The percussive thump and burr which sparked into life Francesco Provenzale’s ‘Non posso far’ (from his opera Lo Schiavo di sua moglie) at the start of this lunchtime recital by…
Author: Claire Seymour
Brünnhilde’s Dream: an inventive, expressive and impressive sequence by Rozanna Madylus and Counterpoise at Wigmore Hall
The programme originally planned for this Wigmore Hall recital by the ensemble, Counterpoise, might have been titled ‘Fathers and Daughters’. A new monodrama integrating speech, sprechstimme and singing, The…
Machaut’s Remede de Fortune: the Art of Music, Poetry and Love
Guillaume de Machaut’s Remede de Fortune (c.1340) is at once a coming-of-age tale; a didactic work on the arts of poetry, music, rhetoric and memory; a microcosm of, and manual for, fourteenth-century…
The Owl and the Nightingale: stylish musical storytelling from the City of London Sinfonia
‘Avian invective’ is, sadly, an all-too-common dissonance on the cyber-airwaves today. But, twittering tiffs are no modern invention: the medieval bird-debate poem tradition offers rich examples of feathery squabbles, such…
In conversation with Antony Hermus
“Organised chaos!” is how the Dutch conductor Antony Hermus describes the first production rehearsal of the Prologue of Ariadne auf Naxos, when he chats to me from his hotel room…
The Sphere of Intimacy: magical miniatures from Cyrille Dubois and Christophe Rousset
At the end of the seventeenth century, the Parisian publisher Christophe Ballard, in collaboration with his son Jean-Baptiste-Christophe, undertook an ambitious artistic project to publish a new periodical, Recueils d’airs…
Glyndebourne announces it will no longer tour in 2023 following cut in Arts Council funding
Glyndebourne regrets to announce that it will no longer be able to tour as planned in 2023, following a reduction to its Arts Council England (ACE) funding for touring and…
Barnaby Smith goes back to Bach
Barnaby Smith’s debut solo disc was titled, simply, Handel. This, his second, once again a collaboration with the Illyria Consort, announces its focus with similar succinctness: Bach. It is, in…
Leoncavallo’s Zingari: another gem from Opera Rara
When Ruggero Leoncavallo’s one-act dramma lirico, Zingari, premiered at the London Hippodrome in September 1912, the Manchester Guardian noted that the large audience greeted it with enthusiastic applause, repeatedly calling…
Glyndebourne announces three Jerwood Young Artists for 2023
Glyndebourne had announced the names of three singers who will be taking part in its Jerwood Young Artists Programme in 2023. The Jerwood Young Artist Programme started in 2010 and…