Fionnuala Hunt News
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2024-03-26
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2024-03-13 16:40:56
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2024-02-28 07:37:00
Beauty and meaning: Handel's Theodora from Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo with Louise Alder in the title role
Handel: Theodora; Louise Alder, Tim Mead, Anna Stéphany, Stuart Jackson, Adam Plachetka, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; Alpha ClassicsReviewed 20 February 2024A performance of Handel's late masterpiece that combines musical beauties with a sense of the inner meaning of the words, with a wonderful central performance from Louise AlderConsidering that Handel evidently regarded it as one of his favourite oratorios and that any performance of it is something of an event, Handel's Theodora has rather a sparse history on disc, though the converse of that is that most of the recordings are that little bit special. Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli recorded it in 2000 with Susan Gritton and Susan Bickley, Maxim Emelyanychev and Il Pomo d'Oro recorded it in 2022 with Lisette Oropesa and Joyce DiDonato, whilst further back there is the recording with the unforgettable Lorraine Hunt Lieberson from 1992 as well as the famous Glyndebourne production.Now Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo have […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2024-01-06 21:26:14
“No Choice but Love: Songs of the LGBTQ+ Community”
A two-CD song recital that I set aside last year because it didn’t have program notes or the sung texts just surfaced in my pile. This time I noticed a QR code that gets me the program notes on my cellphone, and I finally figured out that they’re also on the record company’s website. I read them—they’re by the much-published writer on music Roger Pines—and was immediately intrigued. Eric Ferring, a marvelous young tenor who has been doing lyric and coloratura roles at the Met recently (e.g., Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Pong in Puccini’s Turandot) made his debut recording in this album with pianist Madeline Slettedahl. No Choice but Love: Songs of the LGBTQ+ Community is an imaginative compilation of songs by gay and lesbian composers (seven men, two women) plus a “Mexican American transgender composer”, Mari Esabel Valverde. The more recent songs often address the challenges […]
2023-12-18 08:39:00
Pandora's Box: great tunes, a neat moral, energetic performances, London Youth Opera premieres Stuart Hancock & Donald Sturrock's new opera
[…] singers made up the gardeners, and Hancock took advantage of his in many of the large-scale ensembles.This was Hancock's third opera for the company, he and Sturrock wrote Rain Dance (2010) and The Cutlass Crew (2017) for W11 Opera and both of these have also been taken up by North Cambridge Family Opera in Boston, USA. Hancock is known for his film and TV work including the animated We're Going On A Bear Hunt.Pandora's Box sits part way between opera and musical and operetta. Written in distinct numbers, the work used sung dialogue with just a sprinkling of spoken text for emphasis. Hancock's music varied in style and he seemed to take great delight in giving us different musical genres (including what sounded like Countrry & Western) in the different numbers, and this enabled the different soloists to exercise their various musical styles of performance. Some had neat, […]
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