's Symphony No. 1, which was premiered by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter in Manchester on 3 December 1908.

Full details from St John's Smith Square website.

Not quite Massenet the modernist, but his late grand opera Ariane is full of wonderful things and intrigues in the way he weaves 19th and 20th century together

Massenet: Ariane; Amina Edris, Kate Aldrich, Jean-François Borras, Jean-Sébastien Bou, Munchener Rundfunk Orchester, Laurent Campellone; Palazzetto Bru Zane

Returning to the Paris Opera after a gap of 12 years, Massenet created an opera full of wonderful things as the magician wove his magic yet with modern elements from Wagner and beyond. The result, in this terrific recording is by turns seductive and thrilling

We tend to think of Massenet's later career as focusing far less on grand opera. After Thais (1894) he had a run of operas at the Opéra-Comique and Monte Carlo Opéra including works that have currency in the modern opera house, Cendrillon, Chérubin and Don Quichotte. But in 1906, he made a return to the Paris Opera with Ariane to a libretto by Catulle Mendes. Ariane and its companion, Bacchus represent Massenet's final operas for the Paris Opera, and they show no reduction in scale or grandeur.

Massenet's Ariane has left almost no trace whatsoever in the recorded legacy so it is a pleasure to be able to welcome a magnificent new recording from Palazzetto Bru Zane with Laurent Campellone conducting the Munchener Rundfunk Orchester with Amina Edris as Ariane, Kate Aldrich as Phèdre, Jean-François Borras as Thésée and Jean-Sébastien Bou as Pirithoüs,

The opera is no small undertaking. The orchestra calls for triple woodwind, four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, tuba, two harps, timpani, four percussion and celeste! The opera is in five acts and is more of a Hollywood spectacular avant le lettre, the scenario encompassing a fight with the Minotaur, a ship on stage in the midst of a storm, and a recreation of the realm of Hades, not to mention the usual grand opera scenes of procession and assembly. After the premiere, an alternative staging was contrived for Nice but the opera was barely seen outside Paris, and its last major revival was at the Paris Opera in 1937 with Georges Thill.

Musical pleasure: strong & stylish performances from a young cast in English Touring Opera's new production of Rossini's La Cenerentola (Cinderella)

Rossini: Cinderella - English Touring Opera (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

Rossini: Cinderella (La Cenerentola); Esme Bronwen-Smith, Joseph Doody, Edmund Danon, Arshak Kuzikyan, Nazan Fikret, Lauren Young, Edward Hawkins, director: Jenny Ogilvie, conductor: Naomi Woo; English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire

An enviable young cast in a stylish, musical account of Rossini's opera buffa that balances the serious and the comic

The second opera in English Touring Opera's (ETO) Spring season is Rossini's Cinderella, contrasting in style and genre from Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea but both pieces have strong women who come out on top, an intriguing link. Rossini's Cinderella opened at the Hackney Empire on Saturday 7 October 2023 in a production directed by Jenny Ogilvie and conducted by Naomi Woo. Esme Bronwen-Smith was Cinderella with Joseph Doody as Ramiro, Edward Hawkins as Alidoro, Nazan Fikret and Lauren Young as Clorinda and Tisbe, Edmund Danon as Dandini and Arshak Kuzikyan as Don Magnifico. Designs were by Basia Binkowska.

Having trained in dance and acting, Jenny Ogilvie has worked extensively as a movement director in theatre and opera, whilst her work as a director in opera has included Britten's The Burning Fiery Furnace at Scottish Opera and Freya Waley-Cohen's Spell Book and Francesca Caccini's La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'Isola d'Alcina at Longborough Festival Opera. Her dance experience showed in the way that music and movement were integrated in the production of Cinderella. The large set pieces felt part of the drama rather than bolted on, as sometimes happens, and frankly you often lost any sense that this was choreographed at all.

Rossini: Cinderella - Esme Bronwen-Smith, Joseph Doody - English Touring Opera (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

The idea behind the production seemed to stem from the role of Alidoro (Edward Hawkins), the prince's tutor who played a fairy godmother like role became a manipulative museum curator. However, nothing was explained, we had to work things out for ourselves. James Conway, ETO's previous general director, usually contributed an article in the programme book when he directed a production, articulating his thoughts, and this is something that ETO should encourage. It would have been interesting to have Ogilvie's thoughts on her production.

It was set in a museum, Basia Binkowska's designs were simple but effective. A modern museum with Edward Hawkins' Alidoro as curator. They were having a move-around, and the museum's mannequin's came alive. Tisbe (Lauren Young),Clorinda (Nazan Fikret) and Cinderella (Esme Bronwen-Smith) were all in the museum cabinets, whilst the other characters were wheeled on storage crates. In particular, both Joseph Doody as Ramiro and Edmund Danon as Dandini showed a remarkable ability to freeze in awkward poses. The pale body-stockings the cast wore to evoke mannequins had a strangely nude look too.

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Rémy Brès-Feuillet (as Flavio, in bath) and Yuriy Mynenko as Vitige in Handel's Flavio at Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival (Photo: Clemens Manser)

September on Planet Hugill: Berlioz at the Proms, Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, Ethel Smyth premiere is available via MadMimi. 

This month's newsletter covers our final visit to the BBC Proms for magnificent account of Berlioz' Les Troyens, our return to the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, as well as a wealth of opera from Baroque to contemporary in the UK. Recordings this month include the premiere recording of Ethel Smyth's first major success, Der Wald and we also explore her contemporary reputation in a feature.

Our Saturday interviews resumed this month, after a short Summer recess, and we chatted to Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko about his London Piano Festival appearance, and to Canadian baritone Étienne Dupuis about his Autumn spent with Verdi including singing Don Carlo in the Royal Opera's revival of La Forza del Destino.

September on Planet Hugill via MadMimi. 

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Astonishing that no-one has heard or heard of the work: Ella Marchment on directing Camille Erlanger's L'Aube rouge at Wexford

Camille Erlanger's L'Aube rouge in rehearsal at Wexford Festival Opera 

This year's Wexford Festival Opera opens on 24 October with the theme, Women & War with operas including Donizetti's Zoraida di Granata, La ciociara by contemporary Italian composer Marco Tutino and L'Aube rouge by the French composer Camille Erlanger. La ciociara is conducted by Francesco Cilluffo, Wexford's principal guest conductor and I chatted to him about the opera earlier this year, see my interview. L'Aube rouge will be directed by Ella Marchment and conducted by Guillaume Tourniaire, and I caught up with Ella, in the midst of rehearsals, to talk about Erlanger and his opera.

Ella Marchment

Camille Erlanger (1863-1919) studied the Paris Conservatory under Léo Delibes, won the Prix de Rome in 1888 and wrote nine operas including the five-act music drama Le Fils de l’étoile, written for the Paris Opéra, where it enjoyed success. Erlanger was Jewish and served as choirmaster of the Synagogue des Tournelles in the Marais district of Paris. He is perhaps best remembered now (if at all) for his opera Le Juif polonais, a more enduring success in its day. L'Aube rouge premiered in Rouen in 1911, it inhabits a similar world to Giordano’s Fedora, with Nihilistic plots forming the backdrop. But since Erlanger's death, his operas have almost dropped off the radar.

[Note: Camille Erlanger should not be confused with his contemporary, the Anglo-French composer Baron Frédéric Alfred d'Erlanger (1868 – 1943) whose works include an opera, Tess (to a libretto by Luigi Illica after Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles) which premiered at the San Carlo in Naples, and a ballet, Les cents baisers which was performed by the Ballets Russes and choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska]

Ella had not come across the Erlanger's L'Aube rouge before Rosetta Cucchi, Wexford's artistic director, asked her to direct the piece. Now, Ella finds it astonishing that no-one has ever heard of or even heard the work. Yet, during his lifetime he was a great success and called the French Puccini. Ella calls L'Aube rouge a real Verismo opera, there are no ensembles or duets and has the text word for word. And the music is incredible, she describes it as beautiful and sumptuous with every note having a real dramatic intention.