Early Music at the Space A Handel on Jazz; Monteverdi’s Venetian Legacy; Les Femmes Illustres; French Collection 9, 16, 23, 30 May 2024 2.00 pm
New College has recently opened its new Gradel Quadrangles in Mansfield Road. The development includes a purpose-built recital hall, a space in which New Chamber Opera will be able to rehearse and perform.
For the first concerts in the Space, NCO has teamed up with New College to promote four concerts with baroque chamber groups.
Alasdair Nicolson, text from Death Bed by Craig Raine
Alasdair Nicolson
Alasdair Nicolson was born in Inverness and brought up on the Isle of Skye and the Black Isle. He studied at Edinburgh University and later became Shaw McFie Lang Fellow there working in composition and music theatre. Whilst his first commissions came immediately after he finished his studies, he began his career by combining composition with work in theatre and opera as musical director, conductor and repetiteur. It was in the late 80s and early 90s that he came to wider attention as winner of the IBM Composers’ Prize and, following this success, he received commissions from the UK and abroad. Nicolson has gone on to work with some of the world’s best orchestras, ensembles, and soloists. His music is widely performed and broadcast and it has won critical acclaim for its clarity, craftsmanship and individuality. He is now regarded as one of Scotland’s foremost composers. As well as his compositional work Alasdair has been involved with many organisations as a creative producer. He is currently Artistic Director of the St Magnus International Festival and Director of the St Magnus Composers’ Course as well as being Artistic Director of his own ensemble The Assembly Project. He is currently working as a curator for one of SCOT:lands for Edinburgh’s Hogmanay. Previously he has worked as Artistic Director of Bath International Music Festival, Sound Inventors, Northlands Festival and Platform Festival.
Last Things
Last Things was commissioned by New Chamber Opera for its Patron’s Concert in October 1993. The words are by Craig Raine and are taken by the poet from his poem Death Bed. This performance is the work’s (somewhat belated) London premiere. Written for solo countertenor and piano, the idea of the piece is to involve the singers and the instrument in the telling of the tale.
Karol Jozwick – Countertenor
Karol Jozwik is currently studying at New College, Oxford where he sings with New College Choir. He began his career as a treble in the Schola Cantorum of The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, where he was able to feature in the children’s chorus of opera productions at the ROH and ENO. During his time in the choir, he also had many solo opportunities with professional orchestras; after his transition to countertenor, these included Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Handel’s Messiah, and Mozart’s Requiem. He then took a gap year, taking up a one-year choral scholarship post at Portsmouth Cathedral, notably playing the character of Isaac in a performance of Britten’s Canticle II.
During his time at Oxford, Karol has been a member of the Oxford Schola Cantorum and a choral scholar in Oxford Bach Soloists. He is taught by Bronwen Mills, has taken part in masterclasses with Michael Chance, Laurence Cummings, and Roderick Williams, and is receiving vocal coaching from countertenor Iestyn Davies. He is excited to expand his horizons into the world of opera, with some upcoming productions with New Chamber Opera.
Dónal McCann – Piano
Dónal McCann, who is originally from Belfast, read music at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was an academic and organ scholar. At King’s, he accompanied the choir in daily chapel services, as well as in recordings, broadcasts and extensive tours, including to America and Australia. Prior to this, Dónal was the Andrew Lloyd Webber Scholar at Eton College, where he achieved the FRCO with the Limpus Prize, subsequently being nominated for the Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. The following year he won the inaugural Dame Gillian Weir Medal at the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition. Dónal studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, and organ with Professor Gerard Gillen at St Mary’s Pro Cathedral. He has performed as a soloist with the Ulster Orchestra and the Academy of Ancient Music and has given many recitals in the UK and abroad.
Craig Raine
Craig Raine is a poet, novelist, dramatist, librettist and critic. He writes a monthly column for the TLS. His last book was My Grandmother’s Glass Eye: A look at Poetry (2017).
A Cautionary Tale
Samuel Hogarth, text after Chekhov
Samuel Hogarth
Samuel Hogarth, who came up to New College in 2001 to read music, went on to be director of music at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and thence to the National Opera Studio repetiteurs course, while teaching at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department. Samuel has worked as a repetiteur and conductor at Oper Köln, at the Hamburg Staatsoper, and since 2014, has been Kapellmeister (staff conductor) at the Staatstheater Mainz, where he has conducted a range of opera and concert repertoire including La Bohème, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Dialogues des Carmélites, Carmina Burana, Spamalot, Gluck’s Armide and Cherubini’s Médée, as well as works such John Cage’s Atlas eclipticalis. His other conducting engagements include work at Glyndebourne (preparatory workshops on Brett Dean’s newly-commissioned opera Hamlet with singers including Sir John Tomlinson and Allan Clayton); he returned to Glyndebourne in summer 2017 to assist Vladimir Jurowski on the world premiere production of Hamlet and conduct the cover cast.
The Evils of Tobacco
The source of The Evils of Tobacco is a monologue by Anton Chekhov. It is a parody of an evening lecture, given on what Chekhov describes as ‘the platform stage of a provincial club’ in which the speaker’s text crumbles under the pressure of thoughts of domestic misery. The main character, Markel Ivanovich Nyukin, attends the evening under pressure from his wife who runs a boarding school for girls. The composer, Samuel Hogarth, commented on the piece:
‘In writing the libretto I have been forced to reduce the original play considerably, no easy task given the remarkable conciseness of Chekhov’s text. In choosing what to include, translating it, and indeed composing the music, my aim has been to preserve what I perceive as the play’s principal device: the subtle, almost unnoticed scheme of repetitions and references that so powerfully captures the speaker’s stream of consciousness.’
William Purefoy – Countertenor
William Purefoy A graduate of Magdalen College Oxford, William studied on the opera course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and has collaborated with the BBC Proms, English National Opera, Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Hanover Band, English Concert, The Sixteen, Scottish Opera, Buxton Festival, Garsington Opera, Iford Arts, Opera Theatre Company and Classical Opera Company. He has given concerts and recitals at Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Barbican, and the Purcell Room. International appearances have included New Zealand Opera, Theater Basel, Valencia Opera, Staatsoper Hannover. His repertoire includes roles such as Ottone L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Ptolemy Giulio Cesare, Ernesto Il Mondo della luna, Andronico Tamerlano, Antonio Gesualdo, Apollo Apollo and Hyacinth, AscanioAs- canio in Alba, Athamas Semele and many more. William has made many recordings, ap- peared regularly with vocal groups Cantabile – The London Quartet, I Fagiolini and Theatre of Voices and was featured in the television series In Search of Shakespeare and the film Young Victoria. He was in a devised play Le Sixième Continent at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris and has frequently appeared at Shakespeare’s Globe.
James Andrew – Piano
Jamie Andrews is the junior organ scholar at New College where he studies music. He was born in 2001 in Brighton and began learning the piano at the age of 7. Jamie started playing the organ at the age of 12 achieving his grade 8 two years later. He was appointed as the organ scholar of All Saints Church in Hove where he played for weekly services. In this role, Jamie got the chance to accompany the choir on visits to cathedrals including Rochester, Guildford and St Pauls. At the age of 16, Jamie was awarded the prestigious Andrew Lloyd Webber Scholarship to study at Eton College for sixth form. At Eton, Jamie studied organ with David Goode and piano with Libby Burgess and James Kirby. Working with the chapel choir at Eton, Jamie had the chance to attend the choir tour to Hong Kong in April 2019 which included a concert of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with the Hong Kong Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Despite the obvious challenges of 2020, Jamie continued to make music and was a finalist in the Sussex Young Musician of the year competition. As organ scholar, he accompanies services and trains choristers alongside organist Robert Quinney.
A Confession
Luke Smith, text by Michael Burden
Luke Smith
Luke Smith has just graduated from New College, Oxford with a degree in music that focused primarily on composition and performance. Before coming to Oxford, he studied cello and piano at school. He has since taken up bass guitar and is now a passionate jazz musician and a member of ‘The Donut Kings’, an Oxford University big band. Luke has also played bass guitar and cello for numerous musical theatre productions in Oxford, as well as performances for National Youth Music Theatre. Luke was taught composition by Luke Lewis and will be moving to Cambridge to study next academic year.
The Organist’s Confession
The Organist’s Confession is a monologue which moves backwards and forwards between hymns, anecdotes, and new incidents.
The central character is organist who has just been sacked by the vicar. Initially her demeanour and her attempt to play a standard hymn suggest that she is not just eccentric, but definitely past it! However, as she reminisces, a more sinister narrative emerges, and we learn of sexual misconduct and murder. On the surface, it seems that the organist’s firing has produced a series of flashbacks to her youth, but we are never sure whether the story
References can be found in the work to other pieces of 20th-century music theatre, including Birtwistle’s Down by the Greenwood Side and Maxwell Davies’ Missa super l’homme armé. Some are intentional – and others unintentional – and include the use of borrowed material and the re-working of the central piece as a dance number.
Lindsay Bramley – mezzo soprano
Lindsay Bramley read Music at The Queen’s College, Oxford. Originally trained as a pianist, she started singing professionally at university and since then her career has taken her to Israel, Ireland, France, Austria and Canada. Lindsay sang the title role in The Judgement of Theodora for ENO’s Contemporary Music Studio, Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, The Medium and Mere d’Iseut in Le Vin Herbe for Ardente Opera. Other recent work includes Berta in Barber of Seville for Opera Up Close, Baba in The Medium for Opera Alegria and The Silver Swan at the Tate Modern for ClodEnsemble, a variety of roles at Opera Holland Park and a busy schedule of oratorio. Lindsay first ventured into opera conducting in 2011 and she has since been assistant conductor to Matthew Kofi Waldren for La Cenerentola at West Green Opera, conducted Un Ballo in Maschera, Carmen, L’Elisir d’Amore, Le Nozze di Figaro, Semele, Hercules, The Magic Flute,Acis & Galatea/Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse and Trial by Jury for various community projects. In 2018 she was appointed Chorus Master to Chelsea Opera Group, preparing them for Mose in Egitto, Norma, Mefistofele, The Demon, and most recently Un Giorno di Regno. She is currently Musical Director of Opera Alegria and Richmond Opera, conducts regularly for Windsor & Eton Operatic Society, and works as a translator producing surtitles for several companies across the country, and creating newly commissioned singing translations of The Impresario, Bastien & Bastienne, Count Ory, L’Heure Espagnole, La Scala di Seta and Un Mari a la Porte for Opera Alegria and bespoke translations of La Boheme and Cavalleria Rusticana for Paisley Opera. Later this year she will sing Zita in Gianni Schicchi at the Atheneum.
Michael Burden
Michael Burden is Professor of Opera Studies at Oxford. He directs opera from many different periods, and has staged many of the Music Theatre classics from 1970s and 80s. These were the inspiration for his text for An Organist’s Confession.
A Coffin – Last Things by Alasdair Nicolson, with a text by Craig Raine, is a meditation at the bedside of a dying woman. (Performance deferred)
A Confession – The Organist’s Confession by Luke Smith, with a text by Michael Burden,is a study of an organist with dementia.
A Cautionary Tale – The Evils of Tobacco by Samuel Hogarth, with a text after Chekhov, is a humorous didactic on smoking.
Last Things– Karol Jozwik, countertenor The Evils of Tobacco – Austin Haynes, countertenor The Organist’s Confession – Lindsay Bramley, mezzo-soprano Premiere
The only opera in history to have been entirely encored at its first performance, The Secret Marriage (Il matrimonio segreto) tells the story of Carolina, secretly married to her father’s secretary Paulino. Her father is trying to marry Carolina’s sister, Elisetta, to one Count Robinson, but his plans have been derailed; the Count only wants to marry Carolina. Meanwhile, Carolina’s and Elisetta’s Aunt Fidalma has fallen in love with Paulino, providing yet another complication… the libretto, by Bertati, is based on an English comedy by George Coleman, and set by Cimarosa, one of the most prolific and capable opera composers of the late 18th century. It was first staged on 7 February 1792.
Conductor: Joseph Beesley Assistant conductor: Toby Stanford Director: Michael Burden
Carolina: Margaret Lingas Elisetta: Emily Brown Gibson Fidalma: Stephanie Franklin Paulino: Richard Douglas Count Robinson: Tom McGowan Geronimo: Chris Murphy
Jonathon is a long-standing member of Faculty for both the Georg Solti Accademia di Bel Canto and Lyric Opera Studio Weimar and is a visiting vocal coach at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Royal Academy of Music, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He is passionate about the training of young voices and is the Artistic Director of the Alvarez Young Artists’ Programme at Garsington Opera.
Event 1
21 June 2018
Edward Boyle Auditorium, St Hilda’s College
2.30pm
William Christie, Rameau and
Staging Baroque Opera
2.30pm Lecture- James Halliday
3.30pm Tea
4.00pm Round Table discussion
James Halliday, with William Christie, Claire Holden, Jonathan Williams, Jonathan Patterson
5.30pm Drinks Reception
Event 2
22 June 2018
Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, St Anne’s College
11.30am-12.30pm
William Christie in Conversation with
Edward Higginbottom
This event will take place in the programme of the Oxford Conducting Institute’s International Conducting Studies Conference 2018.
Born into a family of singers, Andreas Scholl, aged 13, was chosen from 20,000 choristers gathered in Rome from around the world to sing solo at Mass on 4 January 1981. Just four years later, Scholl was offered a place at the Schola Cantorum, an institution that normally accepts only post-graduate students, and now succeeded his own teacher there, Richard Levitt. His operatic roles include Bertarido in Handel’s Rodelinda at Glyndebourne in 1998 and at the Met in 2006, and the title role in Giulio Cesare at Oper Frankfurt. He has worked with many of the contemporary Baroque specialists including William Christie and Philippe Herreweghe.
Scholl has released a series of extraordinary solo recordings including: Wanderer – a disc of German Lied in partnership with pianist Tamar Halperin; O Solitude – an all-Purcell album with Accademia Bizantina which won the 2012 BBC Music Magazine award, Arias for Senesino, Heroes – a disc of arias by Handel, Mozart, Hasse and Gluck, Robert Dowland’s A Musicall Banquet, Arcadia – a collection of rare and unpublished cantatas by composers from Rome’s Arcadian Circle, Wayfaring Stranger – a selection of specially arranged English and American folksongs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Bach cantatas with Kammerorchester Basel and Vivaldi Motets with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, all of which are released on Decca. His most recent recording, Small Gifts of Heaven, is a collaboration with Dorothee Oberlinger and released on the Sony label this season.
26 October 2017 Stephen Langridge in conversation: “Why play opera at all?” 5:00-6:45pm; T. S. Eliot Lecture Theatre
27 & 30 October 2017 Making Opera
27 October 2017 Singers’ workshop 10.00-1.00pm; Long Room, New College New creations 2.00-5.00pm: Long Room, New College
30 October 2017 Working with the New 10.00-1.00pm: Long Room, New College Performing the New 2.00-5.00pm: Long Room, New College
Biography
Stephen Langridge is Artistic Director (Opera/Drama) of GöteborgsOperan, the Gothenburg Opera. Having studied Drama at Exeter University, Stephen then spent several years working as assistant director, mostly with the cutting edge company, Opera Factory, but also at Covent Garden, Opera North and Scottish Opera. His own practice developed through a mixture of small-scale tours of cut-down classics with Pimlico Opera, practical laboratories for composers and librettists, and devised music theatre projects, often in unconventional spaces with unconventional people. Underlying all his work is the belief that music theatre is a natural and dynamic form of human expression, to which everybody should have access, both as a creative participant and as an audience.
Stephen is well known for his education, development, and training work (projects in France, Spain, Germany, Finland, Holland, Sweden, Senegal, South Africa, and throughout the UK), and for his theatre work in unusual settings, including West Side Story (Bernstein) and Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) with large casts of prisoners in various British high security prisons, and Ngoma, a multi-racial music and theatre project in South African townships.
Although his directing work is now often on a larger scale – including productions at many of the world’s leading opera houses – Stephen continues to work off piste incorporating smaller scale experimental and developmental projects as an essential part of his working life.
Friday 27 January @ 5 pm in the T.S Eliot Lecture Theatre, Merton College (to be followed by a drinks reception in the foyer)
Woman. Alone: Â Directing opera now.
Katie Mitchell is one of the few senior women working in opera in Britain and mainland Europe today.  She has worked here at English National Opera, The Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival and Welsh National Opera. She is currently opening the revival of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin at the Royal Opera House whilst preparing for George Benjamin’s second commission scheduled for 2018. She has also worked extensively in Germany, France, Austria and Scandinavia at houses like The Staatsoper, Berlin, The Salzburg Festival and Royal Danish Opera.  She is currently a resident artist at The Aix en Provence Festival where she has directed five operas including Pelleas and Melisande and Handel’s Alcina. IN her first ‘Conversation’, she will describe her background in theatre and how she fell into opera to become one of its leading international lights.
Saturday 28 January @ 9.30 am in the Ante-Chapel, New College
Acting Handel: Â How to bring the da capo aria to life on stage.
Katie Mitchell will draw on her recent experience of directing Handel’s Alcina at the Aix en Provence Festival to run a workshop giving insights into how to make the da capo aria work dramatically.  These arias are notoriously difficult for opera singers to perform on stage and the workshop will be offer acting ideas and concrete tips to help the young singer navigate this tricky form.  The workshop will take the form of a ‘masterclass’ where young singers are directed live by Katie in front of the audience.  There will also be opportunities for some audience participation.  Footage of the original production of Alcina will also be seen as part of the workshop.
Jane Glover
Jane Glover studied at the University of Oxford, where, after graduation, she did her D.Phil. on 17th-century Venetian opera. She holds honorary degrees from several other universities, a personal Professorship at the University of London, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. She joined Glyndebourne in 1979, becoming Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1981 to 1985 and Artistic Director of the London Mozart Players from 1984 to 1991. From 1990 to 1995 she served on the Board of Governors of the BBC and was created a CBE in the 2003 New Year’s Honours. She is Director of Opera at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and is also Music Director of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque.
Jane Glover has made many recordings; most recently a series of Haydn Masses for Naxos. Her extensive broadcasting career includes the television series Orchestra and Mozart, and the radio series Opera House and Musical Dynasties, all for the BBC. Her book, Mozart’s Women, received great critical acclaim, and she is currently writing a book on Handel.
Engagements in current and future seasons include Le nozze di Figaro in Goteborg, Iphigenie en Aulide for the Met Young Artists and Juilliard, The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Academy of Music, Cosi fan tutte in Aspen and L’Elisir d’amore at Houston Grand Opera. She has concert engagements with Music of the Baroque, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra.
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New Chamber Opera
Conductor and pianist Jonathon Swinard is the Head of Music at Garsington Opera and the Artistic Director of the Scottish Opera Young Company. He studied at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he held the NCO Répétiteur Scholarship, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He began his career at Scottish Opera as the company’s first Emerging Artist Répétiteur and also held the Alexander Gibson Choral Conducting Fellowship with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus. From 2014 to 2016 he was Solorepetitor and Kapellmeister at the Staatstheater in Nuremberg where he conducted opera, ballet, and musical theatre. In 2016 he returned to Scottish Opera as Chorus Master and Répétiteur. He studied conducting with Sian Edwards at Dartington and is the Musical Director of the Helensburgh Oratorio Choir.
