Mary Bevan News
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2024-03-22
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2023-12-19 16:22:40
Locke’s List for 2023: Notable Operatic Recordings Plus
[…] “Goose Market” that some of Handel’s first operas were performed. Keiser’s operas have mostly not survived, but Ulysses has, and now it has gotten a spiffy reading. The work is mostly in German, but some of the arias are in Italian, as was common at the time in Germany (and occasionally in France). Handel’s oft-performed Serse (i.e., Xerxes), entirely Italian, is treated this year to a splendid recording that features two utterly marvelous sopranos, Mary Bevan and Lucy Crowe, under the responsive baton of Harry Bicket. Other Baroque operas that proved entertaining and enlightening were L’Idalma by Bernardo Pasquini (best known for his “cuckoo” piece for organ, gloriously orchestrated by Respighi in the Ancient Airs and Dances), Cavalli’s L’Egisto (featuring two remarkable and distinctive tenors: the lighter Zachary Wilder—a favorite of Boston audiences—and the darker Marc Mauillon), Lully’s Psyché (which is full of colorful details, including music for giants hammering […]
2023-12-19 09:41:00
Nevill Holt refocuses as a multi-arts festival for 2024 under guest festival director James Dacre.
[…] Holt Festival in 2024 is being curated by guest festival director James Dacre, artistic director of Northampton's Royal & Derngate Theatres from 2013-2023. There will be a festival opera, Mozart's The Magic Flute [ironically, or deliberately, the first production from Nevill Holt Opera in 2013] created in association with the Britten Sinfonia. Other musical events include performances from mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and pianist Imogen Cooper, pianists Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, Benjamin Grosvenor, Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy. Tenor Nicky Spence, soprano Mary Bevan and pianist Joseph Middleton bring their celebratory Noel Coward programme, the Britten Sinfonia will perform Max Richter's Vivaldi re-write alongside a world premiere, and Cécile McLorin Salvant and Dan Tepfer will premiere A French Affair as an evening of chansons exploring their shared French heritage. In the wider arts, there will be an Anthony Caro exhibition across the Nevill Holt estate alongside an outdoor sculpture collection including work by Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, Allen Jones, Conrad […]
2023-12-17 12:44:34
Bevan/BBCSO/Wigglesworth review – intensely personal and panoramic Magnificat from husband and wife team
Barbican, LondonConducting his own setting, dedicated to wife and soloist Sophie Bevan, Ryan Wigglesworth captured the scale and scope of a text that spans ‘the history and future of humanity’. Bevan was also glorious in a tantalising fragment of MonteverdiSettings of the Magnificat, the Marian hymn taken from Luke’s gospel, are a regular part of the Christian liturgy, but versions intended primarily for the concert hall are much less common. Even the most famous versions, such the two included in
2023-10-19 07:11:00
Pastoral charm with an engaging sense of style: Handel's Clori, Tirsi e Fileno from the English Concert at Wigmore Hall
[…] e Fileno is a pastoral cantata that is almost an opera, and certainly the work has been staged in modern times. But Ruspoli was also a member of the Accademia degli Arcadi, the Arcadian Academy, and such pastoral works as Clori, Tirsi e Fileno were part of the Academy's raison d'etre.The English Concert, conductor Harry Bicket, returned to Wigmore Hall on 18 October 2023 for a performance of Clori, Tirsi e Fileno with Ailish Tynan as Clori, Joélle Harvey (replacing Mary Bevan) as Tirsi and Iestyn Davies as Fileno. The work offers a simple pastoral narrative for three characters, the fickle Clori toys with her two lovers, Tirsi and Fileno, who go through all the permutations of desire, hope and despair before they eventually abandon her when they discover her duplicity, and in fact more than one modern staging has had the two male characters going off together at the end. A homo-social view of the […]
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