May news
It's been a busy month here at Opera Prelude. We had two baritone-focused lecture recitals in London and Henley.
The first, performed by Peter Edge and pianist Kaoru Wada, was an exploration of the great baritone roles. Peter delved into his creative process in getting into character for these roles, discussing memorisation, physicality and language. Interspersing performances of favourite arias, Peter received excellent feedback on his performances and we were glad to see a report on the recital in the Henley Standard.
Our subsequent lecture recital, this time in London, was performed by Patrick Alexander Keefe and Jong Sun Woo. The recital centred around the 'baryton-noble', a role type representing opera's lords and aristocrats, which was the starting point of many of the 20th century's great Verdi baritones. Patrick spoke about how French and Russian repertoire was used as a stepping stone on the path to Verdi, and we heard him perform arias by Gounod, Tchaikovsky and Verdi himself. Some glittering audience feedback for Patrick really made us smile:
"It was brilliant. Patrick was a dream and he should rise to the top!"
"I thoroughly enjoyed Patrick's presentation and learnt so much. I shall be looking out for Patrick at ENO."
Young Artist News:
Our Young Artists got up to fabulous work elsewhere this month too.
To start with, Georgia Mae Bishop and Joanna Harries gave their first performances with Opera Holland Park in their production of Rigoletto. They starred as Giovanna and Countess Ceprano respectively, in what has been called "an evening that adds up to the the most memorable of recent Rigolettos". Huge congratulations to both of these wonderful mezzos on their contributions to a brilliant production.
With our Summer Programme wrapped up for the year, we wanted to look back and say a huge thank you to everyone who has attended, sung, played for, donated to and helped out at our various events. We love what we do - isn’t it a joy to create and share music together? We can’t wait to be back with our Autumn Season - until then we will keep sharing what our Young Artists are up to over the summer months. Many are up to quite magnificent things and we would encourage you to support them at any performances you are able to attend!
Toki Hamano, baritone, has been participating in the Serena Fenwick programme at British Youth Opera this month. The programme offers young singers 1:1 coaching, performance psychology sessions, personal mentorship, audition prep and performance opportunities. It was great to see pictures from behind the scenes at the programme and we're so glad that Toki is able to reap the benefits of what is an excellent programme.
There's lots coming up this month as well. Claire Ward, soprano, will be performing as a step-out soloist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on the 7th and 8th June in their performance of Princess Ida. Joanna Harries will be heading up to Leeds Lieder with SongPath for some walking, talking and music-making on the 11th June (you can sign up at SongPath.co.uk). And Catherine Hooper, soprano, will be giving a recital with OperaUpClose including a new translation of Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos and extracts from The Flying Dutchman on the 13th June.
It's been a musical May; looking forward to jubilant June!