Jonathan Dove News
English composer (1959- )
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- United Kingdom
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2024-04-24
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2024-04-18 09:15:00
Engaging the audience: James Newby and Joseph Middleton in a folk-inspired programme at a cool Leeds café/bar
[…] was impressive how Newby took ownership of the performance space and was not frightened of using his body and his voice. Throughout the cycle, he brought an imaginative approach to tone colour, particularly in his variety of tone in the upper register. Percy Grainger's version of the Willow song came next, Willow Willow, performed with lovely tone colour and urgent words, really projecting the meaning. A wonderfully intent performance of Vaughan Williams' arrangement of The Turtle Dove proved to be near ideal. Then came two Britten arrangements, Il est quelqu’un sur terre and O Waly, Waly, both of which Newby invested a lot in the performance, making the song work. Then as an encore we got Sting's Fields of Gold, a surprising but apposite choice which highlighted the folk elements in the piece, though in his introduction Newby said that he associated the song more with American singer, Eva Cassidy.Never miss out on future […]
2024-03-02 09:03:00
Shamus O'Brien: withdrawn by the composer for political reasons, Stanford's most popular opera languished in the 20th century but all that seems set to change
[…] SOMM Records]. Even a work like Shamus O'Brien has no recording.This is all going to change as Retrospect Opera is releasing the first studio recording of Stanford's Shamus O'Brien with David Parry conducting the Orchestra of Scottish Opera plus soloists Brendan Collins, Anna Brady, Gemma Ni Bhriain, Ami Hewitt, Joseph Doody, Andrew Gavin and Rory Dunne with Irish piper Jarlath Henderson.I recently caught up by Zoom with conductor David Parry who was in Scotland amid performances of Jonathan Dove's new opera, Marx in London, a work which David refers to as fantastic. It has been something of a hit, too, with audiences with Scottish Opera selling out the Theatre Royal in Glasgow.Whilst Shamus O'Brien was popular in its time, David thinks that its very Irishness has mitigated against more recent performances in the complicated post-war political climate. Born in Dublin, Stanford was Anglo-Irish and the opera has a libretto by the Irish writer […]
2024-02-22 08:09:00
Cinderella in the gas works: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire's site-specific production of Massenet's opera
Jonathan Dove: The Enchanted Pig - Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 2023 (Photo Greg Milner)On Monday 29 February 2024, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire debuts its Spring opera production, Massenet's Cendrillon at Gas Street Central in Birmingham. The production involves a collaboration between the London College of Fashion and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with a cast of students from the conservatoire's Vocal & Operatic Studies Department plus a team of student set-designers, language coaches, assistant directors, surtitle operators and so on. All directed by Matthew Eberhardt who has created a production set in the 1950sThe venue is a former gas works that originally supplied the gas to the lamps around the city and is now a church. The production will see the audience move through this interesting space.The conservatoire does not have a specific postgraduate opera course and the performers will be undergraduate and masters vocal students, from the Vocal & Operatic Studies Department […]
2024-02-21 18:49:00
Le nozze di Figaro, Deutsche Oper, 20 February 2024
[…] appreciate a subtle more placing of them and the rest of the household within a greater social whole. Thomas Lehman and Artur Garbas did not seem to be presenting a modern portrayal and falling short; they were doing something different, as was Friedrich. Lilit Daviyan’s Susanna was not so different from what one might expect, though that is not to say she took anything for granted. Maria Motolygina’s Countess truly came into her own in ‘Dove sono’, a finely yet not fussily coloured account, in which musical means conveyed dramatic ends. Meechot Marrero’s Cherubino was not only dramatically alert but perhaps uncommonly beautifully sung. Michaela Kaune’s Marcellina offered a surprising star drunken turn in her fourth-act aria, for once retained. It was a pity still to be missing Don Basilio’s, but Burkhard Ulrich made a fine impression elsewhere: for once, a reading (Friedrich’s too, of course) that presented him as […]
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