Marta Fontanals-Simmons News
lyrical singer
- mezzo-soprano
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2024-04-25
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2022-05-23 07:33:22
The Wreckers returns: Glyndebourne's vividly dramatic new production of Ethel Smyth's opera
Smyth: The Wreckers - Karis Tucker - Glyndebourne (Photo Richard Hubert Smith) Ethel Smyth: The Wreckers; Karis Tucker, Rodrigo Porras Garrulo, Philip Horst, Lauren Fagan, dir: Melly Still, cond: Robin Ticciati, London Philharmonic Orchestra; GlyndebourneReviewed 21 May 2022 (★★★★★) A wonderfully vivid production of Smyth's rarely performed opera reveals it to be a remarkably taut and powerful drama First, a little background. Ethel Smyth wrote The Wreckers in 1906 and it premiered in Leipzig in German, the year after Strauss' Salome premiered and two years after Puccini's Madam Butterfly. It would be another 40 years before Britten's first major success, Peter Grimes was premiered. The only other major English opera composer of the time, Stanford, had had his Much Ado About Nothing performed at Covent Garden in 1901 when it received just two performances; Stanford regarded his operas as an important part of his output but despite his standing, he struggled to get […]
2022-03-11 08:47:01
Britten & Women, Aldeburgh Festival 2022 East Anglian-based arts writer, Tony Cooper, writes about the Aldeburgh Festival which comes round in June. Founded by Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Eric Crozier in 1948, the Aldeburgh Festival originally centred itself on the Borough’s cosy and intimate Jubilee Hall situated in Aldeburgh’s Crabbe Street and built at the expense of local industrialist Newson Garrett to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. Interestingly, Garrett also built the complex of maltings at the village of Snape situated about five miles inland from Aldeburgh where Britten and Pears harboured the idea for years of converting the old Victorian red-brick malt-house at into a concert hall.Their dream came true when the Snape Maltings Concert Hall was graciously opened by Her Majesty the Queen, accompanied by Prince Philip, on 7th June 1969 marking the festival’s 21st edition. Originally, Britten wanted a hall seating […]
2021-12-17 07:43:54
Oliver Knussen, whose 70th birthday is celebrated at the festival (Photo Mark Allan /BBC) With the last two festivals cancelled and Tom Coult's new opera Violet (due to be premiered in 2020) still lacking a first performance, the Aldeburgh Festival has announced that the 2022 festival will run for an extra week, from 3 to 26 June 2022. Other contemporary composers at the festival include Bushra El Turk, Gregor Mayrhofer, Ryan Wigglesworth, Oliver Knussen, Mark Simpson, Gavin Higgins, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Owain Park, Dobrinka Tabakova, Aine Mallon, Judith Weir, Hilary Campbell, Omri Kochavi, Laura Bowler, Liza Lim and the festival features 41 first performances, 11 first UK performances and 19 Britten Pears Arts commissions - the most significant representation of new music in the history of the Aldeburgh Festival. Composer Tom Coult and librettist Alice Birch's new opera Violet (a first opera for both) will open the festival. Developed at Snape Maltings as part […]
2021-11-23 09:47:40
From Stanford's Requiem to Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Catamorphosis: CBSO's season continues with new music, rarities as well as saying goodbye to Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's (CBSO) programme for the remainder of its 2021/22 season is something of a time of transition as Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts her final concerts with the orchestra as chief conductor whilst chief conductor & artistic advisor designate, Kazuki Yamada conducts four concerts. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla's season includes two with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, two of Weinberg's symphonies performed alongside music by his friend Shostakovich, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and with Mahler's Resurrection Symphony as her final concert. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will also be conducting the UK premiere of Catamorphosis by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Other new works in the season include the UK premiere of Danish composer Bent Sørensen’s Sei anime for harpsichord and orchestra, and Roxanna Panufnik’s reorchestrations of Five Polish Folk Songs originally arranged by her father, former CBSO Chief Conductor Sir Andrzej Panufnik, will be performed by the CBSO Children’s Chorus and CBSO Youth Chorus. Joshua Weilerstein […]
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