‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival (10th-17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse and imaginative programme of 40 performances and events.
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Eboracum Baroque is a flexible period instrument ensemble, comprising singers and instrumentalists, which was founded in York - as its name suggests, Eboracum being the name of the Roman fort on the site of present-day York - while artistic director Chris Parsons was at York University.
‘There could be no happier existence. Each morning he composed something beautiful and each evening he found the most enthusiastic admirers. We gathered in his room - he played and sang to us - we were enthusiastic and afterwards we went to the tavern. We hadn’t a penny but were blissfully happy.’
When soprano Eleanor Dennis was asked - by Ashok Klouda, one of the founders and co-directors of the Highgate International Chamber Music Festival - to perform some of Beethoven’s Scottish Songs Op.108 at this year’s Festival, as she leafed through the score to make her selection the first thing that struck her was the beauty of the poetry.
“At the start, one knows ‘bits’ of it,” says tenor Mark Padmore, somewhat wryly, when I meet him at the Stage Door of the Royal Opera House where the tenor has just begun rehearsals for David McVicar’s new production of Death in Venice, which in November will return Britten’s opera to the ROH stage for the first time since 1992.
“Trust me, I’m telling you stories …”
When British opera director Nina Brazier tries to telephone me from Frankfurt, where she is in the middle of rehearsals for a revival of Florentine Klepper’s 2015 production of Martinů’s Julietta, she finds herself - to my embarrassment - ‘blocked’ by my telephone preference settings. The technical hitch is soon solved; but doors, in the UK and Europe, are certainly very much wide open for Nina, who has been described by The Observer as ‘one of Britain’s leading young directors of opera’.
“We need to stop talking about ‘diversity’ and think instead about ‘inclusivity’,” says Bill Bankes-Jones, when we meet to talk about the forthcoming twelfth Tête à Tête Opera Festival which runs from 24th July to 10th August.
The young Hong Kong-born British composer Dani Howard is having quite a busy year.
For Peter Sellars, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a ‘visionary’ work, a utopian opera centred on a classic struggle between a father and a son written by an angry 25-year-old composer who wanted to show the musical establishment what a new generation could do.
“Physiognomy, psychology and technique.” These are the three things that determine the way a singer’s sound is produced, so Ken Querns-Langley explains when we meet in the genteel surroundings of the National Liberal Club, where the training programmes, open masterclasses and performances which will form part the third London Bel Canto Festival will be held from 5th-24th August.
“Sop. Page, attendant on the King.” So, reads a typical character description of the loyal page Oscar, whose actions, in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, unintentionally lead to his monarch’s death. He reveals the costume that King Gustavo is wearing at the masked ball, thus enabling the monarch’s secretary, Anckarstroem, to shoot him. The dying King falls into the faithful Oscar’s arms.
A mournful Princess forced by her father into an arranged marriage. A Prince who laments that no-one loves him for himself, and so exchanges places with his aide-de-camp. A melancholy dreamer who dons a deceased jester’s motley and finds himself imprisoned for impertinence.
‘Aloneness’ does not immediately seem a likely or fruitful subject for an opera. But, loneliness and isolation - an individual’s inner sphere, which no other human can truly know or enter - are at the core of Yasushi Inoue’s creative expression.
What links Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Cavalli’s La Calisto? It sounds like the sort of question Paul Gambaccini might pose to contestants on BBC Radio 4’s music quiz, Counterpoint.
Though she won praise from the literary greats of her day, including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and Siegfried Sassoon, the Victorian poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was little-known among the contemporary reading public. When she visited the Poetry Bookshop of Harold Monro, the publisher of her first and only collection, The Farmer’s Bride (1916), she was asked, “Are you Charlotte Mew?” Her reply was characteristically diffident and self-deprecatory: “I’m sorry to say I am.”
“It lives!” So cries Victor Frankenstein in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein on beholding the animation of his creature for the first time. Peake might equally have been describing the novel upon which he had based his 1823 play which, staged at the English Opera House, had such a successful first run that it gave rise to fourteen further adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novella in the following three years.
It sounds like a question from a BBC Radio 4 quiz show: what links Handel’s cantata for solo contralto, La Lucrezia, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and the post-punk band Joy Division?
The first two instalments of the Academy of Ancient Music’s ‘Purcell trilogy’ at the Barbican Hall have posed plentiful questions - creative, cultural and political.
![Richard Russell [Photo by Jeff Reeder courtesy of New Jersey Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/Richard_Russell.png)
In an episode of the series West Wing, political strategist Josh Lyman (played by Bradley Whitford) visits his friend and speech writer Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) in New York City before heading to New Hampshire for a promising candidate’s campaign speech.
As Lyman turns to leave, he waxes hopeful, “If I see the real thing in Nashua, should I tell you about it?”Just south of New England today, there just might be one of opera management’s versions of the “real thing.” Donors, colleagues, singers, and employees — as well as business associates from his past life as business consultant — are all represented on Richard Russell’s Facebook page: greeting him, telling him of their lives, reminding him of good times, and wishing him well in his ascent from marketing director of Sarasota Opera to General Director at Opera New Jersey (ONJ).
Russell is known for how he carries himself. Warm, affable, and genuine, ONJ’s vetting of Russell uncovers another facet of his personality: he is exceptionally resourceful, giving as much to his work as to relationships. “It is difficult for me to be insincere,” Russell asserts, shedding light on how — along with his approach of “creating an atmosphere” artistically — he inspires results managerially. He gains trust and builds friendships with those he works with. In opera management, these traits would seem essential — a general director is as likely to be figuring out repertory details with musical personnel as hosting a cotillion for sponsors, discussing ticket sales with a publicist over breakfast, or telling a stage hand to secure a scrim. Work comes in many forms, job description margins fade — this in wide-ranging social circles. Russell, with backgrounds in both performance and finance, chuckles that these were a modest preparation for the skill set development that is required of general director.
At Indiana University in a dual degree program (Russell holds a graduate degree in voice performance and choral conducting), he could hardly have imagined ending up in opera administration. In fact, he suspects that his attunement to matters artistic emanate from a yearning to perform that remains even today. Not long after graduation, he spent four seasons as an apprentice at what has become a wellspring of opera management talent. Sarasota Opera boasts five administration alumni as current general directors of regional companies. It is at this point that Russell's life took a course away from opera. He went through a lengthy and disheartening bout of acid reflux that, “took the sails out of the momentum for making a career.” He did not realize it then but the schooling he had received and his performance experience were setting him up for what leadership at Sarasota Opera (Artistic administrator Greg Tupiano and conductor Victor DeRenzi) had already seen in Russell.
It took a stint at Citigroup to round out and turn Russell’s life trajectory back to opera. He found that the work of business consultant, “developing online information and transactional products for use by our institutional clients in the emerging market countries,” called on elements of his creative side. Neither was the compensation package a small part of the appeal. “It turns out that I was gaining skills that coalesced with those I had learned in Sarasota as a performer.”
Russell cites his background in finance as directly responsible for two distinct qualities he brings to the position of general director: (1) Practical and profound budgeting expertise and, (2) managerial experience. “Credibility. Credibility with funders,...I can speak to board members. That is valuable. I know the numbers and can model them when putting a season together.” Russell's finance background means that he constantly weighs costs and rewards and considers revenue. His thoughts today are trained on Opera New Jersey and strengthening its fiscal health.
“It seems like the right opportunity,” remarks Russell, as he contemplates the state of ONJ. The support of the administration at Sarasota Opera (they understood Russell wanted more than to be marketing head) and his hankering to return home (“I missed the North East”) are two other reasons that make the move to New Jersey feel right. Now, Russell percolates with ideas on where to take the company. The top of that list is occupied by a matter of concern of most arts organizations: generating revenue. Specifically, Russell isolates “unearned” money as a main priority for the company, “we are looking at the long-term, building an endowment to solidify the company over the next year or two. We need to bring in individual donors.”
The artistic side of the future of the company is not far from Russell’s mind. He envisions moving a mostly conservative repertory forward, mixing 20th century works with more standard pieces. In 2011, NJO’s beginning fare will be Barber and Trovatore, swinging out to close with Menotti’s The Consul. That Russell considers Trovatore a “conservative” venture might say a little about his confidence in fielding the talent necessary to put on such a work. Slated to conduct the Verdi is none other than Maestro DeRenzi. Decisions like this are evidence that Russell also has artistic quality on his mind. Already, Russell says, “ONJ had been putting on solid productions,” adding, “The quality of regional opera [in general] in the United States is very high.” Russell thinks the company can draw audiences from Philadelphia, Upper New Jersey and New York City.
“There are customers from outside. I see the summer as an opportunity. There is a lot to do in Princeton.” Palpable excitement and eagerness enters into Russell’s voice as he foretells of ONJ being a Summer Festival favorite for opera devotee and novice alike. “People are still becoming aware of us.” Russell recounts that at a Princeton Arts Fair in summer 2010 — just after he took the helm — there were those that approached the ONJ booth to ask where the company performs. Russell sees this as an example of a groundswell of support waiting to surface. If that is the case, Russell’s infectious attitude may be the very “real thing” that attracts opera flocks to New Jersey. “I love opera, and that comes from a very honest place. I like the people in the business…I want to have an impact on the audience.”
Robert Carreras