Over There!

Over There!, John Ireland, Ivor Gurney, Ian Venables, Herbert Howells & popular songs; Richard Bryan, Katie Bray, Nick Pritchard, Craig Colclough, Louise Williams, William Vann; London English Song Festival at Wilton's Music Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 19 2017
Star rating: 4.5
Powerful musical evocation of the entry of the USA into World War One

With Over There! the London English Song Festival returned to Wilton's Music Hall for a further programme exploring World War One through music and readings, this time combining popular song and art songs themed around the entry of the USA into the war in 1917. Pianist William Vann, artistic director of the London English Song Festival, was joined by mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, tenor Nick Pritchard, baritone Craig Colclough, viola player Louise Williams and reader Richard Bryan for a programme which included popular song by George M Cohan, George Fairman, Ed Nelson & Will Hart, and art songs by John Ireland, Ivor Gurney, Charles Ives, and Ian Venables. As with their 2016 programme Songs of the Somme! (see my review), this was a staged recital with the three singers in military fatigues.

We opened with Woodrow Wilson's speech to Congress on 2 April 1917 taking the USA into the war underscored with The Star Spangled Banner on the piano, followed by a sequence of popular songs which captured the upbeat mood, the most famous being George Cohan's Over There, but also George Fairman's I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way and Ed Nelson & Will Hart's delightful When Yankee Doddle learns to parlez-vois Francais.

The Nelson connection and more: St Marylebone

Horatia Nelson

The parish of St Marylebone is 900 this year, with the present church being 200 and the second St Marylebone Festival celebrates these events with a week of festivities in and around the church from 22 July to 28 July 2017. Things kick off with a come-and-sing Haydn Nelson Mass with conductor Gavin Roberts and soloists Helen Semple, Caroline Doggett, Nicholas Berry and Andrew Copeman. Haydn's Missa in Angustiis was written in 1798 but became known as the Nelson Mass after Nelson attended  performance of the mass at Esterhazy Palace. Nelson's daughter, Horatia was baptised at St Marylebone Parish Church in 1803. Horatia's mother was Nelson's mistress, Emma Hamilton and the concert will also include Haydn's Lines from the battle of the Nile which was written to be sung by Emma Hamilton and celebrated Nelson's victory over Napoleon in the Battle of the Nile in 1798.

Other events at the festival include a recital by Stephen Grahl celebrating the 30th anniversary of the church's Rieger organ, a festal Evensong, and Ensemble Hesperi in a programme of music and readings evoking the pleasure gardens of Old Marylebone.

Soprano Alison Pitt and pianist Gavin Roberts explore settings of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (of nearby Wimpole Street) with music by Amy Beach, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, Michael Head, Arnold Bax, Maude Valerie White and Edward Elgar. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were clandestinely married at St Marylebone Parish Church in 1846.

Another concert celebrates the UK premiere of Brahms' Requiem which took place in 1871 in the home in Wimpole Street of a leading surgeon, this used Brahms' own version of the piece with piano duet accompaniment and the choir of St Marylebone Parish Church is joined by soprano Lucy Hall, baritone Ben McAteer and pianists Gavin Roberts and Elizabeth Burgess. The evening also includes songs and piano music by Schubert.

The festival concludes with the church's organ scholar, Bertie Baigent conducting the London Young Sinfonia in a programme of Erwin Stein's chamber version of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 plus a new work by Baigent himself.

Full details from the festival page on EventBrite.

Choral at Cadogan at 10

Choral at Cadogan returns to Cadogan Hall in September 2017 for the tenth series with eight concerts showcasing choirs and vocal ensembles. The Tallis Scholars, artistic director Peter Phillips, open and close the series and there are concerts from The Sixteen, Stile Antico, Vox Luminis, the National Youth Chamber Choir and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. 

The Tallis Scholars first concert features Monteverdi's works in the prima prattica style, unaccompanied polyphony following the example of Palestrina, and the concert will also feature music by Palestrina, Allegri, Gesualdo and Lotti. The choir returns in June 2018 in expanded form to perform Tallis's 40-part Spem in Alium alongside large-scale works by Sheppard, White and Sutton.

Stile Antico is joined by organist Oliver John Ruthven and violone player Kate Aldridge for music of the German Baroque including Schutz's Musiklische Exequien and Bach's Jesu meine Freude, plus music by Handl, Hassler, Daser and Knofel.

The Sixteen and Harry Christophers bring their Christmas programme, Glory to the Christ Child, which includes Poulenc's Quatre motets pour le temps de Noel and his profoundly moving Un soir de neige alongside more popular Christmas Fare. And still in a Christmas mood, the Temple Church Choir, conductor Roger Sayer, bring their Christmas programme with a selection which moves from Sweelinck's Cnatatye domino and Reger's Maria Wiegenlied to The Twelve Days of Christmas and Howard Blake's The Snowman.

The National Youth Chamber Choir, conductor Ben Parry, presents a range of music all written when the composer were in their youthful twenties, with music by Monteverdi, Britten, Owain Park, Billy Joel, Sting and more. The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conductor Stephen Cleobury, perform music inspired by Lent and Holy Week including Tallis's Lamentations, Stabat mater settings by Palestrina and Lassus, Poulenc's Lenten motes and motets by Brahms. The Belgian group Vox Luminis, director Lionel Meunier, will be performing works by Tallis and Sheppard.

Full details from the Cadogan Hall website.

Captivating: Leoncavallo's Zaza on stage at Opera Holland Park

Johane Ansell as Floriana, Anne Sophie Duprels as Zazà, James Cleverton as Bussy and the Opera Holland Park Chorus in Opera Holland Park’s production of Zazà, directed by Marie Lambert © Robert Workman

Leoncavallo Zaza; Anne Sophie Duprels, Joel Montero, Richard Burkhard, Louise Winter; dir: Marie Lambert, City of London Sinfonia, cond: Peter Robinson; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 20 2017
Star rating: 4.5
Leoncavallo's French music-hall drama receives a rare UK staging

Joel Montero, Anne Sophie Duprels - (Photo © Robert Workman)

Leoncavallo's Zaza returned to public attention in 2015 thanks to Opera Rara's recording (and associated concert performance) but this is an opera which cries out for a full staging, and now Opera Holland Park staged it handsomely in a new production by Marie Lambert, designed by Alyson Cummins and Camille Assaf with Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role (seen 18 July 2017). A large cast included Joel Montero as Milio, Louise Winter as Anaide, Richard Burkhard as Cascart, James Cleverton as Bussy, Johane Ansell as Floriana and Charne Rochford as Courtois, with Peter Robinson conducting the City of London Sinfonia.

The opera is set in and around a French music hall in the 1890s, and Act One is a complex, multilayered construction with both backstage and on-stage action. In the stage directions suggest a back-stage setting with a door leading to the music hall stage, with this providing glimpses of the entertainment when open. Marie Lambert's production chose a different route, with Alyson Cummins' set taking advantage of the full width of the Opera Holland Park stage. So we had the main back-stage area, with Zaza's dressing room down-stage, then stage right was the rear of the music hall stage with the stage performers and music hall audience half hidden in the far corner, with the back stage entrance stage left. The music hall entertainment was continuous, with some acts performed silently. Quite how much of this music hall entertainment you could see if you were sitting on the very right of the auditorium I am not sure. But the result gave us a wonderfully detailed feeling of being back-stage at the music hall, and thanks to Mark Jonathan's lighting and Lambert's blocking, we always knew which part of the action was the primary focus.

What Lambert could not disguise was that Act One of the opera is a busy, fussy construction full of cameos as if Leoncavallo (who had worked at a French music-hall in his youth) wanted to include as much background detail as possible. Lambert gave each of the minor players a strong character, so we soon got the feeling of who was whom. But the centre of attention was firmly on Anne Sophie Duprels's Zaza.

Opera in the City

Summer in London seems very much the time for fringe opera productions, showcasing both new composers and new opera talent in existing repertoire, along with the occasional rarity which tempts those opera nerds amongst us. Opera in the City is a new festival, presented by Time Zone Theatre (artistic director Pamela Schermann) at the Bridewell Theatre from 1 - 12 August 2017. They are presenting four different evenings of opera, with an emphasis on rarity and innovation with works by Rimsky Korsakov, Mascagni, Zemlinsky, Simone Spagnolo, and Sarah Toth, as well as a tribute to Mario Lanza.

Rimsky Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, his one-act Pushkin-based opera exploring the apocryphal story that Salieri poisoned Mozart, is being paired with Mascagni's one-act opera Zanetto, exploring the familiar themes of courtesans and lost love! Perhaps more intense, the company is also performing Zemlinsky's Oscar Wilde-based piece A Florentine Tragedy in which a couple discover the erotic power of murder! All three operas are part of Time Zone Theatre's Fin de Siecle project exploring operas written around 1900.

A double bill of a completely different kind is also being presented at the festival when two experimental works, Simone Spagnolo's Even you lights, cannot hear me and Sarah Toth's Nero monologues are performed as a double bill. Spagnolo's work for two opera singers doubling on piano and pebbles merges elements of operatic singing, chamber music and performance art. Sarah Toth's piece, for singer, dancer, piano, and string quartet, draws on material by Monteverdi, Handel, Copland, and György Kurtág to create a multi-art form pastiche chamber opera.

Finally, the festival is also presenting Lanza a tribute to the 1950s singer Mario Lanza.

Full details from the Opera in the City website.

Solo goes up into the organ loft

James McVinnie (Photo © Magnús Andersen)

Composer Alex Groves' concert series Solo continues on Thursday 20 July 2017 with a recital by organist James McVinnie at St Andrew's Church, Holborn. McVinnie will be playing music ranging from 14th-century works through JS Bach to the world première of Alex Groves' Curved Form (No. 1), as well as Philip Glass’s Music in Similar Motion, Meredith Monk's Ellis Island and music by Julia Wolfe.

The organ at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn is a 1989 Mander instrument influenced by the great English organ-builders of the mid-nineteenth century - especially Gray & Davison, and William Hill. The upper part of the casework incorporates carving from an organ built in 1750 for the Foundling Hospital, London, to a design by Handel. The church also houses the tomb of Thomas Coram, founder of the Foundling Hospital.

James McVinnie has held posts at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and now performs around the world as a soloist, collaborating with a diverse range of artists i including Nico Muhly, Squarepusher and Turner Prize-winning visual artist Martin Creed.

Full details from the Solo website.

Scholarships for black & minority ethnic musicians at Royal College of Music

(Photo Chris Christodoulou)

UK black and minority ethnic musicians are currently under-represented across the performing arts, and the Royal College of Music is to fund three UK students from black and minority ethnic backgrounds for the BMus course beginning 2018/19. The scholarships will be awarded on merit and will be up to the value of full fees (currently £9,250 a year) and can be used to cover tuition fees or help with living costs.

A UK Music survey published in January 2017 found that in the wider UK music industry, black and minority ethnic people represent 15.6% of the workforce (which is a higher figure than that for the UK population as a whole, 12.8%). For those working in the industry under a year, the figure rises to 27.5% which suggests that either the efforts to increase diversity are working, or that black and minority musicians have a greater tendency to drop out of music into other occupations. (Full details of the diversity survey on the UK Music website).

All UK black and minority ethnic applicants for the Royal College of Music's BMus course will automatically be considered for the new scholarships when they apply for admission, there is no separate application needed just a declaration of ethnicity on the application. Applications open 19 July 2017 and the deadline to apply for the 2018/19 course is 2 October 2017.

Further information from the Royal College of Music website.

Choir and brass: Lassus Requiem from Girton College & the Guildhall School

Orlande de Lassus Requiem a 5; Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, Historic Brass of the Guildhall, London, Gareth Wilson (director); Toccata Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 11 2017
Star rating: 4.0
The combination of choir and sackbuts brings out the sombre gravity of Lassus's seldom recorded five-part Requiem

Instruments played a larger role in the liturgical performance of Renaissance polyphony than we sometimes give credit. This disc on Toccata Classics presents Lassus' Requiem a 5, relatively rare on CD, in a performance with choir and sackbuts from the Choir of Girton College, Cambridge and Historic Brass of the Guildhall, conductor Gareth Wilson. The mass is performed interspersed with motets by Lassus, Tristis est anima mea, Peccata mea Domine, Fratres sobrii estote, Exaudi Domine vocem meam, Adoramus te Christe, and Levavi oculos meos.

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In 2015 Girton College Chapel Choir joined forces with Guildhall School of Music and Drama students of Historic Brass for a performance of Lassus' Requiem a 5 for Candlemass. This eventually led to this recording, which was made in Canada in July 2016 during a Canadian tour undertaken by the two groups. The service of Candlemass imbues the choice of works for the rest of the programme, themes of penitence and death moving towards consolation and hope.

Royal Philharmonic Society supports young musicians with £91,000

The Royal Philharmonic Society's Young Musicians Programme is making awards totally £91,000 this year, supporting outstanding instrumentalists, ensembles and composers in ongoing professional development. There are 13 commissions for young composers, rare opportunities for further study abroad and recognition for two outstanding chamber ensembles and a young violinist. £20,000 has been made available to enable music students in financial need to purchase much needed quality instruments.

Six new works are being commissioned by the RPS Composition Prize; Eugene Birman, Austin Leung and Freya Waley-Cohen will write for the Philharmonia Orchestra's Music of Today series; Bethan Morgan-Williams will write a new work for Cheltenham Festival, Emmanuel Charalabopoulos for Presteigne Festival, and Laurence Osborn for Music in the Round, Sheffield, for performances in 2018. The RPS has joined forces with Classic FM to commission works by seven young composers (16 and 23 years old) as part of the station’s 25th birthday celebrations; works by Alexander Woolf, Alexia Sloane, Jack Pepper, Benjamin Rimmer, Dani Howard, Marco Galvani and Oliver Muxworthy will be premiered throughout the summer and autumn, and recorded for broadcast on Classic FM.

£30,000 has been awarded for two musicians, percussionist Tom Pritchard and harpist Richard Allen, to study abroad. £20,000 is being made available to help music students in financial need purchase their own instruments essential to their professional studies through the RPS Instrument Purchase Grants; these are not loans, the Society provides one-off non-repayable awards and payback comes purely in the form of the startling musical progress that can be made on an appropriate, quality instrument.

The RPS Henderson Chamber Ensemble Award, offers £5,000 to an emerging, UK-based chamber ensemble and the Pelleas Ensemble has won the award, which will be devoted to developing performance opportunities. Other prizes include the RPS Albert and Eugenie Frost Prize won the Marmen String Quartet, the RPS Emily Anderson Prize won by violinist Amarins Wierdsma. Applications are now open for the RPS Duet Prizes for outstanding young instrumentalists and composers of secondary school age.

Full details from the Royal Philharmonic Society website.

Musical melting-pot: evoking 1780s Calcutta

Ensemble Tempus Fugit - Calcutta (Photo Saga-Images)

In 1690 the East India Company was granted a trading licence by the Nawab of Bengal for three villages on the East bank of the Hooghly river. By 1780, the company had transformed the villages into Calcutta, a small English city. Musicians travelled from London to India, bringing the music of Handel, Corelli and others, whilst others played their harpsichords with Indian classical musicians, and transcribed Indian music into European notation.

It is this musical melting pot which Ensemble Tempus Fugit, director Katie de la Matter, is planning to explore in their programme Calcutta at the Brighton Early Music Festival on 5 November 2017, with further performances at Tara Arts Theatre in 2018. The material is completely fascinating, including Western transcriptions of Hindu and Bengali music (done often at the behest of the wives of English residents), as well as local Indian versions songs.


Indian music and dancing groups were invited into some British-Indian homes, and mainly female colonials would transcribe the songs (or have the songs transcribed) using a harpsichord or pianoforte, this all being part of the greater European 18th-century trend to collect ‘national airs’ — in the same vein as collections of Scots tunes, for example. One of these women, Margaret Fowkes, described the process:

‘I have often made the Musicians tune their instruments to the harpsichord that I might join their little band. They always seemed delighted with the accompaniment of the harpsichord and sung with uncommon animation, and a pleasure to themselves, which was expressed in their faces.'

Another woman, Sophie Plowden hired the musician John Braganza to transcribe songs and had the results put into a beautifully illuminated manuscript with illustrations of Indian musicians by local artists (which contain some of the earliest depictions of some Indian instruments). This survives in the Fitzwilliam Museum as MS380 and forms the basis for Ensemble Tempus Fugit's project.

The performers include James Hall (counter-tenor), Debipriya Sircar (Indian classical vocalist), Sanjay Guha (sitar), Jamie Akers (lutes), Emily Baines (early wind), Lucia Capellaro (Baroque cello) George Clifford (violin) Katie De La Matter (harpsichord & creative direction). And the ensemble will meld this unusual combination of instruments and traditions, with period music, Indian song, puppetry and drama to tell the story of music melting pot on the streets and at the soirées of Calcutta.

The group is crowd-funding for the project (see their page at Crowdfunder.co.uk), and below is their crowd-funding video.

Strong ensemble & intense drama: Janacek's Kat'a Kabanova at Opera Holland Park

Julia Sporsén as Káťa and members of the OHP Chorus in Opera Holland Park’s production of Káťa Kabanová, directed by Olivia Fuchs (Photo © Robert Workman)

Janacek Kat'a Kabanova; Julia Sporsen, Peter Hoare, Anne Mason, Nicky Spence, Clare Presland, Paul Curievici, Mikhail Svetlov, dir: Olivia Fuchs, cond: Sian Edwards; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Apr 13 2017
Star rating: 4.5
The tensions of small-town life, in Janacek's powerfully claustrophobic drama

Julia Sporsén and OHP Chorus in Opera Holland Park’s production
of Káťa Kabanová, directed by Olivia Fuchs © Robert Workman

We don't see nearly enough of Janacek's Kat'a Kabanova, English National Opera last performed it in 2010 whilst at Covent Garden it was last seen in 20007 and at Glyndebourne in 2002. Thankfully Opera Holland Park has revived its 2009 production of Kat'a Kabanova directed by Olivia Fuchs with designs by Yannis Thavoris, movement by Clare Whistler and lighting by Colin Grenfell. Sian Edwards conducted the City of London Sinfonia with Julia Sporsen as Kat'a, Peter Hoare as Boris, Anne Mason as Kabanicha, Nicky Spence as Tichon, Clare Presland as Varvara, Paul Curievici as Kudrjas, and Mikhail Svetlov as Dikoj.

Creating the right sense of small-town claustrophobia in Opera Holland Park's wide open spaces is quite tricky. Fuchs and Thavoris solved this by covering the stage with azure blue colour for the Volga River, and confining the characters to wooden walkways crossing the water. There were just two acting areas, a bed of reeds with a seat stage left, and a circular platform stage right. This latter formed the Kabanova's house in the first half, surrounded by a movable mesh half-screen which again brought a feeling of claustrophobia. And within these spaces, Fuchs regularly had the chorus spilling across, peering, prying, spying and generally intimidating. In one magical moment, during Boris and Kat'a's Act Two duet Boris (Peter Hoare) walks off the walkway into the 'water', and eventually  Kat'a (Julia Sporsen) joins him. This sense of escaping via water created a powerful resonance through the remainder of the opera.

Armenian remembrance: Tigran Mansurian's powerful Requiem

Tigran Mansurian Requiem; RIAS Kammerchor, Münchener Kammerorchester, Anja Petersen, Andrew Redmond, Alexander Liebreich
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 7 2017
Star rating: 4.0
Though using a Latin text, Mansurian's work is suffused with the Armenian liturgy making a sober and striking piece

The Armenian Genocide in Turkey in 1915-1917 still resonates and it affected the family of the Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian in the most direct way. This new disc from ECM is Mansurian's powerful Requiem for soprano and baritone soloists, choir and string orchestra, written in 2010-11 and dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide. The Requiem is performed by RIAS Kammerchor, Münchener Kammerorchester, Anja Petersen (soprano), Andrew Redmond (baritone), Alexander Liebreich (conductor).

The work is a fascinating hybrid, because the Armenian Church (which severed official ties with both Rome and Constantinople in 554) has different theological and philosophical views to the Roman Catholic Church so that the services for the commemoration of the dead are very different.

Michael Spyres & Joyce El-Khoury in Auber, Halévy, Hérold, Donizetti & Rossini

Gilbert Duprez

Auber, Halévy, Hérold, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi; Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres, the Hallé, Carlo Rizzi; Opera Rara at Cadogan Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 14 2017
Star rating: 5.0
Rare mid-19th century French opera and superb singing in an evening from Opera Rara

In February, Opera Rara recorded a pair of recital discs with tenor Michael Spyres, soprano Joyce El-Khoury, the Hallé and conductor Carlo Rizzi exploring mid-19th century repertoire associated with the singers Gilbert Duprez and Julie Dorus-Gras (the discs are available exclusively on the Opera Rara website and on general release in September). On Friday 14 July 2017, the same forces assembled at Cadogan Hall to perform music from the CD, a celebration of repertoire rarely heard in London with extracts from operas by Auber, Halévy, Hérold, Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi.

The tenor Gilbert Duprez (1806-1896) is very much associated with the role of Arnold in Rossini's Guillaume Tell, he was the first tenor to sing the top C using chest voice (essentially the start of the modern tenor sound), but he also created the role of Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor as well as performing in a number of operas by Auber and Halévy plus Verdi's Parisian debut, Jerusalem. Soprano Julie Dorus-Gras (1805-1896) had a somewhat parallel career, singing roles in operas by Meyerbeer and Halévy, and with Duprez she would sing in Halévy's Guido et Ginevra, Berlioz'  Benvenuto Cellini and Donizetti's Les Martyrs. Intriguingly she also sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, most notably in London when it was conducted by Berlioz!

Julie Dorus-Gras as Marguerite
in Les Huguenots

The concert thus gave us a chance to hear music which is rarely heard in London, French grand opera of the 1830s and 1840s. Whilst Opera Rara has been exploring Donizetti's engagement with this style of opera, recording Le duc d'Albe (see my review), and Les Martyrs (see my review of the CD and of the concert) with L'ange de Nisida to come, what we lack is a good overview of the French background to the style. Performances of operas by Auber and Halévy in London are rare indeed and there still seems a general lack of sympathy for, and understanding of the French grand opera style of the 1830s and 1840s.

We started with the overture to Manon Lescaut by Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber, premiered in 1856 well before the settings of the story by Massenet (1884) and Puccini (1893). It was full of imaginative effects, a solo horn call, a lyrical oboe melody, with a main theme akin to a galop. The result as attractively constructed, full of contrasts and not without charm.

Next came 'Venise, o ma patrie' from Rossini's Othello; Gilbert Duprez originally sang the role of Rodrigo in Rossini's Otello in Italy, but later in Paris he sang the title role in French versions of the opera, and the aria sung by Michael Spyres was Othello's entrance aria from this French version. The opening section did indeed make a spectacular opening, full of complex ornamentation yet sung with vibrant tone, firmness and evenness by Spyres, allied to a superb technique (and some fine top Ds, I think). The middle section was more lyrical, but no less complex; a real showpiece.

Exploring her lyrical side: I chat to soprano Natalya Romaniw about recent & forthcoming roles

Natalya Romaniw (Photo Patrick Allen, Opera Omnia)

This Summer soprano Natalya Romaniw made her role debut in the title role of Janacek's Jenufa at Grange Park Opera (see my review) just the latest in a series of striking role assumptions that she has made in the last year with Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at Garsington Opera (2016, see my review) and Lisa in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades at Opera Holland Park (2016). Natalya has also been nominated as a Breakthrough Artist in the Southbank Sky Arts Awards. Having followed her career with interest since I saw her in Poulenc's Carmelites at Guildhall School of Music and Drama (2011), not to mention stunning performances in Wolf-Ferrari's I gioielli della Madonna (2013) and in Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre re (2015) at Opera Holland Park, I recently met up with her to find out more.

When we meet, Natalya is still in the middle of her performances in Jenufa at Grange Park Opera, finding the role beautiful, even though rather harrowing. She is also enjoying the new theatre, and finds it helpful to sing in as it does give a bit of feed back to the stage.

She played flute with her grandfather but she was so bad at it that she took up singing instead

She loves the Slavic heroines and feels that something in the Czech and Russian operas seems to resonate with her. They are also roles in which everyone wants to hear her. She will be performing Tatyana again with Welsh National Opera (WNO) in September 2017, and in a new production directed by Oliver Mears at Scottish Opera in 2018.

Susan Bullock, Natalya Romaniw - Janacek: Jenufa
Grange Park Opera (Photo Robert Workman)

Natalya's grandfather was Ukrainian and settled in South Wales, and we talk about the links between the Ukrainian language and the Russian and the Czech languages. Her grandfather encouraged her to sing; he played the accordion and she played flute with him but she was so bad at the flute that she took up singing instead.

She finds it a privilege to be working with WNO, her home company, though this will not be her debut with them. After she was scheduled to sing Tatyana with WNO she asked if she could cover the title role in Madama Butterfly (in the WNO 2016/17 season), and she had to go on for a single performance, her debut with WNO and her role debut, she describes it as a brilliant experience. She loves Butterfly and she promises that we will hear more of her in the role.

As a young singer with a developing role, a more unusual role takes the pressure off

Since first hearing her in college, many of Natalya's roles in the UK have been relatively unusual ones. Whilst she sang the Foreign Princess in Rusalka with Scottish Opera and the Governess (Turn of the Screw) with Glyndebourne on Tour, roles such as Mimi in La Boheme, Micaela in Carmen and Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus were at Houston Grand Opera where she was on the young artist programme. In fact, her range of roles in the UK has been just the way it turned out, though she feels that it has played to her advantage. As a young singer with a developing voice, singing a more unusual role such as Maliella in I gioielli della Madonna takes the pressure off as there is little to compare it to. But if she was doing lots of Mimis there would inevitably be comparisons to artists like Mirella Freni. In fact, the run of UK roles rather owes its origins to that first role as Maliella in I gioielli della Madonna with Opera Holland Park (the first UK professional staged performances of the opera).

Stravaganza d'amore! Raphael Pichon & Pygmalion

Stravaganza d'Amore!;Raphael Pichon, Pygmalion; Harmonia Mundi
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 6 2017
Star rating: 4.0
Excerpts from the Florentine Intermedi and early operas woven into a new whole

The earliest operas were not operas at all, but music theatre entertainments. This new disc from Raphael Pichon and Pygmalion, Stravaganza d'Amore! on Harmonia Mundi, aims to re-capture some of the excitement of the earliest days of opera at the Medici court in Florence. Rather than play a disc of excerpts, Pichon has created a series of Intermedi made from music by composers who created the earliest operas.

Opera in Florence had its origins in the experiments by the Florentine Camerata in modern styles such as monody, combined with the Florentine court's taste for elaborate musical spectacle, often involving the same composers and librettists from the Florentine Camerata. An important milestone was the Florentine Intermedi of 1589, music theatre interludes written to go between the acts of play, Le Pellegrina for the marriage celebrations of Ferdinand de Medici and Christina of Lorraine.

Dramatically, musically and scenically sophisticated, these Intermedi were such a success that they were repeated without the play. The first attempt at opera seems to have been Jacopo Peri's La Dafne in 1596/97. By 1600 at the wedding of Maria de Medici and King Henri IV of France, the celebrations included two fully sung dramatic entertainments, some of the first operas, Il rapimento di Cefalo by Giulio Caccini and others, and L'Euridice by Jacopo Peri.

Gounod centenary celebrations from Palazetto Bru Zane

The bi-centenary of the birth of Charles Gounod (1818-1893) forms the centre-piece of Palazetto Bru Zane's 2017-18 season, with revivals of his rarely performed operas Le Tribut de Zamora (in Munich) and La nonne sanglante (at the Opera Comique in Paris), as well as a rare revival of the original version of Faust with spoken dialogue (in Paris as part of Palazetto Bru Zane's annual festival). Other composers highlighted include Herve, whose vaudeville-operetta Mam'zelle Nitouche is performed in Toulon, and Andre Messager whose comic operetta Les P'tites Michou will tour France in a co-production with Angers Nantes Opera.

Gounod's Le Tribut de Zamora (1881) comes after Cinq-Mars and Polyeucte and represents Gounod writing in the epic French grand opera tradition. Popular during its first run, it passed however into oblivion. The work is being given in concert at the Prinz Regenten Theater in Munich on 28 January 2018 with Judith Van Wanroij, Jennifer Holloway, Edgaras Montvidas, Tassis Christoyannis, with Herve Niquet conducting the Munich Radio Orchestra.

Gounod's Faust was originally performed at the Theatre Lyrique in Paris in 1859 (it wasn't grand enough for the Paris Opera) and this version had spoken dialogue. The version performed today is the grand opera version, expanded and with recitative, which Gounod created subsequently (and which was performed at the Paris Opera). It Gounod's original 1859 version which is being revived in concert at the Theatre des Champs Elysees with Christoph Rousset conducting Les Talens Lyriques. The performance is part of Palazetto Bru Zane's festival in Paris in June 2018 celebrating Gounod. There is also a production of Gounod's La nonne sanglante at the Opera Comique directed by David Bobee, with Laurence Equilbey conducting Insula Orchestra and soloists including Michael Spyres. This grand five act opera has a Gothic subject, with a libretto which was rejected by a number of other composers including Berlioz.  Jesko Sirvand conducts the Orchestra National de France in a Gounod gala, and there is also a conference devoted to Gounod's operas.

In London there will be a concert at the Wallace Collection on 22 June 2018, when Katherine Watson (soprano) and Simon Lepper (piano) will perform a selection of Gounod's songs to English texts (he stayed in London several times), plus excerpts from the opera Cinq-Mars.

Full details from the Palazetto Bru Zane website

Perfido! The first disc from Ian Page's The Mozartists

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven concert arias; Sophie Bevan, The Mozartists, Ian Page; Signum Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 10 2017
Star rating: 4.5
A striking range of concert arias from Ian Page's new ensemble

This disc from Signum Classics is the first outing for Ian Page's new ensemble, The Mozartists, an off-shoot of Classical Opera dedicated to doing non-operatic projects. Here Ian Page and The Mozartists are joined by soprano Sophie Bevan for a programme of concert arias, Haydn's Scena di Berenice, Mozart's Oh, temerario Arbace, Beethoven's No, non turbati, Mozart's Basta, vincesti, Haydn's Solo e pensoso, Mozart's Ah, lo previdi and Bella mia fiamma and Beethoven's Ah! perfido.

A major figure behind these arias was the soprano Josefa Dusek for whom Mozart wrote Ah, lo previdi (1777) and Bella mia fiamma (1788) and for whom Beethoven wrote Ah! perfido in 1796.

But we start with Haydn, his Scena di Berenice written during his second visit to London and premiered in 1795 as part of a benefit concert with Italian soprano Brigida Giorgi Banti singing the solo role. Though notionally a sequence of recitatives and two arias, Haydn's writing gives a sense of through-composed drama with the opening accompanied recitative large-scale and complex with Sophie Bevan's beautiful shaping of the line combining with her bringing out the welter of emotions. The first aria is short yet affecting, the second terrific in a sturm-und-drang manner with strong performances from Bevan and the ensemble.

Genesis Sixteen's new cohort for 2017-18

Genesis Sixteen

The Sixteen's young artists programme, Genesis Sixteen (supported by the Genesis Foundation) is in its seventh year and has so far worked with over 100 participants. These are young singers (aged 18-23) who have their talents as ensemble singers nurtured via a series of week-long and weekend courses are led by key figures from The Sixteen, including group tuition, individual mentoring and master-classes; participants receive free tuition and a bursary to cover all additional costs.

The new cohort of Genesis Sixteen singers has just been announced:
Soprano: Morven Bremner, Isabella Gibber, Natalie Houlston, Maisie Hulbert, Victoria Meteyard, Rebecca Murphy, Myrna Tennant
Alto: Isobel Chesman, Anya Chomacki, Theo Golden, Katie Jeffries-Harris, David Whitworth
Tenor: Ted Black, Oscar Golden-Lee, Charlie Hodgkiss, Thomas Perkins, Sidharth Prabhu-Naik
Bass: George Clark, George Cook, Sam Gilliatt, John Lee, Peter Norris

Benedict Preece is the  Genesis Sixteen Conducting Scholar for 2017-18.

Applications for the 2018-19 group will open in November 2017.

Modern houses with musical connections

The Modern House website does exactly what it suggests, lists modern (20th century and contemporary) houses for sale. But at the moment there are two with intriguing musical links, both to Glyndebourne. There is a house near Ware (link here), which was designed by Patty Hopkins; Michael & Patty Hopkins of Hopkins Architects designed the present Glyndebourne Opera House which was built in the 1990s. In fact the house in Ware was designed for Michael Hopkins' brother.

Then over in Watford, the Sugden House (link here) was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson for Derek and Jean Sugden. Derek, an acclaimed acoustic engineer at Arup, was responsible for the acoustics of Snape Maltings, Glyndebourne, Theatre Royal Glasgow and concert halls at the Barbican, Bridgewater and the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building among others.

Orpheus Caledonius on the road

In 2016, Žac Ozmo and L'Avventura London joined forces with Scottish folk-band the Old Blind Dogs and singer Siobhan Miller to perform songs from William Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius, the first collection of traditional Scottish songs to be published along with their melodies, in 1725 (see Hilary's review of their concert at Spitalfields Festival). Now the same forces are taking their performances on tour starting at the Petworth Festival on 14 July, with further performances at the Cheltenham Festival (15 July), Queen's Hall, Edinburgh (12 October), Brighton Early Music Festival (27 October).

Thomson's collection was created against the backdrop of the immense popularity of Scottish tunes in 18th century Britain, it became so successful that a second collection, featuring fifty more songs, was printed five years later.

The performances from Žac Ozmo, L'Avventura London, the Old Blind Dogs and Siobhan Miller mix baroque with folk elements to bring this 18th century experience to life, mixing popular ballads about war and love with lively toe-tapping dances. The wide range of musical instruments employed, offers a journey through the history of music, from bowed baroque strings, recorders, lutes, cittern, and baroque guitar, to pipes, whistles, fiddles, mandolin, acoustic guitar, and an array of percussion instruments.