Twenty eight years ago Liz Upchurch, Alain Coulombe and Michael Colvin joined the COC’s Ensemble Studio at a time when Richard Bradshaw led the COC.. Yesterday they gave a recital in the eponymous amphitheatre. It was pretty impressive.

Michael and Liz kicked off with Beethoven’s Adelaide and Der Kuß. Excellent vocal acting here from Michael but, as so often with Beethoven, the main interest perhaps lies in the piano part beautifully played by Liz (which she would do for everything else on the card). This was followed by Alain with a very lyrical and smooth account of Mélodies by Reynaldo Hahn. There was a lovely floated high note in “Fêtes galantes” and, of course, there was “À Chloris”; surely one of ther most beautiful of all French chansons.

Then came the first duet; “Au fond du temple saint” from Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles niftily transposed for Alain’s bass Zurga. Sung ardently, it was, effectively, the theme song of the show! And very lovely. Moving from the sublime to the slightly ridiculous Michael produced a very lively account of Peter Warlock’s setting of Yarmouth Fair. I don’t usually associate Philip Heseltine with rustic humour; rather the opposite, but there you go.

Next, Alain displayed a side of him I hadn’t heard before; a taste for more or less popular music from Québec. In this case it was Luc Plamondon’s C’est ici que je veux vivre which is set to the tune of one of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras and which includes quite lengthy passages of vocalises. Michael’s next set was three of the songs from Roger Quilter’s Seven Elizabethan Lyrics. It was classic English language tenor art song. You know the models!

And to finish, more recent French language material; Michel Legrand’s Un parfum fin du monde sung by Alain and a version for two voices of “La quête” from Jacques Brel’s (a good candidate for your next game of “Name Ten Famous Belgians”) L’Homme de la Mancha album proving that some dreams are, in fact, possible.

I don’t think they should wait twenty eight years before doing this again.

Photo credit: Karen E. Reeves