When Stephen Storace and his sister, Nancy returned to England from Vienna in early 1787, he set to work on a comic piece in the order of the German Singspieler, (what eventually developed into the operetta, and then into what we now know as the musical), entitled the "The Doctor & the Apothecary". Stephen went on to become the father of the English operetta, (Nancy always being the star of his pieces), and was the primary influence for the great English team of Gilbert & Sullivan.
This delightful little aria, composed for Nancy, is one of the few pieces that still survive from him.
This is a video of a young tenor, Randyn Miller, who was an undergraduate voice major at the same time I was in grad school. We were in the same studio and I knew then, that he had a destiny before him. He is doing his graduate work at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he just completed his master's degree. He is currently in Italy where he just completed a concert in Fidenza. Here he is, singing Nessun Dorma from Puccini's beloved Turandot. He was so nervous that he wouldn't let the person filming aim the camera at him so all you see here is a beautiful view of the ceiling, with Randyn's lovely tenor voice soaring. This young man has great promise. I'd be looking out for him if I were you.
This is a clip from the HD broadcast of the Met's production of Lucia di Lammermoor in which the young polish tenor, Piotr Beczala was called out from the audience to sing because of illness on the part of the regularly scheduled singer. Steph and I got to see this performance a couple of months ago on PBS and were amazed by this fabulous tenor and I have been following him since. Here he is as Edgardo in the last scene singing the tragic aria, Tu che a Dio spiegasti l'ali.
I learned that my dear friend Michael, (an old friend from college days), is absolutely crazy about this piece. Can't say as I blame him. So here it is, the final trio from Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, featuring the talents of Felicity Lott, Anne Sophie von Otter and Barabara Bonney. This one's just for you, Michael! Enjoy!
It's one of the most memorable and loved of all operatic duets presented in concert by three different pairs of divas. You choose your favorite pair and tell us why you chose them. Enjoy!
I had to feature this video I found on YouTube because it's of a very dear friend and college classmate. His name is Arnold Rawls and he has one of the sweetest tenor voices I've ever heard. Since our college days he has made quite a name for himself on the professional opera circuit. The video I'm featuring here is Arnold in several clips from the Floyd opera, Susannah. Well done, Arnold!
Shakespeare said that all the world is a stage. And then there is the saying which goes, Opera is life. Then if this is so, which opera best represents your life?
I've presented three very different performances of Purcell's heart-breaking aria "When I am laid in earth" from Dido and Aeneas. Choose your favorite and tell us why you chose it.
Thomas Morley (1557 or 1558 – October 1602) was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance, and the foremost member of the English Madrigal School. He was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England. He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare.
Morley was born in Norwich, in East Anglia, the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood, and he became master of choristers there in 1583. However, Morley evidently spent some time away from East Anglia, for he later referred to the great Elizabethan composer of sacred music, William Byrd, as his teacher; while the dates he studied with Byrd are not known, they were most likely in the early 1570s. In 1588 he received his bachelor's degree from Oxford, and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at St. Paul's in London. His young son died the following year in 1589.
In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colorful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley evidently found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).
Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, though never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from As You Like It has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play, though the possibility that it was is obvious. Morley was highly placed by the mid-1590s and would have had easy access to the theatrical community; certainly there was then, as there is now, a close connection between prominent actors and musicians.
While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional color, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now is the Month of Maying"; he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.
In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and music for the broken consort, a uniquely English ensemble of two viols, flute, lute, cittern and bandora, notably as published in 1599 in The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Pandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl.
Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for almost two hundred years after its author's death, and remains an important reference for information about sixteenth century composition and performance.
Source: Wikipedia
And if you thought he was insistent as Mozart's most famous Don, (thanks Merisi!), you should hear him as Scarpia in this concert performance of Va, Tosca (Te Deum) from Puccini's Tosca. Mamma Mia, indeed!
Last night Steph and I watched "Great Performances" on PBS, an October, 2008 performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera featuring a young Polish tenor by the name of Piotr Beczala. It seems that the tenor who was scheduled to sing the role of Edgardo became suddenly ill and was unable to go on stage. Beczala, who was already known throughout Europe as a fine Mozart tenor, happened to be in the audience that evening and so they pulled him out and put him on stage for the performance. The Met audience went wild for him and thus a new tenor star appeared in the sky.
I've chosen to feature him in a 2006 Salzburg Festival recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni, singing a personal favorite of mine, Dalla sua pace. This guy is absolutely amazing.
If you think she sang an incredible Cherubino, you should hear her as Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville! Flicka's gonna blow your socks of with her rendition of "Una voce poco fa".
This is one of the most beautiful performances of one of my very favorite art songs. Barbara Bonney sings Franz Liszt's Oh! quand je dors with such passion and tenderness that it brings tears to the eyes!
Shame on me for featuring so little Bach in my entries. However, I must confess that I'm truly not a huge fan of Bach, mostly because I am a lover of the "heart chakra" composers--Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, etc., and Bach is all head. But that doesn't keep me from appreciating, and even loving some of Bach's works, most especially his great Mass in B minor.
I'm pleased to feature here, the majestic choral setting of the Dona Nobis Pacem from Bach's great Mass in B minor, preformed by the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, under the direction of Robert Shaw.
This piece ranks up there with the Great C minor Mass, the Ave Verum Corpus, and the Lacrymosa from the Requiem, as one of my favorites of Mozart's sacred works.
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| Lynette Erwin |
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