Andrew Foster-Williams News
British opera singer
- bass-baritone
- United Kingdom
- opera singer, performing artist
Last update
2024-03-19
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2024-02-02 11:48:00
From forgotten arias in a pasticcio based on Balzac's Sarrasine to a forgotten instrument: Göttingen International Handel Festival announces the 2024 programme under George Petrou
George Petrou (Photo: Alciro Theodoro Da Silva)The Göttingen International Handel Festival dates right back to the 1920s and though styles have changed the festival has always been notable for new ideas and new thinking about 18th century music. This year's festival under artistic director George Petrou has just been announced. Running from 9 to 20 May 2024 under the title Kaleidescope, the festival features not only music by Handel and his contemporaries, but modern reflections too, as Petrou wants the programme to bridge the gap between the 18th and 21st centuries, revealing the gap between Handel's music and the pressing issues of our time.The opera staging this year focuses not on one of Handel's operas but on arias discarded by the composer, usually for dramaturgical reasons. George Petrou has fashioned a pasticcio using these arias with a plot based on Balzac's novella, Sarrasine about the sculptor Sarrasine's love for a singer, Zambinella, regarding […]
2020-10-25 11:18:05
A Life On-Line: A Feast in the Time of Plague, an oboe concerto in time of war, an Arcadian Academy in Surrey
Sevak Avanesyan in the recently bombed Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi (Artsakh) Quite a busy column this week, as our short holiday in the West Country slowed things down somewhat and there was no column last week. We finally caught up with the London Mozart Players concert from Fairfield Halls as part of their Classical Club, originally broadcast on 15 October. Conducted by Mateusz Moleda, the orchestra performed Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and Richard Strauss' Oboe Concerto with oboist Olivier Stankiewicz. The Mendelssohn was wonderfully lithe and propulsive; working with rather fewer strings that might be usual (owing to space constraints on stage) the balance was less string dominated than in some modern symphony orchestra performances, and Moleda clearly fed off this and encouraged an impulsive and dynamic performance full of lovely instrumental detail. The second movement continued the sense of onward movement with a graceful flow to the third. […]
2020-09-14 09:31:29
Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Stokenchurch This wonderfully sung Beethoven staging with pared-down orchestra reinforces the story’s message of hope in dark times ‘Oh God, what a moment!” Leonore sings in the final scene of Fidelio as she releases Florestan from his chains. Beethoven’s great plea for justice and liberty also examines the role and nature of hope in the face of individual and collective crisis, which throughout its history has always given the opera profound significance in dark times. As we emerge after lockdown into a world rendered uncertain by Covid-19, few works speak to us so directly, and Garsington Opera’s decision to return to live music with it, in a staging by Peter Mumford, conducted by Douglas Boyd, consequently has tremendous symbolic resonance. Adhering to physical distancing guidelines, Mumford reworks a simple, straightforward concert staging that was first seen at the Paris Philharmonie in 2016. Black-and-white prison images, reminiscent […]
2020-07-05 11:31:53
A Life On-Line: Dreaming of the Silver Screen in Montpellier, Weber's Euryanthe in Vienna, Tippett's The Ice Break in Birmingham,
Weber: Euryanthe - Theresa Kronthaler (Eglantine), Andrew Foster-Williams (Lysiart)Theater an der Wien (Photo © Monika Rittershaus) Opera this week included two rather different rarely performed operas, Weber's grand romantic opera Euryanthe from Vienna, and Tippett's final opera The Ice Break from Birmingham. And we also caught up with Ted Huffman's production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream which debuted in Montpellier last year. First off we caught up with Christof Loy's production of Weber's Euryanthe which was originally given at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, with Jacquelyn Wagner, Norman Rehinhardt, Theresa Kornthaler, Andrew Foster-Williams and Stefan Cerny, and Constantin Trinks conducting the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Weber's opera is notoriously regarded as unstageable thanks to what is seen as a clunky libretto. I have only seen the opera on stage twice, in Richard Jones' striking production at Glyndebourne, and at the Semper Oper […]
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