Monthly Archives: January 2018

Summer Opera

Haydn: Il mondo della luna

The Summer Opera
4 (Preview)/7/10/11/13/14 July 2018

Conductor – Steven Devine; Director – Michael Burden

In a new English translation by Simon Rees

Reviews

NCO’s Rare Haydn Opera is an Enchanting Oxford Evening – Seen and Heard International
A World of Enchantment: New Chamber Opera’s Production of Haydn’s Il mondo della luna – British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies

The Evening’s Events
6.00pm: Drink in the Cloisters
6.30pm: Opera Part I, The Warden’s Garden
Picnic Interval in the Cloisters (approximately 90 minutes)
9.00pm: Opera Part II, The Warden’s Garden
10.15pm: Curtain

Tickets

Wednesday 4 (Preview) & Tuesday 10
New Chamber Opera

http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/newchamberopera
or
Download a form here

****

Saturday 7 & Friday 13
Tickets: New College Development Office (01865) 279 337

Tuesday 10
Tickets: OXPIP (01865) 778 034

Wednesday 11
Tickets: Friends of the Oxford Botanic Garden (07722) 605 787

Saturday 14
Tickets: Friends of WNO (01865) 408 045

Il mondo della luna

Ecclitico, a would-be astronomer: Daniel Shelvey
Ernesto, a cavalier: Daniel Keating-Roberts
Buonafede, a naive old man: Thomas Kennedy
Clarice, daughter of Buonafede: Kate Semmens
Flaminia, another daughter of Buonafede: Rachel Shannon
Lisetta, maid of Buonafede: Indyana Schneider
Cecco, servant of Ernesto: Alexander Gebhard

The central character of Haydn’s opera Il Mondo della Luna is a rather dotty and egotistical but naive old man, Bonafede. He is entranced by the lunar lifestyle invented by Ecclitico, the false astronomer. The aim of the opera is to befuddle Bonafede into allowing his two daughters to marry: Flaminia to Ernesto, and Clarice to Ecclitico. The opera was performed in celebration of the wedding of Count Nikolaus Eszterházy (son of Haydn’s employer, Prince Eszterházy) and the Countess Maria Anna Weissenwolf on August 3, 1777, but very rarely (if at all) thereafter. It underwent a number of changes, and it is clear that there is not one but many versions of the piece.

The opera was a pathbreaker in a number of ways. Up until 1776 there was no regular operatic tradition at the Eszterházy court, where Haydn was composer and Kapellmeister. He had composed several well-received operas, including L’infedeltà delusa (performed by New Chamber Opera in 2014) but it was not until the completion of the new Eszterházy theatre that he began to compose operas on a regular basis. Haydn not only wrote new operas but promoted works by other composers’ new repertoire. It has undergone some revival in the last few years, in particular, in two different productions by English Touring Opera.

Other

Andreas Scholl

The University’s first
Humanitas Visiting Professor of Voice and Classical Music

Photo credit: © Decca/James MacMillan

Events

19 February 2018
T. S. Eliot Lecture Theatre
Andreas Scholl in conversation
‘Beyond Bach’
5.00pm, followed by a reception

20 February 2018
Masterclass, Holywell Music Room
11.00am-1.00pm; 2.00-5.00pm

21 February 2018
Masterclass, Holywell Music Room
11.00am-1.00pm; 2.00-5.00pm

22 February 2018
Masterclass, New College Chapel
11.00am-1.00pm
Masterclass Concert, New College Chapel
2.00-5.00pm

Admission is free, but please book via http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/newchamberopera

Born into a family of singers, Andreas Scholl, aged 13, was chosen from 20,000 choristers gathered in Rome from around the world to sing solo at Mass on 4 January 1981. Just four years later, Scholl was offered a place at the Schola Cantorum, an institution that normally accepts only post-graduate students, and now succeeded his own teacher there, Richard Levitt. His operatic roles include Bertarido in Handel’s Rodelinda at Glyndebourne in 1998 and at the Met in 2006, and the title role in Giulio Cesare at Oper Frankfurt. He has worked with many of the contemporary Baroque specialists including William Christie and Philippe Herreweghe.

Scholl has released a series of extraordinary solo recordings including: Wanderer – a disc of German Lied in partnership with pianist Tamar Halperin; O Solitude – an all-Purcell album with Accademia Bizantina which won the 2012 BBC Music Magazine award, Arias for Senesino, Heroes – a disc of arias by Handel, Mozart, Hasse and Gluck, Robert Dowland’s A Musicall Banquet, Arcadia – a collection of rare and unpublished cantatas by composers from Rome’s Arcadian Circle, Wayfaring Stranger – a selection of specially arranged English and American folksongs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Bach cantatas with Kammerorchester Basel and Vivaldi Motets with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, all of which are released on Decca. His most recent recording, Small Gifts of Heaven, is a collaboration with Dorothee Oberlinger and released on the Sony label this season.

Recitals

Hilary 2018 Recitals

New College Ante-chapel
1.15pm, £2/£1 concessions

February
9 Laura Coppinger, Soprano

16 Alexander Gebhard, Tenor

23 Filippo Turkeimer, Baritone

March
2 Stephanie Franklin, Soprano

9 Lewis Hammond, Countertenor

NCO Studio

The Rake’s Progress

New Chamber Opera Studio
presents
Igor Stravinsky
The Rake’s Progress

14 & 15 February 2018
7.30pm
Sheldonian Theatre

Tickets: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/newchamberopera

or on the door

Conductor – Chloe Rooke
Repetiteur – Anhad Arora
Chorus director - Joseph Beesley
Director – Michael Burden

Cast

Anne Trulove – Emily Gibson
Tom Rakewell – Maximilian Lawrie
Nick Shadow – Patrick Keefe
Father Trulove – Tom Lowen
Baba the Turk – Carrie Thomson
Keeper of the Madhouse – Josh Newman

Stravinsky’s neo-classical opera The Rake’s Progress tells the story of Tom Rakewell, who, at the behest of Nick Shadow (the Devil), abandons his intended, Anne Trulove, for the dubious delights of the city. Shadow leads him into a variety of scrapes, including a scheme to turn stones into bread, a visit to a brothel, and marriage to a bearded lady. He ends up in Bedlam, the Devil having stolen his reason. The Moral? ‘For idle hearts and hands and minds the Devil finds work to do.’ The tale, loosely based on William Hogarth’s series of pictures, is by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman.