As anyone who has looked at the front page of this blog recently will know, I’m singing the soprano solos for a Sing Your Own Messiah production in a couple of weeks. This is the first time I’ve sung a ‘set’ of solos for an oratorio or opera or anything really. It’s also the first time I will have sung in a production of the Messiah, so I’m pretty excited about it on a lot of levels.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGkn91ywbsU&w=420&h=315]
It’s possible, of course, that you have all seen this one already, but I do think this particular rendition of Carmina Burana, Flashmob-style, is rather gorgeous.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJNp5UKRtbQ&w=560&h=315] Continue reading
I was going to rain down death, despair and the vengeance of hell, soprano style, on you today, but that seemed like a bit much for a Monday morning. Instead, I’m going to give you the Queen of the Night’s other aria, in which she persuades and even seduces the young and extremely persuadable tenor, Tamino, to her cause. You can always go hunting for hell’s boiling vengeance later.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov1hRqPnm58&w=560&h=315]
I’ve been chatting about politics on and off all week with an online friend in England. Our conversation has been extremely polite and very careful, because we have almost no political opinions in common.
But we do both observe our minute’s silence on Remembrance Day.
Here’s some music for after the silence.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc4RUeKzddg&w=420&h=315]
Let’s have a change from church music, shall we? One of the girls in my singing performance class on Monday got up and sang this piece. She underlined the rather evil nature of the song by singing it very sweetly, and the class – all women, as it happens – was in tears of laughter. I went looking for a similar interpretation, and found a version sung by Julie Andrews…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bkTAKWyB38&w=560&h=315]
This song is justly famous in our choir as The Warrior Horse Song. You’ll see why shortly….
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzo99a3hOro&w=420&h=315] Continue reading
It’s highly likely that Mondays are going to be church music days around here, quite simply because I spend most of my Sundays singing in church choirs, so that’s the sort of music that is in my head. And of course, every day is Purcell day… and really, why wouldn’t it be? He is a beautiful composer.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwLZFEKWJto&w=560&h=315] Continue reading
This is not the kind of music I normally find appealing, being atonal and deeply, deeply strange. It’s from Thomas Adès’s recent opera of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. This aria belongs to Ariel, an airy spirit, and is sung here by Audrey Luna. It’s positively (and appropriately) unearthly.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPkEj3B9KKI&w=560&h=315] Continue reading
As promised, I return from the opera gala with something to amuse you. This aria was sung by a very handsome young baritone with a beautiful voice, a gleam in his eye, and a copy of Vanity Fair, to which he referred at salient moments, to illustrate the ladies in question. This particular recording, by Erwin Schrott, is much in the same spirit, and leads one to believe that the singer is in fact detailing (and revelling in) his own conquests, not those of his master. In my mind, it immediately became ‘the notches on the bedpost aria’, because I’m vulgar like that. See what you think…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM-2CA47L_A&w=420&h=315] Continue reading
I know, I know, it’s all church music all the time around here, but what can I say? I spent most of yesterday singing in services to celebrate the 350th Anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer (and I now know much more Anglican church history than I used to – ask me hiw. You’re just lucky I’m not inflicting Stanford’s Te Deum (and all its manifold top Fs) on you. My ear-worm-prone brain is still inflicting it on me…
Instead, here, have some equally British Byrd.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fubfWcilbE&w=420&h=315] Continue reading