Morag Beaton News
singer
- soprano
- United Kingdom, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- opera singer
Last update
2024-04-25
Refresh
2024-01-24 07:29:00
Norfolk-based arts writer, Tony Cooper, enjoys a musical heritage tour to Leipzig, a relaxing and inviting city to visit awash with so much musical history.
[…] Earl of Moray, her husband Lord Darnley and her seducer the Earl of Bothwell. These relationships are foreshadowed in the delightful aria of Act I - ‘The Three Stars of my Firmament’. However, the libretto took some liberties with historical facts inasmuch as the character of Lord Gordon is fictitious although partly based on Lord Huntly while the real Earl of Moray was murdered two years later than depicted in the opera. And another character, Cardinal Beaton, was already dead before the opera’s action begin in 1561. A composer I have championed over the years, Musgrave offered an electric and piercing score referencing delicate and tuneful 16th-century court music in the somewhat quieter scenes in stark contrast to the rowdy and bloodthirstiness in others punctuated by screaming brass and percussion heard against intense haunting string textures witnessing debauchery and the like. There were many! The staging by Ilaria Lanzino truly hit the mark, […]
2022-07-23 10:36:00
More than just sisterhood: Mark Adamo's Little Women finally gets its UK premiere in Ella Marchment's imaginative production at Opera Holland Park
[…] City of London Sinfonia at Opera Holland Park in Ella Marchment's new production of Mark Adamo's Little Women. Charlotte Badham was Jo, with Kitty Whately, Harriet Eyley and Elizabeth Karani as her sisters Beg, Beth and Amy, Frederick Jones was Laurie, Harry Thatcher was John Brooke, Benson Wilson was Friedrich Bhaer, Lucy Schaufer was Aunt March with Victoria Simmonds and Nicholas Garrett as the girls' parents. Designs were by Madeleine Boyd with lighting by Rory Beaton and movement by Sarah Louise Kristiansen.Adamo's libretto for the opera takes key moments from the novel, John Brooke's (Harry Thatcher) wooing of Meg (Kitty Whately), Jo's (Charlotte Badham) bad reaction to this, the wedding and Laurie's (Frederick Jones) declaration of love to Jo, her subsequent move to New York and meeting with Frederick Bhaer (Benson Wilson), the beginnings of romance between Laurie (Jones) and Amy (Elizabeth Karani), and Beth's (Harriet Eyley) death. Mark Adamo: Little […]
2022-03-10 14:42:00
Hackney Empire Theatre King Dodon – Grant DoylePrince Guidon – Thomas Elwin Prince Aphron – Jerome Knox General Polkan – Edward Hawkins Amelfa – Amy J Payne Golden Cockerel – Alys Mererid Roberts Queen of Shemakha – Paula Sides Astrologer – Robert Lewis James Conway (director) Neil Irish (set designs and costumes) Rory Beaton (lighting) Chorus and Orchestra of English Touring Opera Gerry Cornelius (conductor) No one could have known at the time of planning—a couple of years ago, I think—but in current circumstances it was eerie, even uncanny, to sit down to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s final opera, The Golden Cockerel. Composed in the aftermath of the disastrous Russo-Japanese war and only premiered, following extended disputes with the censor, in 1909 after Rimsky’s death, it portrays a lazy king persuaded once again to defeat in war following claims, once again, of enemy incursions at the borders […]
2022-03-07 09:00:09
[…] in Russia) had something to do with it. So, to the Hackney Empire on Saturday 5 March 2022, when English Touring Opera's new production of Rimsky Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel was dedicated to the people of Ukraine. Directed by James Conway and conducted by Gerry Cornelius, it featured Paula Sides, Grant Doyle, Jerome Knox, Thomas Elwin, Edward Hawkins, Amy J Payne, Alys Mererid Roberts, and Robert Lewis. Designs were by Neil Irish with lighting by Rory Beaton. The work was performed in the English translation by Antal Dorati and James Gibson, and used Iain Farrington's orchestral adaptation. Rimsky Korsakov: The Golden Cockerel - Edward Hawkins, Grant Doyle, Alys Mererid Roberts - English Touring Opera (Photo Richard Hubert Smith) In many ways Rimsky Korsakov's final opera, written in 1908, is very like his others with its seductive orchestrations, use of neo-Oriental exoticism, folk-tale like plot […]
or
- timeline: Lyrical singers (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): B...