CyclesFour passionate song cycles

Tuesday 16th September 7.30pm

at Cadogan Hall

Respighi, Berlioz, Vaughan Williams, and the world première of Michael Pringsheim’s Eichendorff Liederkreis

London Lyric OperaCycles at Cadogan HallTuesday 16 September at 7.30pm

Madeleine Lovell: ConductorSt George’s Chamber OrchestraKatherine Broderick: SopranoJulietta Demetriades: SopranoAnando Mukerjee: TenorJames Hancock: Baritone

Programme:Mendelssohn: Die schöne Melusine Overture, op. 32Respighi: Deità silvane, P.147Berlioz: Les nuits d’été, Op.7Michael Pringsheim: Eichendorff Liederkreis (world première)Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunteVaughan Williams: Songs of Travel (orch. RVW and Roy Douglas)

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Welcome to London Lyric Opera’s Cycles. The idea for tonight’s concert came from Michael Pringsheim, composer of the Eichendorff Liederkreis. As he says later in this programme, he was inspired to write his music by the works for soprano and orchestra written by Richard Strauss. His muse has been the young Greek soprano Julietta Demetriades, who will be singing tonight, and of course the Eichendorff poems. To complement the world première of his new cycle, we will explore the rich Romanticism of Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été, the mystical sincerity of Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel and the evanescent colours of Respighi’s Deità silvane. Conducted by the brilliant Madeleine Lovell, with the St George’s Chamber Orchestra, the programme is completed with two purely orchestral narratives – Mendelssohn’s evocation of the legendary Melusine and Ravel’s Pavane.

We have been fortunate to find four singers who can share these great works with you. Anando Mukerjee, tenor, will be singing the rarely performed Deità silvane by Ottorino Respighi; Kathleen Ferrier Award winner, Katherine Broderick, soprano, will present Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été and James Hancock, baritone, sings Vaughan William’s Songs of Travel. This being the 50th anniversary of the passing of this great English composer, we celebrate his life and works through his music.

LLO is a new concert opera company performing at Cadogan Hall and the Barbican. Our focus is the under-performed German and English repertory and we will produce an annual concert dedicated to orchestral song. Our commitment to you, our audience, is that we will never offer reduced orchestrations and will always aim for the highest possible musical standards.

A message from our Patronby Isla Baring

Our next concert is Richard Wagner’s masterpiece, The flying Dutchman, at the Barbican on Thursday 27th November at 7.00pm. Our principal conductor, one of the UK’s most distinguished Wagnerians, Lionel Friend, will conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Chorus of 100 voices and a stunning cast of international soloists including the rising star soprano Gweneth-Ann Jeffers making her role debut as Senta, James Hancock singing the Holländer and Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as the spurned lover, Erik. Uncut and in the original keys, this is a must-see for any admirer of this great composer. On February 17th 2009, LLO is back at Cadogan Hall performing Beethoven’s Fidelio. Starring critically acclaimed dramatic soprano Elizabeth Connell as Leonore and Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as Florestan, this performance promises to be an unforgettable evening. Madeleine Lovell will return to conduct the RPO and Philharmonia Chorus.

It is my pleasure to be Patron of London Lyric Opera in this its first year. It is an exciting time for us all but impossible without your support. Opera is an expensive and labour intensive business. LLO has various levels of sponsorship available plus a Friends scheme that offers an opportunity for individuals to contribute to our work. More information about this can be found later in this programme. I would like to make special mention here of Wardour , one of our key sponsors. Led by CEO Martin MacConnol, Wardour’s Design Director, Lisa Cromer and her brilliant team of designers have been instrumental in getting LLO here tonight.

I would like to personally thank the following for their contributions: Madeleine Lovell, for her informative notes on the music; Dr Leo Mellor for his fascinating exploration of the poetry that inspired tonight’s composers; David Cairns CBE, a world authority on Berlioz, for his article about Les nuits d’été; Dr William Wootten for his engaging article about the Songs of Travel and Michael Pringsheim for his delightful note about his work and life. Renowned critic and broadcaster, John Amis will entertain you before the performance with a pre-performance talk that should put you in the mood for an evening of orchestral song.We have almost finished our planning for the 2009/10 season. To be kept up to date with future events, please send your contact details to info@londonlyricopera.com and we will happily keep you informed.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s performance and look forward to seeing you at The flying Dutchman at the Barbican.

Isla BaringPatronLondon Lyric Opera

We celebrate life through

music

ESSAYLondon Lyric Opera � �

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-18��) Overture Die schöne Melusine (1834)

The overture Die schöne Melusine (The Beautiful Melusine) has a significant position in Mendelssohn’s compositional development: it is his last major example of an instrumental work inspired by a story or programme. The lukewarm critical response to Melusine, reinforced by the ambivalent reaction of Felix’s sister Fanny, perhaps convinced Mendelssohn to turn to other areas of composition. The composer’s frustration with the overture’s cool reception was surely heightened by his own knowledge that it was one of his finest works, every bit the equal of his earlier masterpiece, the Hebrides Overture.

The original French legend tells of Melusine, the daughter of a fairy, who marries Raymondin on the condition that he never look at her on Saturdays, for it is on this day each week that she is transformed into a serpent from the hips down. Eventually Raymondin succumbs to curiosity and breaks his promise. On seeing Melusine transformed into a serpent, she disappears for ever.

The version which inspired Mendelssohn’s overture, an operatic setting by Conradin Kreutzer which Felix saw (and hated) in 1833, portrays Melusine as more mermaid than serpentine. It is easy to see how the young composer, who had already displayed his talent for writing water music in works such as the Hebrides and Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overtures, seized on another such opportunity.

The peaceful waterscape of the overture’s opening recalls a great river (the Rhine, perhaps?) rather than the ocean. Two clarinets introduce the water motif, a gently undulating figure, which swells into melody accompanied by bassoons and horns, and counterpointed by the water motif in the flute and strings. This F major

Music and Storiesby Madeleine Lovell

quickly as the text’s images change – the murmuring of the rivers, the irresistible energy of the fauns, the lascivious zephyrs – so Respighi responds in his setting. The prevailing musical motive, however, is a tightly dotted pentatonic figure – a nod to the musical antiquity of the French Baroque, and a fitting accompaniment for this classical tableau. The fauns’ jesting pursuit and the nymphs’ escape is expertly constructed with the accelerating dotted motive breaking into a gallop, propelling the song to its ecstatic climax.

The sound of clashing finger cymbals (one is reminded here of the cymbales antiques of another Arcadian work – Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune) permeates Musica in horto. While in Egle the nymph’s languid steps are conjured in exquisite sound with a sinuous waltz melody played by flute. The continual motion of the water is evoked in Acqua by means of a rocking ostinato scored initially for the xylophone and horn – an inspired coupling.

It is only in Crepuscolo that the cyclical nature of Deità silvane is fully revealed. The sombre twilight is conveyed by a slowly shifting opening in the extraordinarily dark key of E flat minor. At the discovery of the slumbering Pan, however, the fauns’ neo-classical dotted motive returns, and as thoughts turn to the nymph who might one day chance upon him we hear Aegle’s waltz. The opening material re-enters after the rhetorical outburst of ‘Deità della terra’ and it seems that all is done with this classical world - that fount of life has dried up for ever. Respighi, however, allows us one last glimpse, closing the song and the cycle with a musical recollection of the fauns.

opening passage is the embodiment of calm waters – in constant motion and yet static – and it provides the perfect foil for the dramatic, pulsating second section.

Ottorino Respighi (18�9-19��)Deità silvane (1917, orchestrated 1925)I fauniMusica in hortoEgleAcquaCrepuscolo

Best known for his Roman trilogy of orchestral works, Ottorino Respighi was a musician and scholar of wide interests and impressive training. He began his studies with the violin and viola in his native Bologna under the tutelage of Federico Sarti, but composition soon became a vital channel for Respighi’s artistry. Having completed his studies in 1899, he went the following year to St. Petersburg as principal viola player at the Imperial opera. It was in Russia, where he spent the seasons of 1901-1902 and 1903-1904, that he took lessons in composition and orchestration from Rimsky-Korsakov. In spite of Respighi’s growing reputation as a performer he maintained his interest in earlier music and in composition.

As a musicologist with a keen interest in early music, it is hardly surprising that Respighi was drawn to Rubino’s Arcadian verse, and Deità silvane bears all the marks of the composer’s maturity – a richly allusive musical language showing neo-classical influence and orchestration of great delicacy and colour.

I fauni begins with a playful extemporisation above the drone of bucolic pipes. This Puckish melody captures immediately the merry Arcadian scene – the happy shriek of fifes, the fauns chasing with horns erect, ready to ambush the none-too-unwilling nymphs. Just as

Hector Berlioz (180�-18�9)Les nuits d’été, Op.7 (1840-41, orchestrated 1843-56)i Villanelleii Le spectre de la rose iii Sur les lagunes: Lamento iv Absence v Au cimetièrevi L’île inconnue

Les nuits d’été began life in 1840-41 as a cycle for voice and piano. The poems are from a collection of 1838 by Berlioz’s friend and fellow critic Théophile Gautier (1811-72) titled La Comédie de la mort. From the poésies diverses in the second half of the volume Berlioz selected six poems for setting to music, giving the collection his own title, Summer Nights. We don’t know why he composed them or for whom – evidently they weren’t written on commission or for any specific occasion. Unlike Berlioz’s best-known and most characteristic compositions, these are private, even personal works, and he seemed reluctant to put them in the public spotlight.

It was for his mistress, Marie Recio, that Berlioz first orchestrated one of the Gautier songs, Absence, which she introduced in Dresden in February 1843 while the couple were engaged in a grand concert tour. In 1856, just before undertaking Les Troyens, his operatic retelling of Virgil’s Aeneid, Berlioz orchestrated the remaining five songs of Les nuits d’été for publication that year in Switzerland. They were never performed as a set during his lifetime, and he heard only the second and fourth songs sung with orchestra.

Berlioz framed the four central, serious songs of Les nuits d’été with two energetic, sunny ones. The composer calls for a chamber orchestra, and he uses it with exquisite subtlety and restraint. Villanelle is apparently just a simple strophic setting, and yet Berlioz gives

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it depth and interest by changing the harmonies and the orchestration for each verse. The second song, Le spectre de la rose is more complex, beginning with a sumptuous melody that changes character as it goes, breaking into recitative at one point, and later soaring in a thrilling climax before the most intimate of endings.

Sur les lagunes over rising and falling semitones that suggest a gondola rocking on the waves, is built around a desperate refrain. Berlioz leaves the song unanswered, ending with a dominant chord that never resolves. It is the very simplicity of Absence, with its slowly changing orchestral chords and its repeated plea – come back – that makes it so tender and powerful. Au cimetière moves even deeper into despair, with its numb, pulsing accompaniment, and the ghostly shiver of strings as memory brushes past. The playful questioning of L’île inconnue comes as welcome relief, even if the poet can’t suggest where love will last forever.

Interval

Michael Pringsheim (19�1)Eichendorff Liederkreis (2005)MondnachtHeimwehNachtsEs zog eine Hochzeit den Berg entlangIn der Fremde

“At the age of 15 I remember doodling on my parents’ Steinway inventing tunesand harmonies, to the annoyance of my father who was doing some seriouswork in the same room and was more or less telling me I was wasting my time.My ideas never came to anything until now, many years later, when I developeda predilection for the late classical and romantic period and recently have felt thatthe medium of soprano with orchestra represents ultimate beauty. This reacheda climax when I became acquainted with

Richard Strauss’ and Mahler’s settings forthis combination. I was given by a friend a book of Eichendorff’s deeply romanticpoems which often contain an element of nostalgia which I seem to have identifiedwith myself. Now was the moment to put some selected poems to music. Whilstavoiding both any direct derivation from Strauss or Mahler and any attempt tomodernize, I have simply written music in a late classical style and from my heart.”Michael PringsheimLondon August 2008

Maurice Ravel (18��-19��)Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899, orchestrated 1910)

Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) was commissioned of the 24-year-old Ravel in 1899 as a somewhat whimsical salon piece for piano. Ricardo Viñes premiered the work to much acclaim in 1902. The composer was rather bewildered by the work’s popularity, but nonetheless orchestrated it in 1910, to even greater success.

A pavane is a slow processional dance from Padua (Pava is a dialect name for Padua). According to an old Spanish tradition, however, it was performed in church as a stylish gesture of farewell to the dead. As to the identity of the dead princess, Ravel finally admitted he picked the title because he liked the sound of the words ‘infante défunte’. Indeed, Ravel later said that the work represented ‘a pavane that a little princess might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish court’.

Music and Storiesby Madeleine Lovell

Ralph Vaughan Williams (18�2-19�8)Songs of Travel (1901-04, orchestrated 1905/1962 RVW/Roy Douglas)

The VagabondLet Beauty AwakeThe Roadside FireYouth and LoveIn DreamsThe Infinite Shining HeavensWhither Must I WanderBright is the Ring of WordsI Have Trod the Upward and the Downward Slope

The Songs of Travel, written between 1901 and 1904, represent Vaughan Williams’ first major foray into song-writing. Drawn from a volume of Robert Louis Stevenson poems of the same name, the cycle offers a quintessentially British take on the ‘wayfarer cycle’. Originally written for voice and piano, Vaughan Williams orchestrated the first, third, and eighth songs in 1905, while his assistant, Roy Douglas, orchestrated the remaining songs in 1962 using the same instrumentation. The songs made a strong impression on contemporary audiences, and marked a new path in English song, away from the parlour ditty and towards a greater seriousness and sophistication.

The Vagabond sets the scene with a marching motive overlaid with an echo of a trumpet fanfare – this traveller is not setting off for a gentle ramble in the countryside, but rather steeling himself for a battle against nature and his own conflicting desires. No greater contrast could be found than in Let Beauty Awake, with its lyre-like accompaniment suggesting the most delicate of serenades. A childlike enthusiasm for life is evoked by the barely contained energy of The Roadside Fire – the stern, almost military parading of The Vagabond has been transformed into a giddy trot. The temptations of Youth and Love are evoked by Vaughan Williams’

skilful use of harmonies: the equanimity of the G major opening is drawn by the siren light of ‘golden pavilions’ towards the danger of E flat minor. Lascivious triplets lure the traveller – ‘thick as stars at night when the moon is down pleasures assail him’ – before a musical memory of the trumpet fanfare strengthens his resolve. It is not without regret, though, that he bids farewell to love, as the musical setting recollects the innocent days of The Roadside Fire.

The desolation of the bare repeated note at the start of In Dreams immediately conveys the sense of loss occasioned by the traveller’s decision to move on. Agonised chromatic harmonies give us a sense of the personal cost of love’s sacrifice. The hymn-like quality of The Infinite Shining Heavens, again with the spread chords of the journeyman’s lyre, suggests the consolation of faith. The transformative moment – ‘Till lo! I looked in the dusk and a star had come down to me’ – is expressed in such breath-taking harmonies that it seems one will never be the same again, an impression only heightened by the close of the song in a foreign key. The folk-song inspired Whither Must I Wander? predates the others in the cycle, yet its placement here perfectly suggests a move away from desperate isolationism towards the acceptance of others, of traditions, and of one’s place in (God’s) universe. This theme continues in Bright is the Ring of Words, whose bold opening is gently replaced by the traveller’s lyre. I Have Trod the Upward and the Downward Slope was the last addition to the cycle, and recalls several musical themes from earlier songs. The becalmed trumpet fanfares at the opening suggest a very different man from the one who started out on the journey. Most poignant of all is the final recollection of Bright is the Ring of Words: the traveller may pass on but ‘the maid remembers’.

ESSAYLondon Lyric Opera 10 11

Poems that returnby Leo MellorThe four song cycles that you will hear tonight come from four different composers – and each draws on the writings of a very different poet. What unifies them is the form of the song cycle, a form which both limits and forces expression to the highest degree. For such a structure pushes poems to not only be accompanied or counter-pointed by music – but also by each other in the sequence, with such transitions and juxtapositions unsettling or deepening possible meanings. But beyond conceptual matters three practical reasons unify the poems that make up these different cycles. Firstly – all take the idea of a journey and re-shape it. This is itself not unexpected: the journey as an organising idea of the song cycle is a commonplace – most famously in Winterreise. But tonight while travel is inescapable in all four works, the journeys are of very different kinds. Some are literal and are undertaken down dusty lanes or through verdant woods; but some may be mental, involving a descent into equally grimy or grassy corners of the mind. Perhaps most interestingly is how one form of perambulation provokes and entices another, the beat of the feet unravelling the hidden pains, pleasures or conundrums. For as Jean-Jacques Rosseau wrote in his Confessions: ‘I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.’

Secondly – comes the matter of Nature, or rather the various attempts to go beyond description and draw meanings from the natural world. This happens in the enticing luxuriance of Antonio Rubino’s fields – ‘shimmering in daisy and sapphire’ – but also in the melancholic vista of ‘Sur les lagunes’ where the only thought induced is that of loss, and how loss could be narrated. The natural here can be a way towards the sublime, the fecund, the desolate and – perhaps most importantly – the unrelentingly amoral: the wind may blow cold but does so without love or hate. An acknowledgement of

Nature’s indifference – and, hence, human mortality – provides a pivot for much of the bleakness and beauty in these works, with the recognition inspiring both lyric flight or introspective acceptance.

Finally all the works engage with the idea of return: what repetition can be found in phrase or image to bring an ending. Such finality can come through diurnal inevitability as dusk falls, or by the breeze that is both everywhere and nowhere, or – indeed – by death. Yet all such forms of closure involve the sound of recognition, and indeed the poems chosen are so constellated that a thematic or lexical curve back is concealed in every case. Moreover this brings the revelation that the place or state arrived at is both startlingly new and already deep in the memory. T.S. Eliot captures this sublimely at the close of Four Quartets where after all ‘exploring’ our role ‘will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time’.

In Deità silvane by Respighi the journey is through a landscape of bucolic high-summer lushness in both woods and flowers, with a rampant adjectival frenzy needed to describe it. Moreover Rubino’s poems are alive with mythical creatures and flickering with sensual forces: the nymphs gambol, the water sparkles, and ‘raw rapture’ holds the scene. It is also a landscape animated by music, produced by instruments – from the bagpipes of ‘I fauni’ to the finger-cymbals of ‘Musica in horto’ – but also by the elemental sounds of wind and water being read as musical: ‘water play on your mellow flute’. Yet despite the apparent abundance something lurks with menace: the nymphs are chased by the fauns and Aegle dances with ‘languid step’. And the ‘brooding shadows’ are continually looming in every one of these meadows. So after an apostrophe in earlier poems to the nymphs and to the water, the supplicant intensity increases and in the twilight of

‘Crepuscolo’ it is easy to see how the pantheistic, pre-Christian world rules here. For this poem is offered to the sleeping form of the god Pan who might be stirred by a ‘a gentle song’. But that day has not yet arrived, and so comes the dying fall, the melancholia that nature releases: ‘Twilight’ ends with the music from both landscape and nymph falling away, it ‘trembles and saddens’ as the shadows that have stalked the cycle from the start ‘descend from the mountains’.

In Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights), which uses the poems of Théophile Gautier, a rather different symbolic system is evoked through grasping flowers and thoughts. For here the human, and a doomed relationship, is to the fore – and while the natural world surrounds the drama it cannot give comfort or hope for renewal. The cycle moves from the strolling Springtime passeggiata of ‘Villanelle’ (but even here the hope is to ‘cull’ the primrose), through to ‘Le spectre de la rose’ where the eponymous flower connects to that which has been lost, to the gothic close of ‘Au cimetière’ which bleeds all colours out to the symbolic order of the ‘black mantle’ of night, the ‘pale dove’ and, overshadowing all, the yew tree. Even the final poem ‘L’ile inconnue’ cannot transform the fate of the couple. The bejewelled nature of a boat of love, wrought from ivory, silk and gold (and crewed by a tractable Seraph) impresses, but it can only presage departure to pick more blossom - ‘to gather the flower of the snow’ - far over the sea.

The landscape traversed in Michael Pringsheim’s Liederkreis is much wilder; the cycle strides through a map or compendium of German Romanticism as it draws from a specific mythical range: the moonlight, the woods, the hunter, the bells, the birds. In the echoes come faint visions of Caspar David Friedrich’s work – or indeed Grimm’s Tales. Moreover the

poems used here – by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff and most famously previously adapted by Schumann – have an a-b-a-b end-rhymed regularity and are filled with such simple objects that the expectation is for folk-wisdom or reassurance. But here again a passionately pantheistic world is full of life – such as when in ‘Mondnacht’ the moon is found kissing the earth; yet now, unlike in the Respighi, such spirits make the human observer aware of his own transience and insignificance. The journey is then taken through the acknowledgement of such a fate, shaded by the ‘forest-shadows’ that loom. By the final poem – ‘In der fremde’ – this sadness has become more and more pronounced, culminating in the Thanatos when ‘forest-loneliness’ brings the plea: ‘how soon, ah, how soon will that quiet time come’. The concluding cycle, Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel, shows how a bricolage of very different poems when placed together can illustrate a passage through

A form which both limits and forces expression to the highest degree

BIOGRAPHIESLondon Lyric Opera 12 1�

Biographies

Michael Pringsheim has enjoyed a distinguished career in International law. Though not a professional musician his first practical experience of music was when he gave a performance on the recorder of a recorder sonata at the age of eleven before an audience of 300 pupils, teachers and parents at his school. His next step was when he took up the French horn at his next school and played it in the school orchestra and subsequently when he was a student at Oxford University. His earliest musical memory was at the age of seven while staying at his grandmother’s house in Garmisch when she was visited

by Richard Strauss who played with her, Four hands on her piano. Throughout his career he has promoted concerts, notably at the Purcell Room and has enjoyed long-standing friendships with many leading musicians. Despite his life-long involvement with music, he composed nothing before his “songs for Soprano and Orchestra” on texts of the German poet, Eichendorff. His style is best defined as being influenced by the neo-classicists and post-romantics, notably Strauss and Debussy. As such his song cycle fits perfectly in style and mood with the works of the other composers featured.

exquisite pain; not even so much by what they contain but by the breaks between them. This lacerating emotional realm is traversed as Vaughan Williams takes nine poems by Robert Louis Stevenson and fits them together to offer a journey – but one that is as mental as physical, trekking into memory as well as down the undulating path. The jaunty opening of ‘The Vagabond’ would seem to presage nothing more than a hearty enjoyment of the outdoor life, and lyrics that stride away from introspection. It could be related to the blithe unconcern of G.K. Chesterton’s ‘The Rolling English Road’ – or, more complicatedly, to the romanticisation of the thoughtful wanderer in Matthew Arnold’s ‘The Scholar-gypsy’. But such nonchalance darkens and becomes more fatalistic in the second and subsequent stanzas where the pathos of defiance cuts sharply: ‘Let the blow fall soon or late, / Let what will be o’er me’. Indeed this sets the tone for the sadness that becomes clearer as we realise how the physical journey being made is paralleled by one back through time, into memories of lost love. The extent of what has been lost is explicit in poems such as ‘The Infinite Shining Heavens’ where ‘The uncountable angel stars / Showering sorrow and light’ now keep the mind of the traveller fixed on a point he cannot reach. The loss is also most poignantly in the gaps between poems – for instance in the transitions between the close of ‘Youth and Love’ with the last ‘wayside word to her at the garden gate’ – with its possibility of reply and connection, and the start of ‘In Dreams’ where the irrecoverable separation allows no communication but only ‘tears’. By ‘Whither must I wander?’ the despair has changed the journey into a trudge without signs or guides, only an alliterative tread of a voice in conversation with itself. Yet ultimately at the close the fatalism comes to face the value of art – and especially music – in ‘Bright is the Ring of Words’. For even ‘after the singer

Poems that returnby Leo Mellor

is dead / And the maker buried’ the hope is of the song’s afterlife and endurance – and the unlimited, unceasing journeys to come: ‘on wings they are carried’. Against such uncageable hopes the clear-eyed mortal finality of ‘I have trod the upward and downward slope’ must be set.

© Dr Leo MellorFellow in English LiteratureMurray Edwards CollegeUniversity of Cambridge

Michael PringsheimComposer

BIOGRAPHIESLondon Lyric Opera 1� 1�

Dominic MooreLeader

Madeleine Lovell is Musical Director of St George’s Chamber Orchestra, the Lea Singers and Londinium. She has conducted many choirs and orchestras around the UK, including the BBC Symphony Chorus, the Philharmonia Chorus and the National Symphony Orchestra. Madeleine’s extensive work at the BBC Proms includes Chorus Master for the BBCSC’s performance of Verdi’s Requiem in August 2008. From October 2008 Madeleine will be Director of Music and Director of Studies at Queens’ College, the first person to hold such an appointment.

Having studied music at King’s College, Cambridge, Madeleine received an M.Phil in Musicology from Cambridge in 2000, and spent a further two years researching comic opera. She has a Masters in singing and Certificate of Advanced Studies in Repetiteur Training, both from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Madeleine attended the 2005 Dartington International Summer School Advanced Conducting Course (where her studies were funded by a D’Oyly Carte Bursary), performing excerpts from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. In February 2007 Madeleine conducted Die Fledermaus with Alternative Opera in Tunbridge Wells. The production was reviewed by Antony Craig for Gramophone, who wrote: “Madeleine Lovell ... marshalled all her forces with skill and finesse.”

Future plans include Assistant Conductor for London Lyric Opera’s performance of Der fliegende Holländer at the Barbican (November 2008), and Conductor for London Lyric Opera’s Fidelio at Cadogan Hall (February 2009).

Anando Mukerjee is a lirico-spinto tenor. His operatic roles include Rodolfo, the Duke of Mantua, Ishmael, Macduff, Pinkerton, Edgardo and Faust. He is an accomplished recitalist and has a large and varied oratorio repertoire.

He received a Tripos in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, where he was an Inlaks scholar, and later received vocal training privately from Kenneth Woollam, Hon.RCM, Professor of Singing (ret’d) and coaching from Richard Nunn, Professor of Keyboard & Vocal Accompaniment (ret’d), both of the Royal College of Music. He furthered his studies with the celebrated Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, Singer of the Royal Court, Stockholm. He is the recipient of a Charles Wallace Trust Award (British Council) which supported his musical studies in England.

In 2006 he made his international debut at the Belgrade National Opera, Serbia, as Rodolfo in La bohème. In 2007 he made his Italian debut at the Teatro dei Rozzi, Siena, as a guest soloist appearing with the Concordia International Ensemble. He toured with New Sussex Opera as Tobias in Jonathan Dove’s Tobias & the Angel; gave a Crush Bar recital at ROH Covent Garden and made his Wigmore Hall debut accompanied by Leslie Howard.

Plans for 2008 include recitals, concerts and operatic appearances in the UK, India and Europe; Borsa (Rigoletto) for New Devon Opera; recitals around the UK, France and Italy; and the José Cura Opera Project at the Royal Academy.

Anando MukerjeeTenor

Dominic Moore is the leader and co-founder of St George’s Chamber Orchestra.

He began learning the violin with Pamela Spofforth at the age of 8. He later won scholarships to Winchester College and the Royal College of Music studying the violin with Itzhak Rashkovsky, and also the piano as a joint first study. His love of chamber music led him to join the Hogarth Quartet (1997-9) with whom he won the South East Arts Platform and made his Wigmore Hall debut.

As a soloist, Dominic has recorded a CD entitled Café Music with the pianist Daniel Becker for Persephone Books. The disc was brilliantly received, being broadcast several times on BBC Radio 3 and ClassicFM and was described by Classic FM magazine as ‘playing of grace and zest’. Recent solo performances have included Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Edward Vanderspar, Beethoven’s violin concerto with St George’s Chamber Orchestra, and recitals on the violin, viola and piano.

As an orchestral player, Dominic has been invited as a guest to lead the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony and Birmingham Royal Ballet. Engagements for 2008 include leading the Opera Group for Kurt Weill’s Street Scene at the Young Vic and on tour, and leading Birmingham Opera for Mozart’s King Idomeneo directed by Graham Vick.

Dominic is immensely grateful to the Countess of Munster, Abbado, Ian Fleming Trusts and the Musicians Loan Fund for help with acquiring an extremely rare Spanish violin by Marianus Ortega. It is believed to be the only Ortega violin currently in the UK.

Cypriot-born soprano Julietta Demetriades has been described as an artist of ‘quality and persuasion’.

After graduating from the Hellenic School of Music in Nicosia in both piano and singing, she received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London. She graduated from there with a Master’s Degree in Performance with the support of the Leventis Foundation. In 2005 she received a Diploma in Opera Performance Studies from the Opera School of the University of London.

She has performed widely in England, France, Germany, Poland, Finland, Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. Venues in London include St John’s Smith Square, St Martin-in-the-Fields, St James’s Piccadilly and the Hellenic Centre. Highlights of venues abroad include the Cairo Opera House, the Presidential Palace in Cyprus and the Cathedral in Helsinki. She has also collaborated with orchestras such as the Cairo Symphony, the Lublin Philharmonic and the Cyprus State Chamber Orchestra. Broadcasts include Cyprus Radio and Television, Television France, Egyptian Television, Classic FM, Czech Radio and Radio Israel.

She has a wide concert repertoire. As a soloist of choral works, she has sung in Vivaldi’s Gloria, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Gounod’s St Cecilia Mass and Britten’s Te Deum.

In opera, she has appeared in London in the title role in Thomas’ Mignon, and in the roles of Fenena (Nabucco), Ottavia (L’Incoronazione di Poppea), Lucrezia (Lucrezia Borgia), Eva (Die Meistersinger), Alceste (Alceste) and Elettra (Idomeneo).

Julietta DemetriadesSoprano

Madeleine LovellConductor

BIOGRAPHIESLondon Lyric Opera 1� 1�

John Amis’ varied life in the world of sound has enabled him to become one of radio and television’s favourite music presenters and performers; he is the ‘symphony’ man in the long running radio show ‘MY MUSIC’. Five and a half weeks in a bank determined him to have a go at earning a living in music. He sold gramophone records, managed orchestras (notably for Beecham), was a music critic for eighteen years, organised the Dartington Summer School for a quarter-of-a-century, appeared in the Hoffnung Festivals, and had his own radio and television shows.

James was born in Melbourne and studied at the Victorian College of the Arts. He was a Victoria State Opera Young Artist and was awarded the Opera Foundation Australia German Operatic Award which gave him a contract with Oper Köln: the AIMS Award, Graz; Australian Opera Auditions Committee Scholarship; Dame Joan Sutherland Scholarship; The Tait Memorial Trust Scholarship; an Australian Musical Foundation London grant and a Bayreuth Bursary.

Roles he has performed include: Germont; Escamillo; Figaro (Rossini and Mozart) il frate (Don Carlos) and The Poet (Prima la Musica, Salieri).

Companies he has worked for include: UCL opera, Victoria State Opera; Opera Australia; Longborough Festival; Pocket Opera Nürnberg (Der Ring in einem Abend arr. David Seaman); Cambridge University Opera Society (Bill, Maschinist Hopkins, Brand; Der Mann Schwergewicht, Krenek; and The Mayor Der Held, Mosolov).

James has given recitals at the Melbourne International Festival, St James’s Piccadilly, Brighton Festival and festivals in the UK and Australia.

He has sung Conte di Luna, Pavilion Opera; Simon Boccanegra for OperaUK London; Kothner, Die Meistersingers, Edinburgh Players Opera Group and Rigoletto for New Devon Opera. Future engagements for 2008 include: the Dutchman in Der fliegende Holländer at the Barbican with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lionel Friend in November and Don Pizarro in Fidelio at Cadogan Hall with the RPO conducted by Madeleine Lovell, February 2009.

Twenty-five year old Katherine Broderick is the winner of the 2007 Kathleen Ferrier Award. She is currently studying at the National Opera Studio in London having previously completed the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she won the Gold Medal. In 2005 she was one of the first and youngest recipients of the Susan Chilcott Award and was a member of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. In 2006 she won the Maggie Teyte Prize. She studies with Susan McCulloch. For British Youth Opera she has sung Lady Billows and Tatyana, the latter prompting Hilary Finch of The Times to write “[she] expands her thrillingly burgeoning vocal skills in her formidable stage presence as a Tatyana of outstanding character and power”. Recent concert appearances have included her Proms debut singing Woglinde (Götterdämmerung) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Donald Runnicles; Mahler’s Symphony No 2 and Britten’s Les Illuminations with St George’s Chamber Orchestra at LSO St. Luke’s.

Current and future plans include: Bruckner Mass in F Minor with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jiri Belohlavek; Haydn The Seasons at the Aldeburgh Festival with Harry Bicket; Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony with the Munich Bach Choir and also with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Katherine has been awarded successive Maidment Scholarships from the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, the Claire Francis award from the Ogden Trust, the Sybill Tutton award, and is a Samling scholar.

James HancockBaritone

Katherine BroderickSoprano

The result of this varied life is that he has known everybody in the music world from Stravinsky to Stockhausen, from Donald Swann to Gerard Hoffnung, from Britten to Birtwistle. His short career as a tenor began with Herrmann’s ‘Moby Dick’ (not the title role); he made his operatic debut in April 1990 as the Emperor in ‘Turandot’ and finished appropriately with ‘A Late Lark’ by Delius, although he occasionally breaks into song in his one-man-show ‘Amiscellany’ and he pipes up as siffleur and singer in ‘My Music’ in the company of Messrs. Muir, Norden and Wallace.

John AmisWriter/Broadcaster

London Lyric Opera 18 19

St George’s Chamber OrchestraMusicians and Instruments

BassoonsEmma HardingJoanna Shewan

HornsEvgeny ChebykinMax GarrardKatie PryceChristine Norsworthy

TrumpetsRuth RossJohn MacDominic

TimpaniAlex Neal

PercussionAlex NealJeremy Cornes

HarpSuzanne Willison

PianoElizabeth Burley

CelesteJeremy Young

BiographySt George’s Chamber Orchestra was established four years ago as the new professional orchestra for the South East. Based at St George’s Church, Beckenham, the ensemble’s members are musicians of the very highest quality and regularly play with the UK’s leading symphony orchestras. Since its formation, St George’s Chamber Orchestra has received excellent reviews – called a ‘bright new ensemble’ by the Daily Telegraph – and has won praise for the vivacity, technical brilliance and supple style of its playing. The ensemble frequently works with soloists of the highest calibre and has developed a large and faithful audience across London. The orchestra made its LSO St Luke’s debut in 2007, and tonight marks its first performance at Cadogan Hall.

For more information on forthcoming St George’s Chamber Orchestra performances, please contact the General Manager, Malcolm Wilson, at mail@sgco.co.uk or follow the links on the website www.sgco.co.uk. The SGCO is keen to develop its links with sponsors and patrons, and can offer a large range of musical events. In addition, the ensemble is about to launch a new ‘Friends of the SGCO’ scheme – a great way to support the orchestra.

October All that JazzConcert on Saturday 11 October 2008 7.30pm at St George’s Church, Beckenham

J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G, BWV

Copland: Clarinet Concerto Vaughan Williams: Variants of ‘Dives

and Lazarus’ Mendelssohn: Symphony for Strings

No. 9 in C

December The MessiahConcert on Saturday 13 December 2008 7pm at St George’s Church, Beckenham

Handel: The Messiah

Katherine Broderick: Soprano Patricia Orr: Mezzo Nicholas Hurndall Smith: Tenor John Evans: Bass Londinium City Voices

February Music for Valentine’sConcert on Saturday 14 February 20097.30pm at St George’s Church, Beckenham

Elgar: Serenade for Strings Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp,

K. 299 Puccini: Crisantemi Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on

‘Greensleeves’ Haydn: Symphony no. 89 in F major

May St George’s Arts Festival Concert on Saturday 16 May 20098pm at St George’s Church, Beckenham

Mozart: Symphony no. 35 in D major, K. 385 ‘Haffner’

Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello & Orchestra, op. 33

Beethoven: Symphony no. 6, op. 68, F major ‘Pastoral’

July Summer Spree!Concert on Saturday 4 July 20097pm at St George’s Church, Beckenham

Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks Prokofiev: Peter and the wolf, a

musical tale for children, op. 67 Haydn: Concerto for trumpet &

orchestra Albinoni: Adagio for organ and strings,

G minor Mozart: Symphony no. 38 in D major,

K. 504 ‘Prague’

2008 – 2009 Concert Series

The professional orchestra for South East London and Kent

1st ViolinsDominic Moore Rachel McIlwhamSheila LawJamie Hutchinson

2nd ViolinsRuth FunnellDorette Du ToitClaire Turk

ViolasAmy GreenhalghLouise Hawker

CellosBozidar VukoticDaniel Hammersley

Basses Claire Whitson

FlutesStewart McIlwhamKatherine Bicknell (piccolo)

OboesOwen DennisHuw Clement-Evans

ClarinetsJon CarnacEmily Sutcliffe

London Lyric Opera 20 21

AegleThe woodland is rich with leaves and fruit,The riverbanks are shimmering in daisy and sapphire:Through the green arches a lonely soulencircles pale flames in hidden dances.And with quiet intensity and hands as pureAs the pure fountains of life itself,Robed in garments of sun and shadowYou dance, Aegle, with languid step.And toward you, white and blonde among the nymphs,Merrily dancing like fluttering leaves,Under the secret shadows of the foliage,Where the most restless of shadows saddens,In translucent pearl and liquid amethystFlows the raucous joy of the sap.

AcquaAcqua, e tu ancora sul tuo flauto leneIntonami un tuo canto variolungo,Di cui le note abbian l’odor del fungo,Del musco e dell’esiguo capelvenere,Sì che per tutte le sottili vene,Onde irrighi la fresca solitudine,Il tuo riscintillio rida e sublùdiiAl gemmar delle musiche serene.Acqua, e, lungh’essi i calami volubiliMovendo in gioco le cerulee dita,Avvicenda più lunghe ombre alle luci,Tu che con modi labii deduciSulla mia fronte intenta e sulla vitaDel verde fuggitive ombre di nubi.

WaterWater, once again your gentle flutePlays to me one of your varying songs,Whose notes seem like the smell of mushrooms,Of musk and of sleek maiden-hair,So that along all the tiny rivuletsThat water the fresh solitude,Your sparkling presence laughs and ripplesWith the jewels of serene music.Water, while along your banks the whispering reedsPlayfully sway their azure fingers,Flickering longer shadows in the light,

You wind your transient way, seeingOn my brooding forehead and on each of the leavesThe fleeting shadows of clouds.

CrepuscoloNell’orto abbandonato ora l’edaceMuschio contende all’ellere i recessi,E tra il coro snelletto dei cipressiS’addorme in grembo dell’antica pacePan. Sul vasto marmoreo torace,Che i convovoli infiorano d’amplessi,Un tempo forse con canti sommessiPiegò una ninfa il bel torso procace.Deità della terra, forza lieta!,Troppo pensiero è nella tua vecchiezza:Per sempre inaridita è la tua fonte.Muore il giorno, e nell’alta ombra inquïetaTrema e s’attrista un canto d’allegrezza:Lunghe ombre azzurre scendono dal monte...

TwilightIn the abandoned garden, now the greedy mossFights with the ivy for every nook and cranny,And in the sparse cluster of cypresses,Sleeping in the womb of ancient peace liesPan. On the vast marble chest,Bound closely with flowery weed,Perhaps someday with a subdued songA nymph might bend over her provocative figure.God of the earth, joyful force!You have become too serious in your old age:Your fountain has dried up forever.The day dies, and through the vast restless shadeA song of happiness trembles and becomes mournful:Long blue shadows descend from the mountains…

I fauniS’odono al monte i saltellanti riviMurmureggiare per le forre astruse,S’odono al bosco gemer cornamuseCon garrito di pifferi giulivi. E i fauni in corsa per dumeti e clivi,Erti le corna sulle fronti ottuse,Bevono per lor nari camuseFiltri sottili e zeffiri lascivi.E, mentre in fondo al gran coro alberatoPiange d’amore per la vita bellaLa sampogna dell’arcade pastore,Contenta e paurosa dell’agguato,Fugge ogni ninfa più che fiera snella,Ardendo in bocca come ardente fiore.

The faunsOne hears in the hills the bubbling riversMurmuring through the dark ravines,One hears in the woods the groan of the bagpipesWith the chirp of merry pipes.And the fauns racing over hillocks and through thickets,Their horns erect above their broad foreheads,Drink through their flat nostrilsSubtle potions and lascivious winds.And, while beneath the great choir of trees,Weeping for love of the beautiful lifeThe bagpipes of the arcadian shepherd.Happy and fearful of the impending ambush,The nymphs flee, faster than wild gazelles,Their ardent lips like blazing flowers!

Musica in hortoUno squillo di cròtali clangentiRompe in ritmo il silenzio dei roseti,Mentre in fondo agli aulenti orti segretiGorgheggia un flauto liquidi lamenti.La melodia, con tintinnio d’argenti,Par che a vicenda s’attristi e s’allieti,Ora luce di tremiti inquieti,Or diffondendo lunghe ombre dolenti:Cròtali arguti e canne variotocche!,Una gioia di cantici inespressiPer voi par che dai chiusi orti rampolli,E in sommo dei rosai, che cingon molli

Ghirlande al cuor degli intimi recessi,S’apron le rose come molli bocche!

Garden musicA ring of finger-cymbals clashing rhythmicallyPunctuates the silence of the rose gardens,While at the end of fragrant, secret orchardsA flute pours out its liquid laments.The melody, with silver tinklingSeems to shift between saddening and becoming joyful;Now giving out light of uneasy trembling,Now casting long sorrowful shadows:Sharp finger-cymbals and many-sounding pipes!A joy of songs unexpressedfor you gushes forth from the orchards,And at the tops of the rosebushes, that weave garlandsIn the heart of their intimate depths,The roses open like soft mouths!

EgleFrondeggia il bosco d’uberi verzure,Volgendo i rii zaffiro e margherita:Per gli archi verdi un’anima romitaCinge pallidi fuochi a ridde oscure.E in te ristretta con le mani pureCome le pure fonti della vita,Di sole e d’ombre mobili vestitaTu danzi, Egle, con languide misure.E a te candida e bionda tra li ninfe,D’ilari ambagi descrivendo il verde,Sotto i segreti ombracoli del verde,Ove la più inquïeta ombra s’attrista,Perle squillanti e liquido ametistaVolge la gioia roca delle linfe.

Ottorino Respighi: Deità Silvane 1917 Cinque liriche di Antonio Rubino 1880-1964

Translations copyright © Ricordi(adapted by Madeleine Lovell)

ESSAYLondon Lyric Opera 22 2�

Sur les lagunes, the most dramatic piece in the cycle, is the only one in a minor key. Berlioz is just as likely to express loss by means of the major mode, as the fourth song, Absence, shows. Here it is separation from a living beloved that is evoked in a major-key refrain of the barest simplicity, enclosing two minor-key verses in which the sense of unbridgeable apartness rises each time to a cry of pain. In the fifth song, Au cimetière, stepwise movement in the voice combines with the accompaniment’s shifting, somnambulistic chords to create a mood of morbid fascination. Like Le spectre de la rose, the music is haunted by a ghostly presence. The poet lingers at dusk, held against his will, hearing in the moaning of a dove the lament of the dead beneath his feet, while the Berliozian flattened sixth grates against the major-key harmonies.

This claustrophobic atmosphere is abruptly dispelled by the bright sounds and salty rhythms of L’île inconnue. The final song looks back to the mood of the opening, mocking the romantic assumptions and gestures of the intervening four. Yet there is a difference, reflecting all that has been lived through in between. In the end the music half-succumbs to the same illusion: that the enchanted shore where one loves for ever is there, just over the horizon, and though it will never be found, must be for ever sought.

© David Cairns Author of Berlioz, vol.1: The Making of an Artist, 1803-1832, and Berlioz vol.2: Servitude and Greatness, 1832-1869. Penguin

Les nuits d’étéby David CairnsLes nuits d’étéVillanelleLe spectre de la roseSur les lagunes: LamentoAbsenceAu cimetière: Clair de luneL’île inconnue

Originally written in about 1840 for solo voice and piano accompaniment, the six songs of Les nuits d’été were arranged for chamber orchestra at various times in the next fifteen years, and the full score published in 1856, just before Berlioz began working on the The Trojans. By that time his career as conductor was nearing its end. Only two of the songs, Le spectre de la rose and Absence, figured in his remaining concerts. He never performed the complete work.

Because of this, and because the full score specifies different voice-types for the various songs – mezzo-soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone – it has been argued that he did not think of the work as a cycle. The idea of an orchestra song cycle was certainly a novelty at that date; if there were any examples from an earlier time they have not survived in the repertory. Yet Berlioz, whatever his first intention, surely came to regard it as one work, not as a collection of separate pieces published together for convenience. Not only are the songs linked by recurring musical figures, phrase-patterns and intervals: the structure of the whole, the progression from one song to another, is consciously shaped. The order finally settled on describes a clear sequence of idea and mood. Les nuits d’été is palpably a cycle: not a quasi-narrative cycle like Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, but, like Mahler’s, a grouping of separate numbers round a common subject. The work is an anatomy of romantic love, shown in different aspects: light-hearted and extrovert in the first and last songs, more intense and passionate in the middle four.

Quite possibly, when he first chose some poems by his friend Théophile Gautier to set to music, Berlioz did not have a precise scheme in mind. At one point it consisted of four songs, not six, with the same beginning and end as in the final version but with Absence preceding Le spectre de la rose, and Sur les lagunes and Au cimetière still to come. It may have been that the circumstances of his personal life – the collapse of his once happy marriage to Harriet Smithson – moved him to add those two songs, both of them concerned with loss, the one a seascape, like the final song, but a tragic one, with the bereaved lover doomed to travel alone over the empty sea, the other an evocation of a moonlit graveyard where the dead still have power to possess the living.

The first song, Villanelle, already carries a hint of melancholy beneath the skittish surface, conveying it by variations of harmony which heighten the tension from verse to verse, implying that the idyll in the woods and the lover’s whispered ‘for ever’ are not all they seem. The much grander Spectre de la rose, with its long, seductive melodic spans and its textures at once rich and sparkling, retains something of Villanelle’s playfulness, as well as having a delicate fragrance apt to its poetic ‘conceit’: the ghost of a rose which returns to haunt the dreams of the young woman who wore it at her first ball.

At the same time the music’s largeness of style anticipates the third song. Sur les lagunes is constructed round a characteristic Berlioz rhythmic and melodic ostinato, a rocking three-note figure which, recurring almost invariably at the same pitch, suggests both the boat’s movement across the calm water and the obsessive grief of the lover who must set out on his journey bereft of love. The loneliness of the end, after the last impassioned climax, is palpable, as the sea-swell in the bass subsides and the harmony hangs suspended, unresolved.

The enchanted shore is just over the horizon

London Lyric Opera 2� 2�

The ghost of the rose (translation: Emily Ezust)Open your closed eyelidWhich is gently brushed by a virginal dream!I am the ghost of the roseThat you wore last night at the ball.You took me when I was still sprinkled with pearlsOf silvery tears from the watering-can,And, among the sparkling festivities,You carried me the entire night.

O you, who caused my death:Without the power to chase it away,You will be visited every night by my ghost,Which will dance at your bedside.But fear nothing; I demandNeither Mass nor De Profundis;This mild perfume is my soul,And I’ve come from Paradise.

My destiny is worthy of envy;And to have a fate so fine,More than one would give his lifeFor on your breast I have my tomb,And on the alabaster where I rest,A poet with a kissWrote: “Here lies a rose,Of which all kings may be jealous.”

Sur les lagunesMa belle amie est morte,Je pleurerai toujours;Sous la tombe elle emporteMon âme et mes amours.Dans le ciel, sans m’attendre,Elle s’en retourna;L’ange qui l’emmenaNe voulut pas me prendre.Que mon sort es amer!Ah! sans amour s’en aller sur la mer!

La blanche créatureEst couchée au cercueil;Comme dans la natureTout me paraît en deuil!La colombe oubliéePleure et songe à l’absent;

Mon âme pleure et sentQu’elle est dépareillée.Que mon sort est amer!Ah! sans amour s’en aller sur la mer!

Sur moi la nuit immenseS’étend comme un linceul,Je chante ma romanceQue le ciel entend seul.

Ah! comme elle était belle,Et comme je l’aimais!Je n’aimerai jamaisUne femme autant qu’elleQue mon sort est amer!Ah! sans amour s’en aller sur la mer!S’en aller sur la mer!

On the lagoons (translation: Emily Ezust)My beautiful love is dead,I shall weep always;Into the tomb, she has takenMy soul and my love.Without waiting for me,She has returned to heaven.The angel which took her thereDid not want to take me.How bitter is my fate!Ah! without love, to go to sea!

The white creatureIs lying in the coffin;How all in NatureSeems bereaved to me!The forgotten doveWeeps and dreams of the one who is absent;My soul cries and feelsThat it has been abandoned.How bitter is my fate,Ah! without love, to go to sea!

Above me the immense nightSpreads itself like a shroud;I sing my romanzaThat heaven alone hears.

Berlioz: Les nuits d’été 1834Théophile Gautier 1811-1872

VillanelleQuand viendra la saison nouvelle,Quand auront disparu les froids,Tous les deux nous irons, ma belle,Pour cueillir le muguet aux bois.

Sous nos pieds égrénant les perlesQue l’on voit, au matin trembler,Nous irons écouter les merles Siffler.

Le printemps est venu, ma belle;C’est le mois des amants béni;Et l’oiseau, satinant son aile,Dit des vers au rebord du nid.

Oh! Viens donc sur ce banc de mousse,Pour parler de nos beaux amours,Et dis-moi de ta voix si douce: Toujours!

Loin, bien loin égarant nos courses,Faisons fuir le lapin caché,Et le daim, au miroir des sourcesAdmirant son grand bois penché;

Puis chez nous, tout heureux, tout aises,En paniers, enlaçant nos doigts,Revenons, rapportant des fraises,Des bois.

Villanelle (translation: Samuel Byrne)When verdant spring again approaches,When winter’s chills have disappeared,Through the woods we shall stroll, my darling,The fair primrose to cull at will.

The trembling bright pearls that are shining,Each morning we shall brush aside;We shall go to hear the gay thrushesSinging.

The flowers are abloom, my darling,Of happy lovers’ tis the month;And the bird his soft wing englossing,Sings carols sweet within his nest.

Come with me on the mossy bank,Where we’ll talk of nothing else but love,And whisper with thy voice so tender:Always!

Far, far off let our footsteps wander,Fright’ning the hiding hare away,While the deer at the spring is gazing,Admiring his reflected horns.

Then back home, with our hearts rejoicing,And fondly our fingers entwined,Lets return, let’s return bringing fresh wild berriesWood-grown.

Le spectre de la roseSoulêve ta paupière closeQu’effleure un songe virginal!Je suis le spectre d’une roseQue tu portais hier au bal.Tu me pris encore emperléeDes pleurs d’argent de l’arrosoir,Et, parmi la fête étoilée,Tu me promenas tout le soir.

Ô toi qui de ma mort fus cause,Sans que tu puisses le chasser,Toute la nuit mon spectre roseÀ ton chevet viendra danser;Mais ne crains rien, je ne réclameNi messe ni De Profundis.Ce léger parfum est mon äme,Et j’arrive du du paradis.

Mon destin fut digne d’envie,Et pour avoir un sort si beau,Plus d’un aurait donné sa vie;Car sur ton sein j’ai mon tombeau,Et sur l’albâtre où je reposeUn poëte avec un baiserÉcrivit: “Cigît une rose,Que tous les rois vont jalouser.”

London Lyric Opera 2� 2�

Of a love-lorn angel. One would say that an awakened soulIs weeping under the earth in unisonWith this song,And from the misfortune of being forgotten,Moans its sorrow in a cooingQuite soft.

On the wings of the musicOne feels the slow returnOf a memory.A shadow, a form angelic,Passes in a trembling ray of light,In a white veil.

The beautiful flowers of the night, half-closed,Send their perfume, faint and sweet,Around you,And the phantom of soft formMurmurs, reaching to you her arms:You will return!

Oh! never again near the tombShall I go, when night lets fallIts black mantle,To hear the pale doveSing on the limb of the yewIts plaintive song!

L’Île inconnueDites, la jeune belle,Où voulez-vous aller?La voile enfle son aile,La brise va souffler.L’aviron est d’ivoire,Le pavillon de moire,Le gouvernail d’or fin;J’ai pour lest une orange,Pour voile une aile d’ange,Pour mousse un séraphin.

Dites, la jeune belle,Où voulez-vous aller?La voile enfle son aile,La brise va souffler.

Est-ce dans la Baltique?Dans la mer Pacifique?Dans l’île de Java?Ou bien est-ce en Norvège,Cueillir la fleur de neige,Ou la fleur d’Angsoka?Dites, la jeune belle,Où voulez-vous aller?Menez-moi, dit la belle,À la rive fidèleOù l’on aime toujours!Cette rive, ma chère,On ne la connaît guèreAu pays des amours.

The unknown isle(translation: Emily Ezust)Say, young beauty,Where do you wish to go?The sail swells itself,The breeze will blow.The oar is made of ivory,The flag is of silk,The helm is of fine gold;I have for ballast an orange,For a sail, the wing of an angel,For a deck boy, a seraph.

Say, young beauty,Where do you wish to go?The sail swells itself,The breeze will blow.

Is it to the Baltic?To the Pacific Ocean?To the island of Java?Or is it to Norway,To gather the flower of the snow,Or the flower of Angsoka?Say, young beauty,Where do you wish to go?Lead me, says the beauty,To the faithful shoreWhere one loves always!This shore, my darling,We hardly know at allIn the land of Love.

Ah! how beautiful she was,And how I loved her!I will never loveAnother woman as much as I loved her;How bitter is my fate!Ah! without love, to go to sea!To go to sea!

AbsenceReviens, reviens, ma bien-aimée,Comme une fleur loin du soleil,La fleur de ma vie est fermée,Loin de ton sourire vermeil.

Entre nos coeurs qu’elle distance !Tant d’espace entre nos baisers!Ô sort amer! Ô dure absence!Ô grands désirs inapaisés!

D’ici là-bas que de campagnes,Que de villes et de hameaux,Que de vallons et de montagnes,A lasser le pied des chevaux!

Absence(translation : Samuel Byrne)Come back, come back, my dearest love!Like a flower far from the sun,The flower of my life has drooped,removed from the charm of your smile. Between our hearts how long a distance!What a wide space our kisses divide!O bitter fate! O cruel absence!O longing vain, unsatisfied! Between here and there what fields,What towns and hamlets,What small valleys and mountainsTo ride there on horseback!

Au cimetière Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe,Où flotte avec un son plaintifL’ombre d’un if?Sur l’if une pâle colombe,Triste et seule au soleil couchant,Chante son chant:

Un air maladivement tendre,À la fois charmant et fatal,Qui vous fait malEt qu’on voudrait toujours entendre;Un air comme en soupire aux cieuxL’ange amoureux.

On dirait que l’âme éveilléePleure sous terre à l’unissonDe la chanson,Et du malheur d’être oubliéeSe plaint dans un roucoulementBien doucement.

Sur les ailes de la musiqueOn sent lentement revenirUn souvenir.Une ombre, une forme angélique,Passe dans un rayon tremblant,En voile blanc.

Les belles de nuit demiclosesJettent leur parfum faible et douxAutour de vous,Et le fantôme aux molles posesMurmure en vous tendant les bras:Tu reviendras!

Oh! jamais plus près de la tombe,Je n’irai, quand descend le soirAu manteau noir,Écouter la pâle colombeChanter sur la pointe de l’ifSon chant plaintif.

At the cemetery(translation: Emily Ezust)Do you know the white tombWhere floats with plaintive sound,The shadow of a yew?On the yew a pale dove,Sad and alone under the setting sun,Sings its song:

An air sickly tender,At the same time charming and ominous,Which makes you feel agonyYet which you wish to hear always;An air like a sigh from the heavens

London Lyric Opera 28 29

Far away bells are ringinginto the woods.Alerted, a deer raises its head,and is soon sleeping again.

But the trees move their tops,dreaming of walls of rock.For the master walks over the heights,blessing the silent land.

Im WaldeEs zog eine Hochzeit den Berg entlang,Ich hörte die Vögel schlagen,Da blitzten viel Reiter, das Waldhorn klang,Das war ein lustiges Jagen! Und eh’ ich’s gedacht, war alles verhallt,Die Nacht bedecket die Runde,Nur von den Bergen noch rauschet der WaldUnd mich schauert’s im Herzensgrunde.

In the woods (translation: Emily Ezust)Beside the mountain there passed a wedding party.I heard the birds singing;Then there blazed past many horsemen, their forest horns sounding.That was a merry hunt! And before I could think about it, everything had died awayAnd the night threw a cloak all around.Only from the mountains did the woods yet rustle,And deep in my heart I shudder.

In der fremdeAus der Heimat hinter den Blitzen rotDa kommen die Wolken her,Aber Vater und Mutter sind lange tot,Es kennt mich dort keiner mehr.

Wie bald, ach wie bald kommt die stille Zeit,Da ruhe ich auch, und über mirRauscht die schöne Waldeinsamkeit,Und keiner kennt mich mehr hier.

In a foreign land(translation: Emily Ezust)From the direction of home, behind the red flashes of lightningThere come clouds,But Father and Mother are long dead;No one there knows me anymore.

How soon, ah, how soon will that quiet time come,When I too shall rest, and over meThe beautiful forest’s loneliness shall rustle,And no one here shall know me anymore.

MondnachtEs war, als hätt der Himmel,Die Erde still geküßt,Daß sie im BlütenschimmerVon ihm nur träumen müßt.

Die Luft ging durch die Felder,Die Ähren wogten sacht,Es rauschten leis die Wälder,So sternklar war die Nacht.

Und meine Seele spannteWeit ihre Flügel aus,Flog durch die stillen Lande,Als flöge sie nach Haus.

Moon-night (translation: Emily Ezust)It was as if the skyHad quietly kissed the earth,So that in a shower of blossomsShe must only dream of him.

The breeze wafted through the fields,The ears of corn waved gently,The forests rustled faintly,So sparkling clear was the night.

And my soul stretched its wings out far,Flew through the still lands,as if it were flying home.

HeimwehDu weisst’s, dort in den Bäumen Schlummert ein ZauberbannUnd nachts oft, wie in TräumenFängt der Garten zu singen an.

Nachts durch die stille Runde,Weht’s manchmal bis zu mir,Da ruf’ ich aus Herzensgrunde,O Bruderherz, nach dir.

So fremde singen die andern,Mir graut im fremden Land.Wir wollen zusammen wandern,Reich treulich mir die Hand.

Wir wollen zusammen ziehen,Bis das wir wandern müd’.Auf des Vaters Grabe knienBei dem alten Zauberlied.

Homesickness (translation unknown)You know there in the treesSlumbers a magic spellAnd often at night as in dreamsThe garden begins to sing.

At night a breeze reaches meThrough the peaceful countrysideThen I call you – brother –From the bottom of my heart

So distant are the othersI dread being in foreign landsLet us walk togetherAnd give me your trusting hand.

Let us wander togetherTill tired we will beAnd kneel on our father’s graveAnd hear the old mystic song.

NachtsIch stehe in WaldesschattenWie an des Lebens Rand,Die Länder wie dämmernde Matten,Der Strom wie ein silbern Band.

Von fern nur schlagen die GlockenÜber die Wälder herein.Ein Reh hebt den Kopf erschrockenUnd schlummert gleich wieder ein.

Der Wald aber rühret die Wipfel Im Traum von der Felsenwand.Denn der Herr geht über die GipfelUnd segnet das stille Land.

At Night (translation: Jakob Kellner)I stand in forest-shadowsas on the verge of life,the lands like dusky meadows, the stream like a silver ribbon.

Michael Pringsheim: Eichendorff Liederkreis 2005Josef Karl Benedikt von Eichendorff 1788-1857

ESSAYLondon Lyric Opera �0 �1

The Song will carry onby Dr Will WoottenTo the millions who have read them and to the even greater numbers who have seen them on screen, Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) remain the most thrilling of classics. But while the Edinburgh-born Robert Louis Stevenson (1859-1894) is best known as a novelist, he was a writer of many talents. He was an excellent essayist and travel writer.And he was a poet. Indeed, though inclined to be modest about his poetic abilities, Stevenson wrote verse throughout his life, publishing four volumes: the perennially popular A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), Underwoods (1887), Ballads (1890) and Songs of Travel (1895).

Stevenson was a born traveller. Though much of his journeying was necessitated by chronic ill health and the need to find a conducive climate, travel was also his delight and inspiration. A canoeing trip through France and Belgium made in 1876 provided the material for his first book An Inland Voyage (1878); a twelve day hike in the mountains of South-Central France gave rise to the immortal Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879)

So it proved throughout Stevenson’s life. The decision to join his future wife Fanny Osborne, whom he married in 1880, meant the arduous journey to California was recorded and eventually published in 1892 as Across the Plains. And, over the next few years, the Stevensons would live in America, England, France and Switzerland. In 1888, Robert and Fanny, along with their extended family, set sail for the South Seas. They stayed in the Hawaiian Islands, the Gilbert Islands and Tahiti. In 1890 Stevenson bought land on the Samoan island of Upolu and set up home.

On 3rd December 1894, Stevenson, who had been at work on his great novel Weir of Hermiston, came downstairs at sunset, teased his wife about a sense of

foreboding she had and played cards to cheer her up. He then fetched a bottle of burgundy from downstairs and made a salad dressing. Joining his wife on the veranda, Stevenson put his hands to his head asking ‘Do I look strange?’ before collapsing and losing consciousness. Stevenson had had a cerebral haemorrhage, perhaps brought on by pulling the wine cork. The inscriptions on his grave include the famous lines from his poem ‘Requiem’:

Here he lies where he longed to be;Home is the sailor, home from the sea,And the hunter home from the hill.

Stevenson’s Songs of Travel were made to be set to music. Indeed, they were often composed to pre-existing tunes. ‘The Vagabond’ has the original subtitle ‘To an Air of Schubert’; ‘Whither Must I Wander’ was ‘To the Tune of Wandering Willie’. Other Stevenson poems too showed Stevenson’s wide-ranging musical taste: from Bach to the ‘Skye Boat Song’.

These poems manage to show both wanderlust and a certain nostalgia or homesickness, often at the same time. ‘The Vagabond’ may be a song of the open road, full of disdain for cold weather, an apparently carefree reproach to the stay-at-home. Nevertheless, the poem’s frosty fields are reminiscent of the landscape of Stevenson’s Scottish youth, not his present tropical home. Similarly, the regrets of the love song ‘In Dreams’ are addressed to the girl left behind; this is the traveller who left ‘with a smile’ but who ‘Forgets you not.’

There is a valedictory air about these posthumously published poems. Though still in his early forties, Stevenson knew that he could not cheat ill health forever and would never recover enough to return home. As he wrote to S.R. Crockett on 17 May 1893: ‘I shall never take that walk by

the Fisher’s Tryst and Glencourse. I shall never see Auld Reekie [Edinburgh]. I shall never set my foot again upon the heather. Here I am until I die, and here I will be buried. The word is out and the doom is written.’

Still, even as he contemplates death, Stevenson, in poetry as in life, was by no means despairing:

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them,Fair the fall of songs When the singer sings them.Still they are carolled and said – On wings they are carried –After the singer is dead And the maker buried.

Low as the singer lies In the field of heather,Songs of his fashion bring The swains together.And when the west is red With the sunset embers,The lover lingers and sings And the maid remembers.

‘Bright is the Ring of Words’ may be nostalgic for the heather and the love songs of youth. Yet it is also a poem where the writer of songs imagines the continuance of the song and the people it brings together. Singer and maker may die, but, with the memory of lovers, the song will carry on.

© Dr William Wootten

London Lyric Opera �2 ��

Youth and LoveTo the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand,Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide,Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level landCall him with lighted lamp in the eventide.

Thick as stars at night when the moon is down,Pleasures assail him. He to his nobler fateFares; and but waves a hand as he passes on,Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate,Sings but a boyish stave and his face is gone.

In DreamsIn dreams unhappy, I behold you standAs heretofore:The unremember’d tokens in your handAvail no more.

No more the morning glow, no more the grace,Enshrines, endears.Cold beats the light of time upon your faceAnd shows your tears.

He came and went. Perchance you wept awhileAnd then forgot.Ah me! but he that left you with a smileForgets you not.

The Infinite Shining HeavensThe infinite shining heavensRose, and I saw in the nightUncountable angel starsShowering sorrow and light.

I saw them distant as heaven,Dumb and shining and dead,And the idle stars of the nightWere dearer to me than bread.

Night after night in my sorrowThe stars looked over the sea,Till lo! I looked in the duskAnd a star had come down to me.

Whither Must I Wander?Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?Hunger my driver, I go where I must.Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather:Thick drives the rain and my roof is in the dust.Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree,The true word of welcome was spoken in the door –Dear days of old with the faces in the firelight,Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.Now when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

The VagabondGive to me the life I love,Let the lave go by me,Give the jolly heaven above,And the byway nigh me.Bed in the bush with stars to see,Bread I dip in the river –There’s the life for a man like me,There’s the life for ever.

Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o’er me;Give the face of earth around,And the road before me.Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I seek, the heaven above,And the road below me.

Or let autumn fall on meWhere afield I linger,Silencing the bird on tree,Biting the blue finger.White as meal the frosty field –Warm the fireside haven –Not to autumn will I yield,Not to winter even!

Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o’er me;Give the face of earth around,And the road before me.Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I ask, the heaven above,And the road below me.

Vaughan Williams – Songs of Travel 1901-1904Robert Louis Stevenson 1850-1894

Let Beauty AwakeLet Beauty awake in the morn from beautiful dreams,Beauty awake from rest!Let Beauty awakeFor Beauty’s sakeIn the hour when the birds awake in the brakeAnd the stars are bright in the west!

Let Beauty awake in the eve from the slumber of day,Awake in the crimson eve!In the day’s dusk endWhen the shades ascend,Let her wake to the kiss of a tender friend,To render again and receive!

The Roadside FireI will make you brooches and toys for your delightOf bird-song at morning and star-shine at night,I will make a palace fit for you and meOf green days in forests, and blue days at sea.

I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom;And you shall wash your linen and keep your body whiteIn rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

And this shall be for music when no one else is near,The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!That only I remember, that only you admire,Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.

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Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours.Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood –Fair shine the day on the house with open door;Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney –But I go for ever and come again no more.

Bright is the Ring of WordsBright is the ring of wordsWhen the right man rings them,Fair the fall of songsWhen the singer sings them,Still they are carolled and said –On wings they are carried –After the singer is deadAnd the maker buried.

Low as the singer liesIn the field of heather,Songs of his fashion bringThe swains together.And when the west is red With the sunset embers,The lover lingers and singsAnd the maid remembers.

I Have Trod the Upward and the Downward SlopeI have trod the upward and the downward slope;I have endured and done in days before;I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.

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London Lyric Opera ��

Cadogan Halletiquette and information

EtiquetteSmoking: All areas of Cadogan Hall are non-smoking areas.

Food & Beverages: You are kindly requested not to bring food and other refreshments into Cadogan Hall.

Cameras and Electronic Devices: Video equipment, cameras and tape recorders are not permitted. Please ensure all pagers, PDA’s and mobile phones are switched off before entering the auditorium.

Dress Code: There is no dress code for the majority of performances. If a particular dress is requested you will be informed at the time of booking by the box office.

Interval and timings: Intervals vary with each performance. Some performances may not have an interval. Latecomers will not be admitted until a suitable break in the performance.

Consideration: We aim to deliver the highest standards of service. Therefore, we would ask of you to treat our staff with courtesy and in a manner in which you would expect to be treated.

Food and BeveragesOakley Bar: Concert goers may enjoy a wide selection of champagnes, spirits, red and white wines, beers and soft drinks from the Oakley Room Bar. There are also some light refreshments available.

AccessFree Companion/Assistance Scheme:Cadogan Hall has a range of services to assist disabled customers including a provision for wheelchair users in the stalls. Companions of disabled customers are entitled to a free seat when assisting disabled customers at Cadogan Hall.

Please note that companion seats not sold 48hrs prior to any given performance will be released for general sale.

Wheel Chair Users: If you use a wheelchair and wish to transfer to a seat, we regret we may not be able to provide a member of staff to help you physically. However, we will arrange for your wheelchair to be taken away and stored. A Lift is located to the right once inside the box office reception allowing access to a lowered box office counter. Foyer areas are on the same level as the box office and the foyer bar (Caversham Room) is accessed via a wide access lift. A member of staff will help you with your requirements. Stalls within the auditorium are via a wide access lift as are adapted toilet facilities.

Customers with hearing requirements:The box office counter is fitted with a loop system to aid customers with any hearing impairment. The auditorium is fitted with an Infra-red Amplification System. This is not the same as a Loop System so switching your hearing aid to ‘T’ is not sufficient. You will need to use an amplification aid. There is a choice of aids depending on the nature of your hearing impairment. A member of staff will be happy to explain the use of the system and there is an opportunity to check that your equipment is working prior to curtain up.

Customers with sight impairment: Working / Guide dogs are welcome to access the hall and auditorium but please do let us now prior to arriving at the hall so we may make any special arrangements if necessary. We produce large print (20 point) brochures upon request as well as audiocassette versions of season brochures. To request a free copy please call the box office and ask to be added to our regular lists.

‘Touch / Familiarisation’ tours can be arranged and we have Unisex accessible toilet on all levels except Gallery.

The Barbican Centre is owned, funded and managed by the Corporation of London.

Der fliegende Holländer

Richard Wagner

Thursday 27 November 7.00pm

020 7638 8891 Box office

Reduced booking fee online

www.barbican.org.uk

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lionel Friend

London Lyric Opera in concert at the Barbican

Gweneth-Ann JeffersJames HancockKarl HumlJeffrey Lloyd-RobertsRichard Roberts Anne-Marie Owens

Sung in the original German with English surtitles

Tickets£55, £45, £38, £32.50£27.50, £22, £15

An international cast presents Beethoven’s classic opera in concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of brilliant young conductor, Madeleine Lovell. LLO is delighted to announce that world-renowned dramatic soprano Elizabeth Connell will be singing one of her signature roles with the exciting young tenor, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, as Florestan.

Tickets: £45, £39, £32, £25Box Office: 020 7730 4500 www.cadoganhall.com

London Lyric Opera in concert at Cadogan Hall

Tuesday 17 February 2009 7.30pm

Conductor: Madeleine LovellRoyal Philharmonic OrchestraLeonore: Elizabeth ConnellFlorestan: Jeffrey Lloyd-RobertsJaquino: Andrew Staples

Marzelline: Rachel NichollsDon Fernando: Paul Goodwin-GroenDon Pizarro: James HancockRocco: Richard WiegoldLondon Lyric Opera Chorus

FidelioLudwig van Beethoven

www.londonlyricopera.com

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Supporting LLO

LLO is a young company with ambitions to fill a niche in the UK opera scene by producing high quality concerts with the best available singers and musicians. Concert performances are planned in London every four months in the best concert venues. Such high ambitions come at a price and sponsorship from individuals and corporations will be very gratefully accepted.

Please call us on +44 207 193 4149 or email info@londonlyricopera.com to discuss this further.

London Lyric Opera FriendsWe believe that London Lyric Opera can have an exciting future as an important opera company in the UK – but we need your help. Our aim is to be the premier London concert opera company, performing opera in concert to the highest possible standard with no compromise to orchestra size and quality. We will always perform with the forces required by the score. To continue this important work we are going to need additional funding.We always use professional orchestras and will always try to cast the best available singers. The repertoire we will focus on is the big German and English repertoire plus an annual concert of orchestral song cycles. Large forces at the highest level are expensive but ultimately worth it. If you could support us by being a ‘Friend’ we would be enormously grateful.

The ‘Friend’ categories are the following:Bronze £5 - £249Silver £250 - £999Gold £1,000 - £4,999Platinum £5000+

All names of friends will be prominently listed in future programmes and appear on the LLO website. Friends will get first call on performance tickets and get to meet the artists at events organised throughout the year. If you’d like to send a cheque – please make it payable to:London Lyric Opera27 Clevedon RdLondon SE20 7QQ

Corporate sponsorshipThrough corporate contributions towards London Lyric Opera’s work, your company will enhance and promote its image and messages to an audience of well-educated, affluent opinion-shapers and decision-makers. Promote products in the most prestigious concert venues to central London audiences and establish name identification, brand affiliation and image transfer with London’s new opera company. LLO aims to offer flexible sponsorship packages, tailored to suit each individual sponsor’s specific aims. This flexible approach also means we can offer something to suit every budget. LLO’s quarterly concert performances of the great operas in Central London concert venues will provide a perfect opportunity to entertain clients and constituents in exclusive and unique settings. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the wide variety of London Lyric Opera’s corporate sponsorship opportunities with you, to create a tailored package that really meets your specific marketing and entertainment needs. For more information please email Lara on lara@londonlyricopera.com or call on 020 7193 4149.

Thornton Foundation Award

Tristan Dyer ballet Royal School of Ballet

Duncan Rock baritone Guidhall School of Music & Drama

Dance Arches Award

Naomi Hibberd ballet Rambert School of Ballet

Brieley Anne Cutting piano Royal College of Music

Christina Katsimbardis violin lessons with David Takeno

Grants throught partner orgnaizations

Melissa Doueke flute Royal Over-Seas League

Michael Ierace piano Royal Over-Seas League

Elena Xanthoudakis soprano Performing Australian Music Competion

Mary Jean O’Doherty soprano Australian International Opera Award

Velda Wilson soprano National Opera Foundation Australia

Maria Okunev soprano Miette Song Recital Award

Christine Luo piano Dartington Summer School

Claire Howard piano Smaull Song Singing Course

The Tai t Memor ia l Trus t i s p leased to be ass i s t ing these f ine young Aust ra l ian a r t i s t s in 2008

For tickets or more information on the Trust

please contact us on:

4/80 Elm Park Gardens London SW10 9PD

020 7351 0561info@taitmemorialtrust.orgwww.taitmemorialtrust.org

Registered charity no. 1042797

Tuesday 23 September Piers Lane and the Australian String Quartet

Programme to include Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A major, Peter Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No.8 and Debussy String Quartet in G minor Op.10.

7 for 7.30 at 49 Queen’s Gate Terrace, SW7 Tickets £25 or £20 for Tait Friends

Tuesday 14 October John Amis on Britten and Tippett

Writer and broadcaster John Amis will give his fascinating talk on Britten and Tippett. Amis knew both composers and offers a witty nostalgic insight to a relationship that lasted over thirty years between the two most significant composers of the British post-war musical scene.

7 for 7.30 at 49 Queen’s Gate Terrace, SW7 Tickets £17 or £15 for Tait Friends

Thursday 22 January 2009 The Chamber Strings of Melbourne with pianist Antony Gray

Christopher Martin conducting The Chamber Strings of Melbourne, programme includes works by Vivaldi, Telemann, Arensky/Tchaikovsky, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Elgar and Malcolm Williamson’s Piano Concerto.

6.30 for 7pm St. Paul’s Knightsbridge SW1X 8SH Tickets £25 or £22 for Tait Friends

Our Upcoming Events :

We wish to thank our sponsors:

Vernon Ellis Foundation for hosting our concerts.

London Lyric Opera �0

Patron and Sponsors

Patron–in-Chief Isla Baring

Founder of LLO James Hancock

Principal Conductor Lionel Friend

Guest Conductor Madeleine Lovell

Company Accountant Global Accountants Ltd www.globalaccountant.co.uk

Design Wardour

Legal Services Gordon Dadds

Public Relations Catherine Stokes Consultancy

With our warmest thanks to: Kathie Convery, Leeza Johnson, Ludmilla Andrew, St. George’s Beckenham, Wagner Journal, Music Club of London, Wagner Society and the Business team at Lloyds TSB, Bromley, Hugh Mather and the Friends of St.Mary’s Perivale, St. Barnabas’ Ealing, Patrick Norohna, Andrew Bernardi.

Sponsors

Wardour www.wardour.co.uk

Gordon Dadd’s www.gordondadds.com

Tait Memorial Trustwww.taitmemorialtrust.org

The Ashton Partnership www.theashtonpartnership.com

providing scholarships for African mining students

www.julianbaringscholarship.com

TheJulian Baring

scholarshipfund

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Programme designed by WardourIllustration by Izumi Nogawa

Passion feeds perfection.Whether it’s music, or words and design. At Wardour we’re passionate about every piece of work we do, big or small.From strategic planning through to delivery of high-quality finished projects - in print or online - we ensure you have support and input from some of the best brains in the communications business. However you want to reach your audience, Wardour can help you to hit the right note.

For further information, please contact Shelley Murdoch on 020 7016 2550 or shelley.murdoch@wardour.co.uk wardour.co.uk