Sara Flower News
British opera singer
Commemorations 2025 (Death: Sara Flower)
- contralto
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- opera singer
Last update
2024-03-22
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2024-03-02 13:54:01
Sometimes I wonder. What was the need to pluck the Flower, dissect it, analyse it, study it, and wor
2024-02-26 09:11:00
Beyond coloratura: Strong performances and a serious approach in Chelsea Opera Group's account of Léo Delibes' Lakmé
[…] Paz Nieto's Miss Ellen was certainly no cool English rose and Paz Nieto sang her with delightful coquettish charm, whilst Caroline Carragher gave Miss Rose a nicely contrasting demure poise. Sarah Pring was great value as their governess, performing with great aplomb.The two Indian servants were finely taken. Polly Leech as Mallika only appeared in Act One, but she made a lovely foil for Haegee Lee and sang with lovely warm tone in the famous Flower Duet. Magnus Walker as Hadji also provided discreet and firm support. David Padua, John Vallance and Kevin Hollands were good value in their stand-out performances during the Market Scene at the opening of Act Two, though is was a shame that the chorus seemed to find Delibes' fiddly vocal writing here something of a challenge. Elsewhere, the chorus was on strong form often providing firm underpinning to the larger-scale scenes.Conductor Matthew Scott Rogers clearly loves […]
2024-02-13 08:15:00
Pierre Loti's writings inspired Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé and a whole genre of Orientalist operas
[…] colonised people had their daily lives displayed for visitors, giving Debussy his first experience of the Balinese Gamelan.Léo Delibes' Lakmé, however, has another layer of exoticism too in the form of the the novelty of exotically colonial English people and it is hero Gérald's desire to put country and duty above love that give the opera one of its engines.Whilst the music from the opera remains well known, with the Bell Song being a popular coloratura showcase and the Flower Duet being virtually ubiquitous, performances are still rare. The opera reached Covent Garden in 1910, but the present company (formed after World War Two) has never staged the opera and its last major London outing seems to have been at Opera Holland Park in 2015 [see my review].Delibes had quite a varied career, though he remains best known for his ballets, Coppelia and Sylvia. As a boy he sang in the première of Meyerbeer's Le prophète at […]
2024-02-12 07:38:00
Personal choice: Love's Lasting Power, debut disc of Schubert lieder from duo Harriet Burns and Ian Tindale on Delphian
Schubert Lieder: Love's Lasting Power; Harriet Burns, Ian Tindale; DelphianReviewed 5 February 2024With a youthful flexibility, emotionalism and sense of urgency to the performances, this is a finely engaging and thoughtful debut recital for the duoOn their first joint recording, on Delphian, long-term performing partners Harriet Burns and Ian Tindale have made a personal choice of Schubert’s lieder, exploring the theme of love, but also the friendships and relationships between poets and the composer out of which he crafted songs of astonishing empathy.Whilst Schubert's emotional life remains somewhat obscure, with it being unclear which, if any, of his personal relationships were more than close friendships, what cannot be gainsaid is that in his music he displays a remarkable ability to respond to a range of emotional turmoil. When discussing Schubert's setting of poetry by August von Platen (whom we know to be gay from his diaries), Graham Johnson comments that […]
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