Having only become a singer relatively late in life, I didn’t work with organisations such as British Youth Opera, but I am always pleased to support colleagues who can still qualify as young(!). To this end I was at a recent performance of BYO’s Don Giovanni, applauding a friend’s immaculate (electronic) mandolin in the Serenade and his […]
I’m a fan of Sondheim. He writes in Finishing The Hat that his favourite of his own lyrics are those that are simplest and most direct; but, like many of his fans, I just can’t resist his virtuosic linguistic twists and turns, when he’s at his most showy. Even A Little Priest, the mountain of […]
Dispensing with one of the best-loved and longest-lived productions in the history of the Royal Opera is a high-risk decision. Leaving it to your successor to deal with the fall-out could seem like extreme management cunning, but of course it’s basically a question of unfortunate timing. Given how far ahead plans have to be laid, […]
Hofesh Shechter is a choreographer whose work I have been meaning to see for years, but just not quite managing it. Last night I finally made it to a performance of Grand Finale, and I wish that I had seen his other shows in London, because I loved what I saw and want to have […]
Like his Boris Godunov, Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina is based on a narrative from Russian history. It’s another story involving scheming boyars, monks, the Tsar and a love triangle sub-plot that borders on the ridiculous. At least the composer had Puskin’s text to work with for Boris, but he decided to write his own libretto for Khovanshchina, which does […]
I first blogged about Polish composer André Tchaikovsky in 2013, when I was involved in a symposium in Leeds, dedicated to his life and work. At the time, André’s operatic treatment of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice – nearly complete at the time of his death aged 46 – was getting its first performances at the Bregenz […]
Stephen Dickinson has written a new group of songs for me entitled A Shakespeare Quartet, which we will be premiering together on Sunday 16 July at 3pm. The songs are settings of speeches from four different female characters in Shakespeare’s plays: Rosalind’s teasing of Orlando (As You Like It), Viola to Duke Orsino (Twelfth Night), […]
September 16th will be the first performance of Over My Shoulder, my latest McCaldin Arts project, about soprano Elisabeth Schumann and musical comedy star Jessie Matthews. In this recital I narrate the remarkable life-stories of these two women and sing some of the wonderful music most closely associated with them. Accompanying me in songs ranging […]
Last night I sang at the Francis Crick Institute as part of an event to mark the second birthday of the Knowledge Quarter. This is an organisation that exists to focus and enable collaboration between the many knowledge-based organisations clustered in the geographical area around Kings Cross-St Pancras, including the British Library, the Wellcome Trust […]
Two new projects for 2017 are in development with McCaldin Arts: Mary is a monodrama for mezzo, trumpet, oboe and cello, by Martin Bussey with libretto by Andy Rashleigh (Vivienne). Queen Mary I is chiefly remembered as Bloody Mary but her personal story is more subtle and interesting than many of us realise, and her […]