Yesterday’s RBA concert was at the unusual hour of 5.30pm and featured bass-baritone Brandon Cedel with Sandra Horst at the piano. It was a nicely balanced programme. Cedel began with Purcell’s Arise, ye subterranean winds from The Tempest. It’s one of those very Purcellian arias for low voice that feature long, not especially fast runs and put a lot of demands on the singer’s technique. Cedel’s is very solid. He can shape a line too and his English diction is excellent. There was some particular fine playing from Sandra Horst here too.
The COC unveils its 2020/2021 season next Monday so, as in previous years I took a go at predicting what it might look like. This year operaramblings has abandoned traditional predictive methods such as animal sacrifice and hallucinogenic drugs in favour of handing all the data over to Cambridge Analytica. That didn’t work too well as they predicted a new opera based on Brexit and Putin being elected President of the USA. So it was back to the methodology we data scientists call “small data” where basically we make stuff up based on far too few data points. Here’s what emerged.
This is a really unusual CD. It combines readings; both in the original Greek and in English translation of some of the best known passages in Homer’s Odyssey with music for period instruments composed by Rachel Stott.
operaramblings 