The latest video recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is from Versailles. It’s a 2024 recording using the same production, by Cecille Roussat and Julien Lubek, as the 2014 Rouen recording and, like that one, there’s a lot of additional instrumental/dance music consistent with the idea that the piece was conceived as a court entertainment in the French style. There’s not much point in repeating what I said back then about the production. Check out the earlier review.
Château de Versailles Spectacles have produced a really classy period instruments recording of Purcell’s Hail! Bright Cecilia with a bonus of Blow’s Welcome Every Guest. The band s La Poème Harmonique under the direction of their founder Vincent Dumestre. It’s a very authentic period sound and the small chorus is precise and sings in excellent English.
The Blow piece is short but but interesting and it gets a sprightly and almost jazzy reading. Both baritone Tomáš Král and teHugo Hymas are excellent and have perfect English, “The sacred Nine” is particularly enjoyable.
Songs of Passion is a new recording from mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre with the Jupiter Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble and their director and lutenist Thomas Dunford. It’s ninety minutes of music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell arranged for various combinations of voices plus the instruments; violins, viola, double bass, viola da gamba, recorders, lute, harpsichord and organ. They are interesting and varied arrangements and suit the range of emotions of the music well. Continue reading
My review of Il Pomo d’Oro’s CD of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Joyce DiDonato as the Queen of Carthage is now available at La Scena Musicale.
This week the Young Artists Studio at the Canadian Children’s Opera Company gave two performances of Purcell’s classic Dido and Aeneas. The YAS is a new initiative designed to give young singers (16-19) additional opportunities to the CCOC’s usual fare and maybe provide a pathway to serious professional study.
So on Saturday night at St.Olave’s CE I finally managed to catch a concert in the Apocryphonia series. It was titled Brews, Beauties and Brawlers and was billed as “classical” meets “punk”. It was a collection of pieces for piano, solo voice and/or choir and organiser Alexander Capellazzo had recruited four voices of each type with soloists coming from the group. Narmina Afaniyeva was at the piano. Everybody (and some of the audience) had dressed for the occasion!
Wednesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was given by Ensemble Studio graduates Samuel Chan and Rachael Kerr, reuniting for the first time since ES days. Nowadays Sam is Fest at Theater Kiel and the recital was built around his attempt to probe his identity as a Chinese-Canadian performing Western opera for (mostly) Germans. Sam is a pretty deep, thoughtful kind of guy so it wasn’t surprising that this was an unusual and carefully curated recital. It was also quite wonderfully performed.
I guess I’ve learned never to expect the predictable from Emily D’Angelo (except for the black clothes and boots). Her new album; freezing, is as unexpected as enargeia was four years ago. This album is even less “classical”. The seventeen tracks cover a range of genres. I think I’d classify them as contemporary art song, traditional folk song, singer/songwriter covers and English renaissance. All in all there is a total of 47 minutes of music. Continue reading
The final programme of Confluence Concerts season took place at Heliconian Hall on Wednesday night. It was billed as The Confluence Songbook and, if there was a theme, it was about doing live versions of music that had been streamed during the Plague. But really by the time we saw it it had outgrown that. For, in addition to the full line up of Confluence artistic associates there was a raft of guests which resulted in a fairly lengthy and very eclectic programme. Continue reading
All is Love, which opened Thursday night at Koerner Hall, is a remount of the 2022 Opera Atelier show which, for various reasons, nobody much saw. It’s a staged series of quite eclectic (mosly) opera and ballet excerpts around the theme of “love”; which means pretty much anything goes.
operaramblings 