Aylesbury Opera
23 May @ 12:45 pm – 1:45 pm
Tickets on the door (cash or card). Under 18s and carers go free
Doors open at 12:15 pm
Performers
Olivia Singleton
Soprano
Chiara Carbone
Mezzo soprano
Philip Hayes
Tenor
Aleksi Koponen
Baritone
Harriet Lawson
Piano
Notes on the performers
A quartet of principal singers from Aylesbury Opera will present a varied programme of solos, duets and ensembles from across the 18th-20th century opera and chamber repertoire. Featuring Olivia Singleton (soprano), Chiara Carbone (mezzo soprano), Philip Hayes (tenor) and Aleksi Koponen (baritone). Piano accompaniment will be provided by Harriet Lawson, who spent her career working in opera houses across Italy before retiring to Bucks.
Harriet Lawson studied the piano, harpsichord and voice at the Royal College of Music and as a post graduate répétiteur at the RCM Opera School. Her career was based in Italy, working as a répétiteur at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and Teatro Piccolo in Milan. She collaborated with Giorgio Strehler on his last production, Cosí fan tutte, touring in China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and Spain. She worked for six years at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro as Maestro di sala e al cembalo, collaborated with Théâtre de l’Opéra de Bordeaux, L’Orchestra Verdi Milano, Glyndebourne Festival, with Radio France and with Radio Suisse.
Harriet’s concert work as an accompanist has taken her all over Europe – Salle Gaveau in Paris, opera houses in France, Germany, Italy Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, and numerous festivals. She has collaborated with the Britten Pears School in Aldeburgh and the Solti Peretti Masterclasses in Italy and was, for ten years, a teacher and pianist in the Walton Foundation masterclasses and concerts in Ischia. Since 1988 she has been teaching at the Accademia di Lirica di Osimo.
In 2015, after 35 years in Italy, Harriet returned to the UK, taking up bee keeping, building a vegetable garden and planting an orchard at her home in Beaconsfield. In her spare time, she has collaborated with the London Bel Canto Festival, occasionally with Arcadian Opera and Aylesbury Opera, and twice been Music Director of the Chiltern Shakespeare Festival. In 2021 she joined the Wooburn Singers, a great auditioned local choir.
Programme
Programme notes
Claudio Monteverdi
L’incoronazione di Poppea
Duet: Pur ti miro, pur ti godo
L’incoronazione di Poppea (SV 308, The Coronation of Poppaea) is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi’s last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season.
Source: Wikipedia
George Frideric Handel
Samson
Thy glorious deeds
Samson (HWV 57) is a three-act oratorio by George Frideric Handel, considered to be one of his finest dramatic works. It is usually performed as an oratorio in concert form, but on occasions has also been staged as an opera.
Source: Wikipedia
George Frideric Handel
Xerxes
Ombra mai fu
Xerxes; HWV 40) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The opera is set in Persia (modern-day Iran) about 470 BC and is very loosely based upon Xerxes I of Persia. The opening aria, “Ombra mai fu”, sung by Xerxes to a plane tree (Platanus orientalis), is set to one of Handel’s best-known melodies, and is often known as Handel’s “Largo” (despite being marked “larghetto” in the score).
Source: Wikipedia
George Frideric Handel
Jephtha
Waft her, angels
Jephtha (HWV 70) is an oratorio (1751) by George Frideric Handel with an English language libretto by the Rev. Thomas Morell, based on the story of Jephtha in Judges (Chapter 11) and Jephthes, sive Votum (Jeptha, or the Vow) (1554) by George Buchanan. Whilst writing Jephtha, Handel was increasingly troubled by his gradual loss of sight, and this proved to be his last oratorio.
Source: Wikipedia
George Frideric Handel
Alcina
Tornami a vagheggiar
Alcina (HWV 34) is a 1735 opera seria by George Frideric Handel. Handel used the libretto of L’isola di Alcina, an opera that was set in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he acquired the year after during his travels in Italy. Partly altered for better conformity, the story was originally taken from Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (like those of the Handel operas Orlando and Ariodante), an epic poem. The opera contains several musical sequences with opportunity for dance: these were composed for dancer Marie Sallé.
Source: Wikipedia
Felix Mendelssohn
Herbstlied: Duet
Mendelssohn wrote six duets, Op 63.
Source: Wikipedia
Edvard Grieg
Zur Rosenzeit
Tornami a vagheggiar
Between 1884 and 1888, Grieg composed six songs: Zur Rosenzeit, Op 48.
Source: Wikipedia
Roger Quilter
Now sleeps the Crimson Petal
Now sleeps the crimson petal has been a favourite among singers ever since its publication in 1904. It is a drawing-room song raised to a higher plane by its sensitivity to the words, resulting in flexible barring rarely seen at the time.
Source: Michael Pilkington
Robert Schumann
Die Lotosblume
Die Lotosblume is a poem written by Heinrich Heine and set to music by Robert Schumann in 1840. This Lied is part of Schumann’s Myrthen collection (op. 25 no. 7). The piece speaks of the blooming of a lotus flower, who hides from the sun and only reveals herself at night to her lover, the moon.
Source: Wikipedia
Robert Schumann
Wenn ich ein Vögelein wär
Translates as ‘If I were a bird’. The song, which expresses the longing of a person whose thoughts constantly revolve around the absent loved one, was widely received in the 19th century.
Source: Wikipedia
Franz Schubert
Quartet: Lebenslust
Lebenslust was composed in 1818 by Schubert.
Source: Wikipedia
Gaetano Donizetti
Don Pasquale
Com’è gentil
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti with an Italian libretto completed largely by Giovanni Ruffini as well as the composer.
Source: Wikipedia
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln
The Abduction from the Seraglio is a singspiel in three acts by Mozart. The plot concerns the attempt of the hero Belmonte, assisted by his servant Pedrillo, to rescue his beloved Constanze from the seraglio of Pasha Selim. The work premiered on 16 July 1782 at the Vienna Burgtheater, with the composer conducting.
Source: Wikipedia
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Die Zauberflöte
Duet: Bei Männern welche Liebe fühlen
The Magic Flute ( K. 620) is an opera in two acts by Mozart , which premiered in 1791 at the Freihaustheater in Vienna.
Source: Wikipedia
Engelbert Humperdinck
Hänsel und Gretel
Duet: Abendsegen
Hansel and Gretel is an opera by nineteenth-century composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who described it as a Märchenoper (fairy-tale opera).
Source: Wikipedia
Gioachino Rossini
La cenerentola
Come un ape ne giorni
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo (“Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant”) is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini.
Source: Wikipedia
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Fidelio
Mir ist so Wunderbar
Fidelio, originally titled Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe (Leonore, or The Triumph of Marital Love), Op. 72, is the only opera by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.