Contents

Welcome 4 Boyhood’s End 54

Prose A WATER BIRD TALK POEMS OF SIX ROMANCES A Water Bird Talk 6 Music and Text | MARINA TSVETAEVA ON BRITISH POETS Ideas on atonal music Q&A with Susan Bickley Dominick Argento Shostakovich | Tsvetaeva Shostakovich | Raleigh, John Shea recites Boyhood’s End Dominik Argento - a biography Burns, Shakespeare Julien Van Mellaerts Baritone Katie Stevenson Mezzo-soprano On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco, the Chekhov Play Holy Sonnets of John Donne 58 Ella O’Neill Pianist on which Argento bases A Water Bird Talk Ian Tindale Pianist Edward Hawkins Bass Poems Susan Bickley Director Bernadette Iglich Dancer Sergey Rybin Pianist La Voix Humaine 12 Making Material from a Sound World Rahel Vonmoos Director James Conway Director

Life of an Artist in Lockdown Notes on ‘Holy Sonnets of John Donne’ LA VOIX HUMAINE Poulenc | Cocteau HOLY SONNETS THE POET’S ECHO Felicity Lott’s ‘Thoughts on Poulenc’ Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva 66 OF JOHN DONNE Britten | Pushkin La voix humaine — a programme note by Dr Lucy Walker Paula Sides Soprano Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva Britten | Donne A Distinctly Human Voice| A note on La voix humaine Sergey Rybin Pianist Jenny Stafford Soprano Marina Tsvetaeva: A Note from James Conway by James Conway James Conway Director Richard Dowling Tenor Sergey Rybin Pianist A Short Biography of Marina Tsvetaeva Ian Tindale Pianist James Conway Director Songs and Proverbs of William Blake 22 A reading of My Poems by Holly Mathieson TEL JOUR, TELLE NUIT Bernadette Iglich Choreography Poems Poulenc | Éluard & Dancer Background into Britten’s Songs and Proverbs The Heart’s Assurance 76 of William Blake, op. 74 Poems Jenny Stafford Soprano CHARM OF LULLABIES A reading of The Tyger by Tom Shakespeare Notes on ‘The Heart’s Assurance’ Julien Van Mellaerts Baritone Britten | Blake, Burns, Greene, A reading of Ah! Sun-flower by Jilly Cooper James Conway Director Randolph, Phillip A reading of A Poison Tree by Omar Shahryar Charm of Lullabies 82 Poems BOYHOOD’S END Katie Stevenson Mezzo-soprano Tippett | W.H. Hudson Ian Tindale Pianist Romances on British Poetry 30 Notes on A Charm of Lullabies James Conway Director Poems Thomas Elwin Tenor Director’s note Biographies 90 Ian Tindale Pianist SONGS AND Edward Hawkins recites Sonnet 66 by William Shakespeare Paul Chantry Dancer Acknowledgements 94 PROVERBS Rae Piper and Paul Chantry The Poet’s Echo 36 Choreography OF WILLIAM BLAKE Production Credits 97 Britten | Blake Poems and translation Preparing to stage A Poet’s Echo (Britten/ Pushkin) Tour schedule 98 THE HEART’S Julien Van Mellaerts Baritone Background on Britten’s The Poet’s Echo, op 76 (1965) ASSURANCE Ella O’Neill Pianist Tippett | Lewis & Keyes John Savournin Director Tel jour, telle nuit 44 Poems and translation Thomas Elwin Tenor Ian Tindale Pianist An extract from Poulenc’s ‘Diary of My Songs’ Richard Dowling Actor Poulenc: Tel jour tell nuit | Lucy Walker Bernadette Iglich Choreography

Design Consultant: Louie Whitemore

2 3 Enjoy our opera for children, Shh! We Have a Plan Online until January 26th 2021

Four friends fail in their hare-brained schemes to catch a beautiful birdy. Welcome The littlest of them knows that a bit of kindness can go a long way. Will his friends follow his gentle lead or will they get themselves into even more trouble? In these extraordinary times, we are The team behind the hugely successful 2020 digital & puppetry adaption of pleased to offer this programme to I Want My Hat Back return in style with a short film of Chris Haughton’s much you for free. loved modern-classic Shh! We Have a Plan.

A number of our friends and supporters Click here have offered to donate to ETO to cover the to donate costs of producing this programme. If you enjoy reading it and would like to donate, we would be grateful for your support. We have usually sold programmes for £4.

4 English Touring Opera at Snape Maltings - Baritone Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Ella O’Neill perform Dominick Argento’s A Water Bird Talk 5 (October 23, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) Julien Van Mellaerts Baritone

Ella O’Neill Pianist

Susan Bickley Director

— A Water Bird Talk Q&A with Susan Bickley Music and Text | Dominick Argento Dominik Argento - A biography

Harmful effects of tobacco the Chekhov Play on which Argento bases A Water Bird Talk

6 Image: Baritone Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Ella O’Neill perform Dominick Argento’s A Water Bird Talk 7 (October 23, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) JC: You are used to the harridan wife could be seen JC: How has this period learning pieces from the as a bit of a misogynistic cliché, of relative silence been perspective of the role you she’s clearly made this man’s life for you? Has it clarified are singing — did you come a misery… but I have to say i for you why you are a to know A Waterbird Talk have come across marriages that performer, for example? in a different sort of way? are not dissimilar in nature so Is there anything you there is definitely an element of would like to say about SB: I did approach working reality! Fortunately Julien is also the community of freelance on ‘Waterbird’ differently to an excellent pianist and as the artists, if you perceive that something I would be singing. score requires ‘the lecturer’ to there is a community? The text was my first job…to play, if he possibly can, that has work out what Argento was been a real bonus. SB: Well this year has been meaning, to read the play it was the most extraordinary time for based on and to then listen to JC: I know you have everyone in the arts. Freelancers, it and get a grip of what was recently done your own in particular, have really suffered happening musically. Then to one-person show, based as there has been little or no imagine what ‘ the lecturer’ on music of Berio. What financial support and many have Q&A with would be doing and where do you reckon to be the had to take other jobs to survive. and how on the stage. If it was particular challenges of a That is all very well… but when a role I was singing I would one-person show? you have trained for years and have probably done things the spent a fortune on study it is Susan Bickley other way round… getting to SB: I have had several heartbreaking not to be able to Photo Credit: Leon Hargreaves Leon Photo Credit: know the notes and studying experiences of being the sole use those very particular skills. the text second. Singers all singer in a piece, the most recent And they are skills that need to have different ways of getting of which was to perform Berio’s be nurtured and practised… a to know what they are having Recital for Cathy. It is scored difficult thing to maintain while Director, James Conway JC: As a performer, what JC: What was it like to learn. As a performer who for a singer and accompanist working for Amazon, say, on speaks with mezzo-soprano have you come to value directing another singer? has learnt the skill of interpreting and chamber orchestra who are night shifts. I count my blessings… in a director? Susan Bickley about SB: What a very interesting someone else’s ideas… offstage and was written for his I had a lot of work cancelled, the difference between SB: As a performer I’ve been situation to be in... to be on composer, librettist, director or wife Cathy Berberian. It’s a piece here and abroad, but I have a of music theatre….a monologue performing and directing extremely fortunate to work the other side of the table! I conductor it was most interesting husband who works full time so with some truly inspirational hadn’t really planned to do any to be suggesting my ideas to from a singer giving a recital in we are not on the breadline. and how this has influenced someone else for a change! which she gradually loses her However, many young artists, her direction of Argento’s directors... my favourites being directing but was delighted to those who regularly choose be asked by James Conway... mind while singing about 42 some married to other performers A Water Bird Talk. to work in theatre as well and perhaps starting with a JC: What do you like best very short extracts from her past and with families to support, as opera. Before ending up one person opera is a good about A Waterbird Talk? repertoire. What a piece! Very have really suffered. So those studying music and singing I idea! My first reaction was to When does it speak to tricky to learn but covering the companies, like ETO, who had always wanted to be an think ..‘oh I’m not sure I’d be your heart? full gamut of emotion. We last are now managing to mount performed it in the British Museum some performances, albeit in actress and so being involved up to that..’ but frankly, in these SB: It’s an interesting piece… amongst the Elgin Marbles! I compromised ways, will be the in opera has ticked all boxes! times when singing work is Waterbird... a rather good loved doing it… but when you’re saviours for those young singers, Directors who also understand virtually nonexistent, it seemed vehicle for an actor/singer to on your own there certainly actors, technicians etc starting the nature of the music are very the perfect time to take on a show a wide variety of emotions. is a responsibility to keep the out. It will be the future for the valuable… it’s surprising how challenge. I was very lucky to There is some humour and some audience engaged… you can’t time being, I suspect. And while many come with a CD booklet be working with such a talented great sadness as well as anger relax for a moment! it might make us more resourceful of text but haven’t really taken and receptive singer as Julien. and frustration. The music isn’t and imaginative, the fact that the integration of both art forms We had fun, along with our easy to learn but actually sounds the industry that is art and into consideration! wonderful pianist Ella and I very lyrical at times as well as performance has been neglected think I was able to use some dramatic. The offstage role of techniques learnt from directors for the most part is devastating for I have worked with... obviously those that work in it. in a very simple way, given my newness to the role!

8 Image: Mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley, right, with violinist Jacqueline Shave performing Berio in the British Museum. 9 Dominick Argento — A biography

Dominick Argento, considered Since the early 1970s Argento’s to be America’s pre-eminent operas were heard with composer of lyric opera, was increasing frequency abroad. born in York, Pennsylvania in Among these are The Voyage 1927. He earned his Bachelor’s of Edgar Allan Poe (1976), and Master’s degrees at Dream of Valentino (1993), Peabody Conservatory and and Casanova’s Homecoming his Ph.D. from the Eastman (1984), which Robert Jacobson School of Music. Fulbright of Opera News hailed as and Guggenheim Fellowships “a masterpiece.” allowed him to study in Italy and following his Fulbright, Argento Dominick Argento received became music director of Hilltop the Pulitzer Prize for Music Opera in Baltimore, and taught in 1975 for his song cycle theory and composition at the From the Diary of Virginia Eastman School. In 1958, Woolf. He was elected to the he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Arts Department of Music at the and Letters in 1979, and in University of Minnesota, where 1997 was honored with the title he taught until 1997 of Composer Laureate to the and later held the rank of Minnesota Orchestra, a Professor Emeritus. lifetime appointment.

During his years at Eastman, — February 2019 Argento composed his opera, Reprinted by kind permission of The Boor (1957), of which Boosey & Hawkes John Rockwell of The New York Times stated: “[it] taps deep currents of sentiment and passion.” Following his arrival in Minnesota, Argento accepted commissions from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Minneapolis. Image: John J Audubon

10 11 Paula Sides Soprano

Sergey Rybin Pianist

James Conway Director

—

Life of an Artist La Voix Humaine in Lockdown Poulenc | Cocteau Felicity Lott’s ‘Thoughts on Poulenc’

La voix humaine — a programme note by Dr Lucy Walker

A Distinctly Human Voice| A note on La Voix Humaine by James Conway

12 Performer in image: Paula Sides 13 Life of an Artist in Lockdown

I am a classical musician Now things are becoming oddly that had the stark reality of normal. We both teach from life taking a very drastic shift home and are recording music in March along with everyone from home, which we probably else in the world because of never would have done were it COVID 19. All of my work not for COVID. I was asked by was cancelled in very quick James Conway (ETO general succession, and I was left Director) to prepare La Voix with the question, “What do Humaine (Poulenc), a piece that I do now?” I find fascinating and the music intoxicatingly good. I dove into I never imagined this would the Poulenc with a hunger for the happen and was not prepared study of it and joy of the focus for it, but I shifted my focus from that I could give to it. I became being a musician to having the a bit obsessed and have greatly luxury of spending time with enjoyed it. The first socially my children in a way I had not distanced rehearsal felt like I was been able to before. Of course coming out of a cave into the the stress of not knowing how light of my life as a musician. It to earn a living loomed over us, is incredibly difficult to know that and my husband and I started this artistic world is lacking the studying neuroscience remotely support that it needs and feeling for fun. It seemed bizarre, but the tragic sadness of so many what else could we do? We friend and colleagues, beautiful were both musicians and were artists, which are at the mercy now teaching our voice students of such uncertainty. My sincere online, but we felt as if we hope is that there is a way didn’t have a direction anymore forward for more companies to move towards….static…. to do what ETO are doing this and at the same time feeling the season with socially distanced ground shift beneath our feet. live performances. Paula Sides

14 ETO at Snape Maltings – In image: Paula Sides | La Voix Humaine (Poulenc) | Photo: Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) 15 La Voix Humaine is all about into the pit a recording of the lying, about not seeing the other slow movement of Poulenc’s flute Thoughts person and not knowing the sonata was played and we went reality of the situation. ‘Elle’ is straight into Poulenc’s operatic lying when she says she is well version. ( The director wisely said on Poulenc and happy, that she’s wearing that if they had an interval, all her pink dress, that she’s just Cecilia’s fans would go home…) back from shopping with Marthe It was a very beautiful production I’ve loved Poulenc’s music since phone and no-one to give you etc, and he is lying by saying and Almodovar came to see my student days, when Graham a cue- there have been stories he’s at home. She catches him it; we were invited to watch Johnson and I performed “La of singers having a prompter out, literally, but doesn’t say so; him filming in the middle of the courte paille” in a recital at on the other end of the phone she admits her lie and tells him night in a Madrid suburb. He the Royal Academy of Music. but I don’t know if that’s true! that she would understand if he was filming ‘Volver’ and we all We went to Paris to work with Each time the call is cut off and had told her he was at home had pizza at about 2am with Pierre Bernac on “Tel Jour, telle Elle answers the ring again, alone so as not to hurt her any Penelope Cruz in her winnebago. nuit” which was a wonderful ‘allo, allo’ is at a different pitch more. The accompaniment here is like a slowly turning screw, The other occasion was at the experience, almost as good as and leads off in a different Proms with Sir Andrew Davis studying the songs with Poulenc direction: if you go the wrong boring into her. She hopes that he will ‘own up’ so that this on the hottest August night ever himself. The recording they way you can cut pages of script! recorded ( at that time, anyway) made together tells you almost There are comparatively few relationship of 5 years doesn’t end in a lie, but he won’t do We had a small stage area all you need to know about how lyrical passages when you can in front of the orchestra and to perform the cycle; Bernac really sing and enjoy Poulenc’s it. And then he tells her that he and his new wife will be going very powerful lighting which finds such an array of colours beautiful writing for the voice, contributed to the overheating. in his voice and every word so when they come they are to Marseilles, where Elle had spent so many happy times with I was wearing a burgundy- is crystal clear. I think the last precious. As it’s a conversation, coloured silk dress which after song, “Nous avons fait la nuit” the work is broken by silences him. I think that finally breaks something inside her and she 45 minutes was rather damp. is one of the great songs in all while the lover speaks and the Andrew gave me a huge hug the repertoire, in its expression singer and accompanist, or begs him to hang up. It’s a devastating piece to perform and conducted the rest of his of love, wonder and quiet conductor, have to work out concert in a pink tuxedo. contentment: the piano postlude what is being said so that the because you just have to live always moved me to tears. pauses are the right duration: through it every time. My Poulenc credentials are too short and you don’t have good: Graham and I were I have written a few thoughts I have performed it a lot since the time to react and change, too Glyndebourne Tour, mainly semi- given permission by Poulenc’s on singing ‘La Voix Humaine’ long and you can’t sustain the heirs to record the version with in a book I wrote with Olivier staged as part of an orchestral emotion and the whole piece concert, but with chaise-longue, piano on DVD; before that they Bellamy ’Il nous faut de l’amour’- sags. The first conductor I had only allowed performances but it’s in French! So… table, rug, and telephone ( worked with on the piece said telephone supplied by myself!) with orchestra; we made a film I first sang “La Voix Humaine” he spent more time on it than Two performances stand out in at Poulenc’s house in Noizay- I with Glyndebourne Touring on preparing a Wagner opera. my memory: in Madrid it was slept in his room- and I am very Company in 1977 in a double- staged as a double-bill with the proud to be the President of bill with “The cunning little play, and ‘Elle’ was played by Les Amis de Francis Poulenc in vixen”! It was SO hard to one of Almodovar’s favourite France! I just wish that I had learn because it’s non-stop, actresses, Cecilia Roth. She known him… 45 minutes on the end of the performed the play in Spanish Felicity Lott and while the orchestra filed

16 17 La Voix humaine — a programme note by Lucy Walker

Online ‘Discovery Session’ The premise of Poulenc’s La in its appropriation of an utterly of ‘Je devenais folle!’ (‘I was later on in the work — a burst because the absolutely stylised (click here) on La Voix humaine Voix humaine (1958) belongs contemporary device within a going crazy’) launching up to of jazz down the line causes tones of the beautiful operatic with Lucy Walker: to both these conventions: the traditionally operatic scenario a high C, and accompanied by Elle to confront the fact that voice are employed down the curiosity of hearing just one — a jilted woman — and a similar motif as to her later her lover isn’t at home alone, telephone wires expressing the Originally a programme note half of a phone conversation, also modern in how the ‘Je t’aime’. although she pretends the jazz most banal, ‘mediocre’ phrases. for the 2017 Aldeburgh Festival, and the woman trapped in telephonic and the operatic comes from his noisy neighbours. by Lucy Walker her apartment, desperately intersect throughout. The telephonic or technological Increasingly, though, as her Coming hot on the heels of waiting for a man to ring qualities of the work are voice gains in ‘operatic’ style, the Poulenc’s second opera, the Its inception was fantastically embodied in Elle’s vocal style anguished, religious-themed In 1880, American satirist her — further amplied in this accompaniment becomes ever operatic as Poulenc recounted in at the start (her repeated Dialogues des Carmélites, La Mark Twain published a short case by an erratic network more present, bathing Elle’s voice a letter to a friend: ‘Allô’, usually on a questioning Voix humaine is sometimes story called ‘A Telephonic that keeps cutting her off. The in sound. This is particularly so in raised minor third), but mainly seen as its ‘secular appendix’, Conversation’, in which he scenario is, then, mundane. In I was at La Scala, with my a theme that often accompanies in the interjections of the a 45-minute shriek of pain, and remarked: ‘a conversation by Cocteau’s original drama on publisher Hervé Dugardin, Elle’s reminiscences, first heard accompaniment. At the start, perhaps yet another example telephone — when you are which La Voix is based, the and Madame Callas had been under her words ‘Souviens-toi du it is uneasy, jittery and highly- of a (male) composer using a simply sitting by and not taking heroine (simply known as ‘Elle’) singing. And Madame Callas dimanche de Versailles. . .’ (‘Do caffeinated — representing (female) operatic voice through part in that conversation — is one is described by the author as a was pushing aside tenors and you remember that Sunday at Elle’s anxiety as she paces her which to express his own of the solemnest curiosities of this ‘femme médiocre’, an ordinary baritones to take her bows Versailles. . .’), and later on when room. Its doubling and tripling personal hurt. The scenario modern life.’ It was written barely woman in an ordinary situation. before the deservedly wild she remembers a hotel they used of bars and insistent repetitions is certainly painful to witness two years after the invention of But Poulenc’s treatment of her applause. At that point Hervé to visit together. ‘break all the rules’ as Poulenc and highly challenging to the telephone and thus indicates and her situation is very far Dugardin turned to me and said: put it, yet the effect is deliberate. In the final section of the work, perform. However, it is worth how swiftly the phenomenon of from ‘mediocre’. ‘But what you ought to set for Furthermore, it is a heightened, despite its unconventional remembering Maria Callas ‘telephonic conversations’ had her is La Voix humaine, since it’s Purely on a practical level, technological version of Poulenc’s structure otherwise, there is a and her seizing of ‘all the become observable in everyday written for just one woman, and in his adaptation Elle’s world characteristically restless and series of perfect cadences onto A applause’, and the fact that life. His story in fact evolves as a then she could have all is a musical one: in the original eclectic style — here suggesting minor, the key of the conclusion. Poulenc eventually channels satirical observation on the flighty the applause.’ orchestral version, the phone’s not only a telephonic scenario, La Voix humaine moves, then, Elle’s disillusionment into nature of female conversations ring sounds like a xylophone. Maria Callas did not, in the but someone twiddling a radio from a position of fragmentary, sensuous, operatic forms. If in particular; and the cliché of a Elle’s utterances, while initially event, take part in any production dial, attempting to find a station technological isolation into the there is any consolation to be woman waiting by the telephone quasi-spoken and ‘realistic’ in of the work, chiefly because, to settle onto. world of harmonic regularity and taken it is that Elle’s voice is was so common as to form the their telephonic context, gain in as Poulenc continued, ‘it didn’t operatic tradition. It plays out a ultimately a triumph of mastery entire material of a Dorothy song-like momentum throughout interest her in the slightest.’ In the first third of the piece Elle connection between an operatic over telephonic isolation, and Parker’s short story written in the work, culminating in a However, Elle undoubtedly is often singing into silence, or diva and a solitary, isolated of increasing musical control 1924 (it begins ‘Please, God, glorious ‘Je t’aime’ at full channels Callas’s spirit in some of alternating with fragments of ‘woman on the telephone’ and over a situation which has, like let him telephone me now. Dear operatic throttle in the final her more passionate outpourings, sound and it is not clear whether in fact makes this figure a single the telephone in the final bars, God, let him call me now. . .If I bars. In common with many of most notably an ‘aria’, lasting the accompaniment represents entity. If the opera can seem slipped from her grasp. didn’t think about it, maybe the Poulenc’s works, it is ‘modern’ some five minutes, in which she her lover’s voice at the other occasionally ludicrous at the telephone might ring.’) yet not in terms of its harmonic recounts the previous night’s end of the line, or her troubled same time as it is pitiful, it is language. Rather, it is modern suicide attempt, and her outburst spirit. In one instance — slightly

18 19 A Distinctly Human Voice A note on La Voix Humaine by James Conway

I have been lucky enough to I don’t pretend to know much being at home (he is in a bar work on this opera three times about theatre and role models, or restaurant with a band), that now, and to see it many more though I expect I should brush he lies about being single (he times. It is a major feat for the up. I have a common and is with the next one, and plans solo performer, not least from garden acquaintance with to a weekend break with her the point of view of memory, abandonment, of caring ‘too to Marseilles, where they used because Poulenc’s repetitions- much’, of losing love. Some to go), and that she is already with-difference make it so very memories, like some of her alone, even as they speak. hard, but it is a real joy for a remarks, do make me cringe. director. All you really have to I reckon cringing can be Her response to this is what I do is care about this woman, instructive, and we should be would call noble. I will love her to work out exactly what the a bit generous in our response for it, forever. She tells him the unheard man is saying down to people who are in pain. truth, and she tries to enable him the phone, and to find what I sense, too, that Cocteau’s to tell her the truth. She is driven is beautiful and strong in her character — who seems to to end the deception; what she response to this appalling, me more like a man than a wants now is some assurance commonplace situation. woman — is less loved by her they really did love, that their creator than Poulenc’s heroine, five year relationship meant For a while I intended to just as Mozart’s women are something important to each, deny myself the privilege of all infinitely more loved than even if now it only means pain. working on this with Paula DaPonte’s originals. Paula Sides and I shared this Sides and Sergey Rybin, two love for her — which was very artists I esteem highly. I spoke Poulenc and Cocteau are both helpful, since I spent much of our to a number of other directors, clear that although she is having rehearsal supplying his voice! especially women. I just couldn’t a terrible day, she will live to find anyone skilled who liked fight another. She has attempted Finding the terrible and the the protagonist enough! There suicide and called a friend in beautiful in the apparently banal seemed to be an embarrassment plenty of time to save her; that seems to me an estimable, about her attachment to this friend left only at her insistence, humbling pursuit. I resisted man, to the fact that she still because she expected a final naturalism in the production, and loves him even though he has phone call from the man who hope that the poetic landscape ‘moved on’, to her desire to had already broken up with her, will ‘read’. I am living with prolong the conversation rather in a way that they pretended different pages of the score on than read him his rights, to was mutually agreed. Her initial a sort of loop in my head every her humility and her apologies objective seems to be to speak day — I can only imagine the in her last moments with his with him again, to have a chance great shapes that are spinning voice. I got an impression that to get him back. She learns in the for Sergey and for Paula. I hope she was not an appropriate course of the call that his objective that we can manage to get some role model for women, at least is to obtain from her all the letters of it spinning in your minds, too! as described by the men who they exchanged (remember, he created her. is a lawyer!), that he lies about

20 English Touring Opera at Snape Maltings - Soprano Paula Sides and Pianist Sergey Rybin perform Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine 21 (October 23, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) Julien Van Mellaerts Baritone

Ella O’Neill Pianist

John Savournin Director Songs and — POEMS

Background into Proverbs of Britten’s Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, op. 74

William Blake A reading of The Tyger by Britten | Blake Tom Shakespeare

A reading of Ah! Sun-flower by Jilly Cooper

A reading of A Poison Tree by Omar Shahryar

22 Performer in image: Jenny Stafford 23 Songs and Proverbs of William Blake

“Proverb 1” “Proverb 3” The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. “A Poison Tree” The nakedness of woman is the work of God. I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. “London” I was angry with my foe: I wander thro’ each charter’d street, I told it not, my wrath did grow. Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. And I waterd it in fears, And mark in every face I meet Night & morning with my tears: “Proverb 4” Marks of weakness, marks of woe. And I sunned it with smiles, Think in the morning. Act in the noon. In every cry of every Man, And with soft deceitful wiles. Eat in the evening. In every Infants cry of fear, Sleep in the night. In every voice: in every ban, And it grew both day and night. The mind-forg’d manacles I hear Till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine, “The Tyger” How the Chimney-sweepers cry And he knew that it was mine. Tyger Tyger, burning bright, Every blackning Church appalls, In the forests of the night; And the hapless Soldiers sigh And into my garden stole, What immortal hand or eye, Runs in blood down Palace walls When the night had veild the pole; Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In the morning glad I see; But most thro’ midnight streets I hear “Proverb 2” In what distant deeps or skies. My foe outstretched beneath the tree. How the youthful Harlots curse Prisons are built with stones of Law, Burnt the fire of thine eyes? Blasts the new-born Infants tear Brothels with bricks of Religion. On what wings dare he aspire? And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse What the hand, dare seize the fire? “The Chimney Sweeper” And what shoulder, & what art, A little black thing among the snow: Could twist the sinews of thy heart? Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe! And when thy heart began to beat, Where are thy father & mother? say? What dread hand? & what dread feet? They are both gone up to the church to pray. What the hammer? what the chain, Because I was happy upon the heath, In what furnace was thy brain? And smil’d among the winters snow: What the anvil? what dread grasp, They clothed me in the clothes of death, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! And taught me to sing the notes of woe. When the stars threw down their spears And because I am happy, & dance and sing, And water’d heaven with their tears: They think they have done me no injury: Did he smile his work to see? And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Who make up a heaven of our misery Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

24 25 “Proverb 5” “Proverb 6” The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock; If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. But of wisdom, no clock can measure. If others had not been foolish, we should be so. The busy bee has no time for sorrow. Eternity is in love with the productions of time. “The Fly” Little Fly “Ah! Sun-flower” Thy summers play, Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, My thoughtless hand Who countest the steps of the Sun: Has brush’d away. Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done. Am not I Where the Youth pined away with desire, A fly like thee? And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Or art not thou Arise from their graves and aspire, A man like me? Where my Sun-flower wishes to go. For I dance When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light. And drink & sing: Till some blind hand “Proverb 7” Shall brush my wing. To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, If thought is life Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And strength & breath: And Eternity in an hour. And the want Of thought is death; “Every Night and Every Morn” Every Night and every Morn Then am I Some to Misery are born. A happy fly, Every Morn and every Night If I live, Some are born to Sweet Delight, Or if I die. Some are born to Endless Night. We are led to Believe a Lie When we see not Thro’ the Eye Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night God appears and God is Light, To those poor Souls who dwell in Night; But does a Human Form Display To those who Dwell in Realms of day

26 27 Background into Britten’s Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, op. 74

Britten composed his only song And his setting of ‘A Poison cycle for baritone and piano in Tree’ was the second time he 1965. It was written specifically used this poem, having once for the German singer Dietrich before tackled it in 1935 at a Fischer-Dieskau, who had sung time when his musical language so memorably in the premiere was considerably different. This of War Requiem three years dramatic cycle, full of intense earlier, and sets the words of imagery and a strain of cruelty a poet Britten had long been in the words, was infused with attached to — the texts selected the vocal qualities of its first by Peter Pears. It is a lengthy performer. Fischer-Dieskau’s cycle, very dark in character for remarkable vocal quality, the most part, with the gravity lyrical yet profoundly serious, is of the baritone voice reinforced brought out perfectly in Britten’s by the piano part, which often writing which is markedly inhabits the lower register. different from the cycles he However, there are moments wrote for tenor voice. of extraordinary lyrical beauty, Further reading: such as “Ah! Sunflower!” which Paul Kildea gives a fascinating insight appears towards the end of the into this piece in his biography set. Throughout, ‘songs’ and of Britten, on pages 479–482 the much shorter ‘proverbs’ (hardback version, 2013). alternate — the latter containing Further resources: some similarities of musical Exhibition at Tate Britain material, such as a recurring (earlier in 2020) with some useful figure in the piano, rising up background information to the from the very bottom of the poet’s artistic works keyboard. One of Blake’s most famous poems, ‘The Tyger’, sits in the middle of the cycle and is a disconcerting, growly version in an off-beat time signature. Image: Courtesy of Britten Pears Arts

28 29 Edward Hawkins Bass

Sergey Rybin Pianist

James Conway Romances on Director —

British Poetry POEMS Shostakovich | Raleigh, Director’s Note: Shostakovich Burns, Shakespeare Romances on British Poetry

Edward Hawkins recites Sonnet 66 by William Shakespeare

30 Performer: Edward Hawkins 31 MacPherson before his Execution (Robert Burns) Romances on Sae rantingly, sae wantonly Sae dauntingly gaed he. He played a spring and danced it round British Poetry Below the gallows tree. Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong Jeannie coming through the Rye To a Son (Sir Water Raleigh) The wretched destinie! (Robert Burns) Three things there be that prosper all aspace, MacPherson’s time will not be long Comin thro’ the rye, poor body, And flourish, while they grow asunder far, On yonder gallows tree. Comin thro’ the rye, But on a day, they meet all in a place, She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie, And when they meet, they one another mar; Oh what is death but parting breath? Comin thro’ the rye! And they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag. On many a bloody plain, I’ve dared his face, and in this place Jenny’s a’ weet, poor body, The wood is that which makes the gallow tree; I scorn him yet again! Jenny’s seldom dry: The weed is that which strings the hangman’s bag; She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie, The wag, my pretty knave, betokeneth thee. Untie these bands from off my hands, Comin thro’ the rye! And bring to me my sword, Now mark, dear boy, whilst these assemble not, And there’s no a man in all Scotland Gin a body meet a body Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild, But I’ll brave him at a word. Comin thro’ the rye, But when they meet, it makes the timber rot, I’ve lived a life of sturt and strife; Gin a body kiss a body, It frets the halter, and it chokes the child. I die by treatcherie: Need a body cry? It burns my heart I must depart Gin a body meet a body Then bless thee, and beware, and let us pray And not avenged be. We part not with thee at this meeting day. Comin thro’ the glen, Now farewell light, the sunshine bright, Gin a body kiss a body, In the Fields (Robert Burns) And all beneath the sky! Need the warld ken? O wert thou in the cauld blast, May coward shame disdain his name, On yonder lea, on yonder lea, The wretch that dares not die. Sonnet 66 (Shakespeare) My plaidie to the angry airt, Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, Sae rantingly, sae wantonly I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee. As to behold desert a beggar born, Sae dauntingly gaed he. And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity, He played a spring and danced it round Or did Misfortune’s bitter storms And purest faith unhappily forsworn, Below the gallows tree. Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, Thy bield should be my bosom, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, To share it a’, to share it a’. And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, Or were I in the wildest waste, And strength by limping sway disabled Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, And art made tongue-tied by authority, The desert were a Paradise, And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, If thou wert there, if thou wert there. And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill: Or were I Monarch o’ the globe, Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Wi’ thee to reign, wi’ thee to reign, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. The brightest jewel in my Crown Wad be my Queen, wad be my Queen. 6 The King’s Procession (traditional) The King of France went up the hill with twenty thousand men, The King of France went down the hill and ne’er went up a- gain.

32 33 Director’s Note: Shostakovich Romances on British Poetry

Dmitri Shostakovich composed The first of the two poems of This setting, too, is connected to composed when the war was the Six Romances on British Poets Robert Burns (1759–1796) the “Babi Yar” symphony; it is turning, and therefore at its worst in 1942–3. It was, of course, a in the cycle is similarly rough quoted directly in the movement for civilians — a lilting, barely time on inconceivable suffering hewn. “O, wert thou in the could entitled “Humour”. concealed threat to totalitarians in and silence in Russia. Those who blast” is dedicated to his first the guise of a nursery rhyme. had survived the Great Terror and wife, Nina Varzar, pianist and Strange, erotic, and ambiguous, the Winter War in Finland then astrophysicist, and in it there “Jenny, coming through the rye” In preparing for this piece, we witnessed the German invasion are striking resemblances to the hides itself as all these romances considered the composer himself, of 1941: artists like Shostakovich “Anne Frank” movement of the do. Shostakovich made a lifelong disgraced and honoured in were on the anvil hammered by Thirteenth Symphony, “Babi Yar”, habit of hiding his meaning, bewildering sequence, terrorised brutal, totalitarian forces. setting poems of Yevtushenko. preserving his life and the lives by Stalin and his minions, waiting In the Anne Frank movement, as of his family, while shouting for the telephone call, preparing At the time, Shostakovich was here, the poet calls on the spirit loud and singing eloquently in his ‘elevator bag’ — the small studying English language and of the victim Anne to come out code of the suffering of those bag he would bring if he were literature. His choices of material of the ravine of death so that he around him, of the night terrors of taken by night for interrogation for this extraordinary, seething can protect her; in the austere, Stalin’s terrifying, unpredictable and imprisonment (for a good song cycle are surprising and haunting setting of the Burns telephone calls and messages, read, you might consider Julian careful. Sir Water Raleigh (1552– poem the speaker promises to and the guilt of the survivor. Barnes’ novel The Noise of Time, 1618) was not quite a silver or Elizabeth Wilson’s memorable abide and shelter the said in the Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 poet, but a man falsely accused, pitiless storm that is their life. biography, or Volkov’s memoir imprisoned for 13 years, released numbers the indignities and Testimony). We also spoke and then executed. He knew the “MacPherson’s Farewell” is futilities of that survival, with of Vasily Grossman, whose senseless vanities of favour and written by Burns in the voice refined bitterness — always magnificent Life and Fate charts reputation, the sliminess of loyalty of a musically gifted pirate “remembering that thoughts so eloquently the intellectual and and fortune, the irony of brief defiantly playing and singing at seal up the mouth”. Then, spiritual landscape of these years. reprieve. His poem takes the form the gallows a song of farewell unexpectedly, there is a small of a letter to his son — a message written in prison, beginning with light — the love that warrants James Conway to future generations, then — a daring dance and ending by survival, flickering and vital. Director, ETO unseasoned by sentiment. “The breaking his violin upon his knee. Shostakovich’s elegy is on a Wood, the Weed and the Wag” MacPherson’s life may have been grand scale, with simple means proposes that the tree’s wood, the rough and bad, but he dies “by — and is immediately chopped hemp’s fibre and a man’s youth treacherie”, taunting those who off at the knees by the final, are all fine things on their own, live on. How can those watching anonymous lyric, “The King but when they come together they Shostakovich failed to see the of France Went up the Hill”, are gallows, rope and hanged reckless courage of this setting? man. Be careful, keep elements apart, and keep silent… or die in misery.

34 35 Jenny Stafford Soprano

Sergey Rybin Pianist

James Conway Director The Poet’s Echo — POEMS AND Britten | Pushkin TRANSLATION Preparing to stage A Poet’s Echo (Britten/ Pushkin)

Background on Britten’s The Poet’s Echo, op 76 (1965)

36 Performer in image: Jenny Stafford 37 Соловей и роза В безмолвии садов, весной, во мгле ночей, Поёт над розою восточный соловей. Но роза милая не чувствует, не внемлет, The Poet’s Echo И под влюбленный гимн колеблется и дремлет. Не так ли ты поёшь для хладной красоты? Опомнись, о поэт, к чему стремишься ты? Эхо Она [не слушает, не чувствует]1 поэта; Ревёт ли зверь в лесу глухом, Глядишь, она цветет; взываешь -- нет ответа. Трубит ли рог, гремит ли гром, Поёт ли дева за холмом - На всякий звук Эпиграмма Свой отклик в воздухе пустом Echo Полу-милорд, полу-купец, Родишь ты вдруг. From leafy woods the savage howl, Полу-мудрец, полу-невежда, The Nightingale and the Rose Ты внемлешь грохоту громов, A distant horn, the thunder’s roll, Полу-подлец, но есть надежда, The garden’s dark and still; ‘tis spring; no night wind blows. И гласу бури и валов, A maiden singing up the hill, Что будет полным наконец. He sings! The nightingale, his love song to the rose. И крику сельских пастухов - To every sound She does not hearken, his rose beloved, disdainful, И шлешь ответ; Your answering cry the air doth fill Стихи, сочинённые ночью And to his amorous hymn, she dozes, nodding and swaying. Тебе ж нет отзыва... Таков In quick rebound. во время бессонницы With such words would you melt cold beauty into fire? И ты, поэт! You listen for the thunder’s voice, Мне не спится, нет огня; O poet, beware how far you would aspire! The ocean wave’s wild stormy noise, Всюду мрак и сон докучный. She is not listening, no poems can entrance her; Ход часов лишь однозвучный Я думал, сердце позабыло The distant mountain-shepherd’s cries You gaze; she only flowers; you call her; there’s no answer. Раздаётся близ меня. Я думал, сердце позабыло You answer free; Парки бабье лепетанье, Способность легкую страдать, To you comes no reply. Likewise, Epigram Спящей ночи трепетанье, Я говорил: тому, что было, O poet, to thee! Half a milord, half of a boss, Жизни мышья беготня... Уж не бывать! уж не бывать! Half of a sage, half of a baby, Что тревожишь ты меня? Прошли восторги, и печали, My heart… Half of a cheat; there’s hope that maybe Что ты значишь, скучный шопот? И легковерные мечты... My heart, I fancied it was over, He’ll be a whole one by and by. Укоризна, или ропот Но вот опять затрепетали That road of suffering and pain, Мной утраченного дня? Пред мощной властью красоты. And I resolved: Tis gone forever, Lines written during a sleepless night От меня чего ты хочешь? Never again! Never again! Sleep forsakes me with the light; Ты зовёшь или пророчишь? That ancient rapture and its yearning, Shadowy gloom and haunting darkness; Ангел Я понять тебя хочу, The dreams, the credulous desire… Time ticks on its way relentless В дверях Эдема ангел нежный Смысла я в тебе ищу.. Главой поникшею сиял, But now old wounds have started burning And its sound invades the night. А демон мрачный и мятежный Inflamed by beauty and her fire. Fateful crones are at their mumbling, Над адской бездною летал. Set the sleepy night a-trembling, Scurrying mouse-like, life slips by… Angel Дух отрицанья, дух сомненья Why do you disturb me, say? At Eden’s gate a gentle angel На духа чистого взирал What’s your purpose, tedious whispers? With lowered head stood shining bright, И жар невольный умиленья Do you breathe reproachful murmurs While Satan sullen and rebellious Впервые смутно познавал. At my lost and wasted day? O’grady Hell’s abysses took his flight. What is this you want to tell me? «Прости,» он рёк, «тебя я видел, Soul of negation, soul of envy, Do you prophesy or call me? И ты недаром мне сиял: He gazed at that angelic light, Answer me, I long to hear! Не всё я в [небе]1 ненавидел, And warm and tender glowed within him Voices, make your meaning clear… Не всё я в мире презирал.» A strange confusion at the sight. ‘Forgive’, he said, ‘now I have seen thee, Not vainly didst thou shine so bright: Not all in heaven have I hated, Not all things human can earn my spite.’

38 39 solitary vocation, like a lonely The wonderful fourth song As we rehearsed this piece Preparing to stage shepherd the poet or composer describes the power of the we thought over an over again answers nature, freely. But what nightingale’s song of love for the of the poet’s reflection, of the is the reply? Nothing. Thus the rose, depicted in the strange, poet’s lonely, vain anticipation artist examines, listens, creates dissonant chords punctuating of a response. We talked A Poet’s Echo — and the poem goes unread, the garden’s hushed stillness, about the silenced artists, the the song unheard, the truth of and then in the ecstatic outbursts coding that goes on in making that creation unrecognised. of the voice. The rose merely art, the good and the bad (Britten/ Pushkin) sways, unintelligent, beautiful, angels in each artist. For some This case, stated in the first heedless. The poet should reason it sent me back to read song, ‘Echo’, is refined in beware, sacrificing like a Akhmatova (celebrated in the the rapturous second song, Until a few years ago I knew the excellent holiday snapshots nightingale on a thorn for love last of Shostakovich’s Tsvetaeva depicting the heart awakened little of this song cycle. I guess of these two power couples. I of beauty — the rose flowers, songs), derided as nun and as to passion, unexpressed, and it was when I was preparing was interested to learn in the merely, and the poet’s call the whore by totalitarian toadies, then in the ironic depiction of to direct Tchaikovsky’s opera fine Red House film that the rose will never answer. steely biding in Leningrad, the gentle angel of creation Eugene Onegin that I set out 4th song features Armenian and then to recall the misery of and the subtle, envious angel Over and over again, the to read everything I could of harmonies, and that Britten dandy Pushkin, plaything of the of negation. In this case the poet complains that there is no Pushkin in translation, and I was influenced by Armenian Tsar (Alexander I, brother of the artist ponders, with prudent answer, no understanding. In came across theses poems, composers to whose work he “poet-murderer” Tsar Nicholas ambivalence, the nature of the ingenious setting of ‘Lines selected by cellist and conductor would have been introduced. I, nightmarishly decried in the artistic inspiration: is it the voice written during a sleepless night’ Msitislav Rostropovich and set fourth of those songs). of and angel that speaks, or the there are voices, but they have to music by Benjamin Britten. What is of more particular toad at the ear of Eve? Britten’s no meaning, and they merely James Conway I am ashamed to admit that interest to me is the selection serpentine piano figures contrast torture — scratching of mice, Director, ETO they made little impression on and setting of the poetry. with the luminous chords mumbling fates, whispers of me, musically, and that only in Apparently Britten set the associated with the warm light waste (suggesting possibly the preparing these programmes Russian pronunciation of of creation — and even Lucifer voices of critics!). “Answer me, over the last few months did Rostropovich, working from a acknowledges there must be I long to hear!” — but no sound I decide to listen to them with translation in a two language some beauty, after all, in human comes back but the meaningless more attention. Now I cannot edition; at the same time Pears kind. I certainly see method ticking, the chronicle of loss. imagine feeling cool toward prepared an estimable English language singing version, no in Rostropovich’s selection, them; I think they are my Rostropovich was daring in his mean task. We were lucky just a decade before his exile, favourite Britten songs! selection of the outrageous, short enough to work in the room with recalling that as a student fifth poem, the ‘Epigram’ relating They were written in 1965, Sergey Rybin, who pointed out Rostropovich had quit the to Pushkin’s chief in Odessa, the when Britten and his partner the precise and other meanings Leningrad Conservatory when corrupt Count Vorontsov. More Peter Pears holidayed in of the Russian. Shostakovich was dismissed, a howl than a song, it calls out Armenia, guests at the that in 1970 he sheltered the authority based on ignorance Composers’ Village in Dilijan, I have heard it said that the disgraced Solzhenitsyn. The and rank, utterly inadequate to in the company of their poems are not alike, and that ironic, narcissistic, withering responding to the work of an friends Rostropovich and his there is no unifying theme in the gaze on art and artists had artist — as Shostakovich set wife Galina Vishnevskaya. selection. I do not find this to be taken its toll, even though in the climax of his version of The anecdotes of the holiday true. Four of the six meditate on great artists were trained and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 (the are frequently re-told, and the poet’s craft and calling — the masterpieces were created, line that his students looked the photographs reproduced artist’s craft, more generally. The lights in darkness. forward to hearing) “…art made — the sort of Puskin’s clock poet it is obsessively explained, tongue tied by authority”. chiming in sympathy with the reflects the world back to the accompaniment during the last world, having found in it all that song, when Britten played it in is most beautiful and base; thus Leningrad on Pushkin’s piano, sacrificing him or herself to this

40 41 Background on Britten’s ‘The Poet’s Echo’, op 76 (1965)

This atmospheric song cycle The cycle is not as lengthy as was composed at a composer’s some, only around 15 minutes, retreat in Armenia, only a few and ‘Epigram’ barely lasting a months after The Songs and minute. The two longest songs Proverbs of William Blake, are perhaps the most haunting: and again for a performer ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, associated with the War with its echoes of birdsong, Requiem. It was written for and the insomniac ticking of the the Russian soprano Galina piano in ‘Lines Written During Vishnevskaya, and for her cellist a Sleepless Night’. But the cycle husband Mstislav Rostropovich as a whole is highly memorable, (showing his versatility on the getting under the skin long piano), and sets the poetry of after hearing. Pushkin. In this first cycle for the Further Resources: female voice since A Charm Work of the Week, with Ziazan of Lullabies nearly 20 years earlier, Britten exploits the From the Britten Opus Number project full drama of Vishnevskaya’s voice, composing dramatic leaps (even in the first two notes) and a fusion of power and tenderness throughout. The piano part is enigmatic and nuanced, beautifully written as ever, and sympathetic to the higher register of the voice. Image: Courtesy of Britten Pears Arts

42 43 Jenny Stafford Soprano

Julien Van Mellaerts Baritone

James Conway Director Tel jour, telle nuit — POEMS AND Poulenc | Éluard TRANSLATION An extract from Poulenc’s ‘Diary of My Songs’

Poulenc: Tel jour tell nuit Lucy Walker

44 Image: ETO at Snape Maltings - Jenny Stafford, Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Sergey Rybin perform Poulenc’s Tel Jour, Telle Nuit 45 (Oct 23, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts Le front comme un drapeau perdu Je te traîne quand je suis seul Tel Jour, Telle Nuit Dans des rues froides Des chambres noires The brow like a lost flag En criant misère I drag you when I am alone – Poulenc/Eluard Je ne veux pas les lâcher in cold streets, Tes mains claires et compliquées in dark rooms Bonne journée j’ai revu qui je n’oublie pas Nées dans le miroir clos des miennes crying misery Qui je n’oublierai jamais Tout le reste est parfait all the rest is perfect Et des femmes fugaces dont les yeux Tout le reste est encore plus inutile all the rest is even more useless Me faisaient une haie d’honneur A good day: I have seen again whom I do not forget Que la vie I do not want to let them go Elles s’enveloppèrent dans leurs sourires whom I shall never forget Creuse la terre sous ton ombre your clear and complicated hands Bonne journée j’ai vu mes amis sans soucis And fleeing women whose eyes Une nappe d’eau près des seins born in the enclosed mirror of my own Les hommes ne pesaient pas lourd formed for me a hedge of honour Où se noyer than life Un qui passait they wrapped themselves in their smiles Comme une pierre. Hollow the earth beneath your shadow Son ombre changée en souris A good day: I saw my friends carefree water lapping near the breasts Fuyait dans le ruisseau the men were light - Une roulotte couverte en tuiles in which to drown J’ai vu le ciel très grand the shadow of one who passed by Le cheval mort un enfant maître like a stone. Le beau regard des gens privés de tout turned into a mouse Pensant le front bleu de haine Plage distante où personne n’aborde fleeing in the gutter À deux seins s’abbattant sur lui A gypsy wagon roofed with tiles Bonne journée qui commença mélancolique I saw the great, wide sky Comme deux poings the horse dead…a child master Noire sous les arbres verts the beautiful gaze of those deprived of all Ce mélodrame nous arrache thinking his brow blue with hatred Mais qui soudain trempée d’aurore a distant beach on which nobody lands La raison du cœur. of two breasts beating upon him M’entra dans le cœur par surprise. A good day which began melancholy like two fists dark beneath the green trees À toutes brides toi dont le fantôme this melodrama tears from us Une ruine coquille vide but which suddenly dawn-drenched Piaffe la nuit sur un violon the reason of the heart. Pleure dans son tablier invaded my surprised heart. Viens régner dans les bois Les enfants qui jouent autour d’elle Les verges de l’ouragan At full tilt you whose phantom Font moins de bruit que des mouches A ruin an empty shell Cherchent leur chemin par chez toi paws nightly on a violin La ruine s’en va à tâtons weeps into its apron Tu n’es pas de celles comes to rule the woods Chercher ses vaches dans un pré children who play around it Dont on invente les désirs The hurricane yards J’ai vu le jour je vois cela quieter than flies Viens boire un baiser par ici search for their way through you Sans en avoir honte the ruin gropes Cède au feu qui te désespère. your desires are not Il est minuit comme une flèche after its cows in a meadow to be invented Dans un cœur à la portée I have seen the day Une herbe pauvre Come and drink a kiss here Des folâtres lueurs nocturnes I see this without shame Sauvage give in to the fire, which drives you to despair Qui contredisent le sommeil. It is midnight like an arrow Apparut dans la neige within a heart close by C’était la santé meagre the playful night-time gleaming Ma bouche fut émerveillée wild grass which prevents sleep. Du gout d’air pur qu’elle avait appeared in the snow Elle était fanée. it was health my mouth wondered at its taste of pure air it was withered.

46 47 Je n’ai envie que de t’aimer Un orage emplit la vallée Un poisson la rivière Je t’ai faite à la taille de ma solitude Le monde entier pour se cacher Des jours des nuits pour se comprendre Pour ne plus rien voir dans tes yeux Que ce que je pense de toi Nous avons fait la nuit je tiens ta main je veille Et d’un monde à ton image Je te soutiens de toutes mes forces Et des jours et des nuits réglés par tes paupières. Je grave sur un roc l’étoile de tes forces Sillons profonds où la bonté de ton corps germera Figure de force brûlante et farouche Je me répète ta voix cachée ta voix publique Cheveux noirs où l’or coule vers le sud Je ris encore de l’orgueilleuse Aux nuits corrompues Que tu traites comme une mendiante Or englouti étoile impure Des fous que tu respectes des simples où tu te baignes Dans un lit jamais partagé Et dans ma tête qui se met doucement d’accord avec Aux veines des temples la tienne avec la nuit Comme au bouts des seins Je m’émerveille de l’inconnue que tu deviens La vie se refuse Une inconnue semblable Les yeux nul ne peut les crever à toi semblable à tout ce que j’aime Boire leur éclat ni leurs larmes Qui est toujours nouveau. Le sang au-dessus d’eux triomphe pour lui seul Intraitable démesurée Inutile We have turned off the light I hold your hand Cette santé bâtit une prison. I keep watch, I sustain you with all my strength I want only to love you I carve the star of your strengths on a rock a storm fills the valley deep furrows in which the goodness of your body will seed a fish the river I repeat to myself, your secret voice your public voice I made you to fit my loneliness I laugh still at the haughty woman a whole world in which to hide whom you treat like a beggar days and nights in which of the fools you respect of the simple folk to know one another among whom you live and in my head which gently blends To see in your eyes in thought with yours with the night only what I think of you I marvel at the unknown woman you become and a world made in your likeness an unknown woman resembling you resembling all that I love Face of wild and burning strength who is always new. black hair in which gold flows south on corrupted nights Gold-swallowed impure star in a bed never shared At the veins of the temples as at the the breasts’ tips Life denies itself No one can crush the eyes nor drink their brilliance nor their tears alone above them the blood triumphs Intractable boundless useless this vitality builds a prison.

48 49 Poulenc discussing Tel jour, telle nuit Poulenc: People will never know how ‘A toutes brides’ has no other much I owe to Éluard, how much pretension than to heighten the I owe to Bernac. It is due to them effect of ‘Une Herbe pauvre’. Tel jour telle nuit that lyricism has entered my This poem of Éluard has for me vocal works. a divine savour. It recalls for me the invigorating bitterness Poulenc’s remarkable song As Sidney Buckland writes, When I remain for weeks of a flower I once plucked and cycle Tel jour telle nuit emerged ‘during his years with Nusch, working far away from Paris munched in the surroundings of triumphantly from the ashes Eluard’s concept of love defines it is indeed with a heart full of the Grande Chartreuse. of an abandoned work. In and redefines itself in poems love that I return to ‘’my town”. December 1936, Poulenc had of astonishing beauty. Love, One Sunday in November ‘Je n’ai envie que de t’aimer’. been working on some settings for Eluard, becomes not only 1936, I was feeling perfectly To be sung in one single curve, of Jean Cocteau’s collection a link between two beings but happy strolling towards the one single impulse. of poetry Plain-Chant, but was a unifying force, a principle of Bastille. I began to repeat the not happy with them; neither comprehension and of re-creation ‘Figure de force’ is equally a poem from ‘Les yeux fertiles: was Pierre Bernac, Poulenc’s of the world…through her, he song to make one hear the kind Bonne journée’. In the evening regular vocal collaborator, finds his unity with all things.’ of silence that is the opening of the music came itself. much impressed. Dramatically, Poulenc’s nuanced, sensitive, and ‘Nous avons fait la nuit’. Poulenc threw the songs into the thematically interlinked cycle is a In my estimation a song in a fire, writing afterwards: ‘I was beautiful musical counterpart to cycle must have a special colour I was deeply moved when I wrote happy, relieved, and confident these texts. and architecture. this song, and I hope that this will be apparent. The pianistic coda that I still had enough time to Eluard and Poulenc had known A number of various songs by is essential. Play it in strict time compose a new cycle for our each other for a number of Fauré (even of the same period) without hurrying (to make sure of February recital because for the years by the mid-1930s — will never habe the unity of La applause for the singer). past three weeks I had been a perhaps unlikely pairing. Bonne chanson; for example. possessed, working secretly — The last bars look back to ‘Bonee hiding them even from myself — Buckland, in a chapter on their This is why I have opened and journée’. It is very difficult to on a group of new poems relationship in Francis Poulenc: closed Tel jour telle nuit with two make interpreters understand that by Eluard.’ Music, Art and Literature songs in similar keys and tempi. calmness in a love poem can (1999), draws attention to their alone give intensity. The poems in this new cycle, differences in terms of outlook ‘Bonne journée’ should be sung premiered by Bernac and Poulenc and social personality. She with very peaceful joy. All the rest is nothing more that on 3 February 1937, came from shows a photograph of Poulenc a nurses kisses. ‘Und ruine’ must be sung with Paul Eluard’s collection Les Yeux in the summer of 1936, dressed a sense of complete unreality. fertiles, published in October the as was his custom in a formal, ‘Je mommerai ton front’, ‘Une An extract from Poulenc’s previous year. They emerged heavy suit, standing next to Roulette’ and ‘A toutes brides’ are ‘Diary of My Songs’ from a deeply romantic period Bernac, similarly formal and strictly songs from a cycle and, it of Eluard’s life, inspired by his in a self-consciously stiff pose. seems to me, could not possibly second wife Nusch whom he be sung seperately. I believe I married in 1934 (his first wife saw the child or the gypsy wagon had been Gala, who later somewhere late one afternoon in married the artist Salvador Dali). November at Ménilmontant.

50 51 The following summer, Eluard One of Poulenc’s own juxtaposing slower settings was captured at a picnic with remarks, sometimes quoted as with briskly rapid ones, there Nusch, along with Man Ray exemplifying his doubleness, is more structure at play here and his partner Adrienne and does in fact reinforce his than in other works. The first the English Surrealist Roland preference for inclusivity. In a two songs are melancholy (yet Penrose — lounging around a letter to Simone Girard, Poulenc also ravishing — especially low table, the women naked to writes ‘I have plunged into my ‘Une ruine coquille vide’, with the waist. The photos represent Carmelites, and I no longer its melting piano part), then the artists seemingly from sleep. Be so good as to send me follows the short, rapid ‘Le different worlds; yet not only did your recipe for courgette purée.’ front’, leading into the drama of they find much common ground, Here, then, is a melodramatic ‘Une roulotte’. There are other but both appreciated what the ‘plunge’ into artistic endeavour quick-fire settings, but even writer Jean Burgos has termed juxtaposed with homely within ‘Figure de force’ there is ‘the coherence of opposites’. domesticity, but Poulenc is a passage marked lento, and a nonetheless articulating two startlingly intense close. The final As a Surrealist, the jarring equally pressing concerns. In song is simply stunning, one of juxtaposition of seemingly his music, Poulenc’s ‘two sides’ Poulenc’s finest and setting some contradictory or absurd items express themselves in the same of Eluard’s most purely romantic was integral to Eluard’s way and often at the same time. words. It concludes with a aesthetic approach. Andre As Rorem points out, his secular piano postlude echoing the Breton, a key figure in the and sacred styles are more or cycle’s beginning. artistic movement, wrote less identical; Poulenc himself ‘Everything leads one to believe instructed an American choir Eluard was remarkably that there exists a certain point to sing his Gloria ‘like Maurice generous to Poulenc over of the mind in which life and Chevalier’; and thus Poulenc’s the years, quite comfortable death, real and imaginary, past idiom overall is a remarkably allowing for the fact that poetic and present, communicable elastic thing, capable of being titles do not always make sense and incommunicable, high and stretched over a wide number for musical movements, and in low, cease to be perceived of cultural spheres, articulating fact suggesting the title Tel jour contradictorily.’ The poems difference yet simultaneously telle nuit himself, rather than the used in Tel jour telle nuit are incorporating difference within original Les yeux fertiles. He full of apparent contradictions the same musical language. was also somewhat rare in the which, in the world of the poem, Surrealist world in appreciating combine to create a powerful As such, the dramatic music, which was generally and coherent whole, full of language, and embracing considered something of a energy (such as “Riding full tilt spirit of Eluard’s poetry held secondary art. Poulenc was, of you whose phantom/prances no challenge for him. He was course immeasurably grateful to at night on a violin/come and most comfortable setting the him, and also to his long-term reign in the woods”, from ‘A words of his contemporaries, ‘muse’ Pierre Bernac, as he toutes brides’). or near contemporaries (such wrote in his song diary: as Cocteau, or the slightly Poulenc’s own inner ‘duality’ earlier Apollinaire) and created People will never know how — he has famously been flowing, sensual musical forms much I owe to Éluard, how referred to as ‘half monk, from their extraordinary texts. much I owe to Bernac, It is due half guttersnipe’ — can be Tel jour telle nuit is perhaps to them that lyricism has entered interpreted not so much as a Poulenc’s most purely beautiful my vocal works’. division but as a demonstration cycle, and is musically very Lucy Walker of Guillaume Apollinaire’s much part of a whole. While dictum that paradoxes are employing his usual habit of not necessarily opposites.

52 Image: ETO at Snape Maltings - Jenny Stafford, Julien Van Mellaerts and pianist Sergey Rybin perform Poulenc’s Tel Jour, Telle Nuit 53 (Oct 23, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts Thomas Elwin Tenor

Ian Tindale Pianist

Paul Chantry Dancer

Rae Piper and Boyhood’s End Paul Chantry Choreography

Tippett | W.H. Hudson —

PROSE

Ideas on Atonal Music

John Shea recites Boyhood’s End

54 Image: ETO at Snape Maltings - Thomas Elwin, Ian Tindale and Paul Chantry perform Tippett’s Boyhood’s End 55 (October 24, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) Boyhood’s Ideas on End atonal music

What, then, did I want? What To lie on a grassy bank with The compositional world of other, with tiny inflections and did I ask to have? If the question the blue water between me and the twentieth century can be minuscule alterations in the had been put to me then, beds of tall bulrushes, listening defined as an exploration smallest details shifting our and if I had been capable of to the mysterious sounds of the of post-tonal techniques. The perception of home. Equally expressing what was in me, I wind and of hidden rails and assault on tonality (when music often as these gradual shifts, should have replied: I want only coots and Courlands conversing has a central, ‘home’ key) in Tippett will find places to colour to keep what I have; together in strange human-like Western classical music starts the texts with sudden, arresting tones; to let my sight dwell and with Wagner’s Tristan and finds changes of harmony built on To rise each morning and look feast on the camaloté flower different routes away from this scales of five or seven notes out on the sky and the grassy amid its floating masses of in Scriabin, Ives and Janácek, outside the normal pattern of dew-wet earth from day to day, moist vivid green leaves – the and the increasing demands Western classical music. At the from year to year. large almanda-like flower of of heightened chromaticism, opposite end of the spectrum, To watch each June and July a purest divine yellow that distant modulation and the sparsely textured world of for spring, to feel the same old when plucked, leaves you with prolonged dissonances had late Shostakovich is populated sweet surprise and delight at nothing but a green stem in reduced the feeling of a pull by something closer to dissonant the appearance of each familiar your hand. back to ‘home’. atonality. The composer finds order and structure in close flower, every new-born insect, To ride at noon on the hottest This programme shows three motivic imitation between voice every bird returned once more days, when the whole earth twentieth century composers and piano rather than tension from the north. is a-glitter with illusory water, exploring a post-tonal of tonality. The final bars of and see the cattle and horses To listen in a trance of delight language. Britten remains several songs in the cycle in thousands, covering the to the wild notes of the golden the closest to maintaining the seem to resolve, but often onto plain at their watering-places; plover coming once more to feeling of a ‘home’ key in each unexpected keys that could to visit some haunt of large the great plain, flying, flying song and the sequence of these hardly be classed as a tonal birds at that still, hot hour and south, flock succeeding flock tonal centres from song to song centre. Moments of intense see storks, ibises, grey herons, the whole day long. Oh, those is always highly considered: beauty come from chords egrets of a dazzling whiteness, wild beautiful cries of the for example, there is tonal built on sequences of unusual and rose-coloured spoonbills golden plover! I could exclaim symmetry in the movements of intervals such as fourths; and flamingos, standing in the with Hafiz, with but one word The Holy Sonnets of John Donne conversely the bitterness and shallow water in which their changed: “If after a thousand which begins and ends in B anger of song four is coloured motionless forms are reflected. years that sound should minor and major respectively, almost entirely with chords of To lie on my back on the rust- float o’er my tomb, my bone and in the centre we find the thirds — the bedrock of tonal brown grass in January and surprising in their gladness song furthest from a sense Western music now subverted gaze up at the wide hot whitey- would dance in the sepulchre!” of any tonality, ‘What if this and reclothed by a genius at the blue sky, peopled with millions present’. Tippett’s tonality often height of his power. To climb trees and put my hand and myriads of glistening balls results from his polyphonic down in the deep hot nest of of thistle-down, ever, ever textures, with vertical harmonies Ian Tindale the Bienteveo and feel the hot floating by; to gaze and gaze developing as a result of eggs - the five long pointed until they are to me living things interweaving but independent cream-coloured eggs with and I, in an ecstasy, am with horizontal lines; tonal or modal chocolate spots and splashes them, floating in that immense areas morph from one to the at the larger end. shining void!

56 57 Richard Dowling Tenor

Ian Tindale Pianist

Bernadette Iglich Holy Sonnets Choreography & Dancer —

of John Donne POEMS

Britten | Donne Making Material from a Sound World

Notes on ‘Holy Sonnets of John Donne’

58 Image: ETO at Snape Maltings - Richard Dowling, Ian Tindale and Bernadette Iglich perform Britten’s Holy Sonnets of John Donne 59 (October 24, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) 3 O might those sighs and teares return againe Holy Sonnets Oh might those sighes and teares return againe Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent, That I might in this holy discontent Mourne with some fruit, as I have mourn’d in vaine; of John Donne In mine Idolatry what show’rs of rain Mine eyes did waste? What griefs my heart did rent? 1 O my blacke soul That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent ‘Cause I did suffer, I must suffer paine. Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned Th’hydroptique drunkard, and night scouting thief, By sicknesse, death’s herald, and champion; The itchy lecher and self-tickling proud Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done Have the remembrance of past joyes, for relief Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled, Of coming ills. To poore me is allow’d Or like a thiefe, which till death’s doome be read, No ease; for long, yet vehement griefe hath been Wisheth himselfe deliver’d from prison; Th’effect and cause, the punishment and sinne. But dam’d and hal’d to execution, Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned. Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke; 4 Oh, to vex me But who shall give thee that grace to beginne? Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one: Oh make thyselfe with holy mourning blacke, In constancy unnaturally hath begott And red with blushing, as thou are with sinne; A constant habit; that when I would not Or wash thee in Christ’s blood, which hath this might I change in vowes, and in devotione. That being red, it dyes red soules to white. As humorous is my contritione As my profane Love and as soone forgott: 2 Batter my heart As ridlingly distemper’d, cold and hott, As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none. Batter my heart, three person’d God; for you I durst not view Heav’n yesterday; and today As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; In prayers, and flatt’ring speeches I court God: That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Tomorrow I quake with true feare of his rod. Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. So my devout fitts come and go away, I, like an usurpt towne, to another due, Like a fantastique Ague: save that here Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end, Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare. Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue. Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine, 5 What if this present were the world’s last night? But am betroth’d unto your enemie: What if this present were the world’s last night? Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe, Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell, Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I The picture of Christ crucified, and tell Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free, Whether that countenance can thee affright, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish mee. Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light, Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc’d head fell. And can that tongue adjudge thee into hell, Which pray’d forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight? No, no; but as in my Idolatrie I said to all my profane mistresses, Beauty, of pity, foulenesse onely is A sign of rigour: so I say to thee, To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign’d, This beauteous forme assures a piteous minde.

60 61 6 Since she whom I lov’d hath pay’d her last debt 8 Thou hast made me Since she whom I lov’d hath pay’d her last debt Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead, Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste, And her Soule early into Heaven ravished, I runne to death, and death meets me as fast, Wholly on heavenly things my mind is sett. And all my pleasures are like yesterday; Here the admyring her my mind did whett I dare not move my dim eyes anyway, To seeke thee God; so streams do shew their head; Despaire behind, and death before doth cast But though I have found thee and thou my thirst hast fed, Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste A holy thirsty dropsy melts mee yett, By sinne in it, which it t’wards Hell doth weigh; But why should I begg more love, when as thou Onely thou art above, and when t’wards thee Dost wooe my soul for hers: off’ring all thine: By thy leave I can looke, I rise againe; And dost not only feare lest I allow But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, My love to Saints and Angels, things divine, That not one houre myselfe can I sustaine; But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art, Lest the world, Fleshe, yea, Devill putt thee out. And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

7 At the round earth’s imagin’d corners 9 Death, be not proud At the round earth’s imagined corners, blew Death be not proud, though some have called thee Your trumpets, angels, and arise Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not soe, From death, you numberless infinities For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee. All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures be, All whom war, death, age, agues, tyrannies, Much pleasure; then from thee, much more must flow, Despair, law, chance hath slain; and you whose eyes And soonest our best men with thee do goe, Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe, Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie. But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space, Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings and desperate men, For, if above all these my sins abound, And dost with poyson, warre, and sickness dwell, ‘Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace, And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well When we are there. Here on this lowly ground, And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then? Teach me how to repent, for that’s as good One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, As if Thou hadst seal’d my pardon with Thy blood. And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

62 63 Making material Notes on from a sound world ‘The Holy Sonnets

Notes by Bernadette Iglich Dramatic representation of the of John Donne’ on her interpretation and song cycle intends to make performance based on The Holy visible the conflict embedded in Sonnets of John Donne, song the text and the language of the The Holy Sonnets of John Further Resources: Donne was composed in August Work of the Week, with Dr Nicholas cycle by Benjamin Britten. music, to create a third layer. Clark (Britten Pears Arts) With it comes a responsibility 1945 at a feverish pace — In writing the following I not to overload, through literally, in that Britten was ill From the Britten Opus Number project attempt to give an insight representation, the already at the time, and completed into my thought, actions and present inner workings of an in about a fortnight. He had process to create this dramatic individual’s turmoil and doubt in not long returned from a visit representation. Three facts were to Belsen with the violinist the nine of Donne’s Sonnets. The More than one body present the foundation. Yehudi Menuhin and was, responsibility becomes to express on stage will always create a understandably, shaken to his an essence of that conflict. Facts tension. They are always in 1: core by what he had seen. The 2 and 3 become a source in relationship to each other. A anger and anguish of this cycle November 1945 a song the process. Not to represent performing moving body being is his musical response. As cycle was created through the in any way, that being neither non-verbal gives the presence with the William Blake cycle, layering of the words of a 16th appropriate nor justified, but to in that relationship of a process however, there are moments of century priest poet with the give an insight into the possible of disappearing. It is the subject beauty and repose, particularly musical composition of a 20th why of this response by Benjamin of decay, it has the ability to be in ‘Since She Whom I Loved’. Century pacifist composer. Britten. A response that performs broken, lost. It is seen to move But more often to the fore is the questions of doubt in duty, belief, but in that seeing the movement hammering piano writing, and 2: ideology and knowledge. instantly disappears. The bodies forceful declamatory tenor line, performing that which can be That moment of entry to the notably in the first two songs On the 15th April 1945 the heard are an archive of the text Belsen Camp by the allied of the cycle. The final song, British army entered Bergen- and the music, that which can soldiers in April 1945, and ‘Death be not Proud’, builds Belsen concentration camp. be repeated. They perform a Britten in a later different over a repeated piano figure (a Reports give account of bodies, memorial, a permanent presence, context, brought them within favourite device of Britten’s) to dead, dying and those just a record not to be forgotten. about living. touching distance of the bodily a kind of resolution, but it is a archive of how duty, belief The duality of those acting hard-won triumph. The cycle is and ideology can make an 3: bodies forms the idea to embody in stark contrast to the beautiful unrecognisable world. What the essence of The Holy Sonnets Serenade, composed only two The summer of 1945 Benjamin does being human and a good of John Donne by Benjamin years earlier, and seems to bear Britten toured Germany with human signify if it includes Britten — as I see it of conflict of some of the tortured soul of the Yehudi Menuhin to give concert the ability to create, do and right and wrong and purpose, of recently-premiered Peter Grimes. performances. A concert was be such to others? What is permanence and impermanence. Lucy Walker given to those survivors at my part in it? Bergen-Belsen concentration Click here for: 75 years on Richard camp waiting to be given back Dimblebys BBC report on the liberation a country, a home, a place; of Belsen Concentration Camp the Displaced Persons as they were termed.

64 Image: Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum archive 65 Katie Stevenson Mezzo-soprano

Ian Tindale Pianist

Bernadette Iglich Dancer

Rahel Vonmoos Poems of Director —

Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva Marina Tsvetaeva

Shostakovich | Tsvetaeva Marina Tsvetaeva: A Note from James Conway

A Short Biography of Marina Tsvetaeva

A reading of My Poems by Holly Mathieson

66 Image: ETO at Snape Maltings - Katie Stevenson, Ian Tindale and Bernadette Iglich perform Shostakovich’s Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva 67 (October 24, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva

Мои стихи Диалог Гамлета с совестью Моим стихам, написанным так рано, -- На дне она, где ил Что и не знала я, что я -- поэт, И водоросли ... спать в них Сорвавшимся, как брызги из фонтана, My Poems Ушла, -- но сна и там нет! Dialogue of Hamlet with his conscience Как искры из ракет, For my poems, written so early -- Но я её любил, -She is at the bottom, where mud and weed... Ворвавшимся, как маленькие черти, That I didn’t even know yet, that I am - a poet, Как сорок тысяч братьев She went to sleep there, - В святилище, где сон и фимиам, Which erupted like splashes out of a fountain, Любит не могут! But even there she can’t find sleep! Моим стихам о юности и смерти, like sparks from a rocket, -- Гамлет! -But I loved her, like forty thousand brothers - Нечитанным стихам! -- Which burst in like little devils into to a На дне она, где ил: cannot love! Разбросанным в пыли по магазинам sanctuary, where slumber and incense, Ил! . . . И последний венчик -Hamlet! She is at the bottom, where mud: (Где их никто не брал и не берёт!) For my poems about youth and death, Всплыл на приречных бревнах . . . mud!., Моим стихам, как драгоценным винам, Never-before-read poems! - -- Но я её любил, And the last wreath has washed up upon the Настанет свой черёд! Scattered around in the dust in the shops, Как сорок тысяч ... riverside decking... (Where no-one is buying them still), -- Меньше -But I loved her, like forty thousand... Откуда такая нежность? For my poems, like for precious wines, Всё ж, чем один любовник. -Still less than one lover. She is at the bottom, Откуда такая нежность? Will come a high time! На дне она, где ил. where mud. Не первые -- эти кудри -- Но я её -- -But I loved her... Разглаживаю, и губы Why such tenderness? Лыубил? Знавала темней твоих. Why such tenderness? Поэт и Царь The Poet and the Tsar Not for the first time – such locks I stroke, Всходили и гасли звёзды Потусторонним I walked through a gallery And I knew lips – darker than yours. -- Откуда такая нежность? -- Залом цареи. of deceased Tsars. The stars have risen and burn out, Всходили и гасли очи -- [Кто]1 непреклонный Who is this unbending (why such tenderness?), У самых моих очей. Мраморный се proud statue? Ещё не такие песни The eyes have risen and burn out Я слушала ночью темной Close to my very eyes. Столь величавый So majestic in gold [Венчаемая — о нежность! —]1 Much better songs В золоте барм? of the regalia. - На самой груди певца. I have heard in the dark of night, -- Пушкинской славы A pitiful gendarme of Pushkin’s glory. Откуда такая нежность, (why such tenderness?), И что с нею делать, отрок Lying upon the very chest of the singer. Жалкий жандарм. He bad-mouthed the author Лукавый, певец захожий, Why such tenderness? Автора -- хаял, and chopped up his manuscripts, С ресницами -- нет длинней? And what do I do with it, Рукопись -- стриг. A savage butcher Wily lad, wandering singer, Польского края -- of the Polish land. With eye lashes – the longest I’ve ever seen? Зверский мясник. Look at him Зорче вглядися! with a watchful eye! Не забывай: Don’t forget – the Poet’s murderer is Певтсоубийтся Tsar Nicholas the First. Царь Николай Первый!

68 69 Нет, бил барабан перед смутным полком Анне Ахматовой Нет, бил барабан перед смутным полком, О Муза плача, прекраснейшая из муз! Когда мы вождя хоронили: О ты, шальное исчадие ночи белой! То зубы царёвы над мёртвым певцом Ты чёрную насылаешь метель на Русь, Почётную дробь выводили. И вопли твои вонзаются в нас, как стрелы. Такой уж почёт, что ближайшим друзьям — И мы шарахаемся, и глухое: ох! Нет места. В изглавьи, в изножьи, Стотысячное -- тебе присягает. Анна И справа, и слева — ручищи по швам — Ахматова! Это имя -- огромный вздох, Жандармские груди и рожи. И в глубь он падает, которая безымянна. Не диво ли — и на тишайшем из лож Мы коронованы тем, что одну с тобой Пребыть поднадзорным мальчишкой? Мы землю топчем, что небо над нами-то же! На что-то, на что-то, на что-то похож И тот, кто ранен смертельной твоей судьбой, Почёт сей, почётно — да слишком! No, the drum was drumming... Уже бессмертным на смертное сходит ложе. Гляди, мол, страна, как, молве вопреки, No, the drum was drumming В певучем граде моём купола горят, Монарх о поэте печётся! In front of a gloomy regiment и Спаса светлого славит слепец бродячий . . . Почётно — почётно — почётно — архи- When we were burying the leader. И я дарю свой колокольный град, почётно, — почётно — до чёрту! That sound was the teeth of the Tsar - Ахматова! - И сердце свое в придачу. Above the dead poet Кого ж это так — точно воры вора Sounding an honorary drum roll. Пристреленного — выносили? Such a huge honour, that even for closest friends Изменника? Нет. С проходного двора — There was no space to be found. To Anna Akhmatova Умнейшего мужа России. By the bedhead, at the feet, Oh muse of lamentation, the finest of all muses! To the right and left - Oh you, fierce fiend of the white night! Hands to the seams- only chests and mugs of gendarmes. You summon a black snowstorm upon Russia, What a wonder – even upon the quietest of beds And your cries thrust into us, like arrows. To remain under surveillance like a little boy? And we stumble aside, and a stifled; “oh!”- of a hundred thousand Something, something, something Sounds like a pledge of allegiance to you. this honour reminds me of, Anna Akhmatova! This name is a colossal sigh, Honourable – but a little too much! Which falls inside, into to the nameless depth. Look, subjects, how against all rumours, We are crowned by the fact that we trample the same earth as you, The Monarch is caring about the Poet! And that the sky above us is the same! Honourable, honourable, honourable, And he, who is wounded by your deadly misfortune Super honourable, honourable – cursedly so! As an Immortal descends upon his death bed. So whom – like thieves another thief, Shot with a gun – did they carry out? In my all-singing town the domes are shining bright, A traitor? No. Through the back door - And The Holy Redeemer is glorified by a vagrant holy fool. The cleverest man of all Russia. I gift to you my bell-ringing town, Anna Akhmatova, And my own heart in addition

70 71 Marina Tsvetaeva:

A Note from Tsvetaeva’s life coincided Critics and translators of with turbulent years in Russian Tsvetaeva’s work often comment history. She married Sergei on the passion in her poems, James Conway Efron in 1912; they had two their swift shifts and unusual daughters and later one son. syntax, and the influence of Efron joined the White Army, folk songs. She is also known Almost anything you say almost impenetrable — but in and Tsvetaeva was separated for her portrayal of a woman’s about Marina Tsvetaeva will time this very “in-dwelling” work from him during the Civil War. experiences during the “terrible be corrected by someone else came to mean as much to me She had a brief love affair years” (as the period in Russian pretty quickly. She contained a his deeply personal string with Osip Mandelstam, and a history was described by many contradictions, certainly. quartets, and it was clear to me longer relationship with Sofia Aleksandr Blok). As far as I know, she is unlike that he understood Tsvetaeva’s Parnok. During the Moscow any other poet, and I suspect poetry and life in ways he might famine, Tsvetaeva was forced Collections of Tsvetaeva’s poetry she is about as untranslatable scarcely admit. I hope that to place her daughters in a translated into English include as Emily Dickinson (Mary Jane many who hear these works state orphanage, where the Selected Poems of Marina White writes appealingly of no for the first time will return younger, Irina, died of hunger Tsvetaeva, translated by Elaine the challenges of translating to them, and live with them for in 1919. In 1922 she emigrated Feinstein (1971, 1994). She is Tsvetaeva’s verse). years to come. with her family to Berlin, then the subject of several biographies to Prague, settling in Paris in as well as the collected memoirs Nonetheless, I think everyone Here is the biography of the No Love Without Poetry (2009), should have a copy of her poet from the Poetry Foundation 1925. In Paris, the family lived in poverty. Sergei Efron worked by her daughter Ariadna Efron Selected Works in the translation (www.poetryfoundation.org): (1912–1975). of Elaine Feinstein. I know that for the Soviet secret police, I did for at least 20 years until Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and Tsvetaeva was shunned James Conway I loaned it to someone who did (also Marina Cvetaeva and by the Russian expatriate Director, ETO not return it — and I might put it Marina Tsvetayeva) was community of Paris. Through on record here that the offence born in Moscow. Her father the years of privation and is not forgiven! was a professor and founder exile, poetry and contact with of the Museum of Fine Arts, poets sustained Tsvetaeva. She Everything Tsvetaeva did made and her mother, who died of corresponded with Rainer Maria her unappealing to totalitarian tuberculosis when Marina was Rilke and Boris Pasternak, and authority. She was a very 14, was a concert pianist. she dedicated work to Anna dangerous friend or lover, and At the age of 18 Tsvetaeva Akhmatova. she could not be silenced. Her published her first collection of vocation as a poet, whatever poems, Evening Album. During In 1939 Tsvetaeva returned to misfortunes or insecurities her lifetime she wrote poems, the Soviet Union. Efron was ravaged her, was unquestioned verse plays, and prose pieces; executed, and her surviving — and the authenticity of her she is considered one of the daughter was sent to a labor voice is unquestionable. most renowned poets of 20th- camp. When the German army century Russia. invaded the USSR, Tsvetaeva Shostakovich’s late setting of was evacuated to Yelabuga with Tsvetaeva are challenging, her son. She hanged herself on certainly; when I first heard August 31, 1941. them in the orchestral version in mid 1970’s recording with Irina Bogacheva singing, I find the searching, elusive writing

72 73 A Short Biography of Marina Tsvetaeva

Born and raised in a condition Throughout this life framed by of material and cultural privilege the actions of ideologues who in a dilapidated former slave sought to reshape society for the state (the emancipation of the benefit of Mankind, regardless serfs took place only in 1861), of the cost to the individual Marina Tsvetaeva lived through lives being re-shaped, Marina world wars, the collapse of Tsvetaeva spoke of and for Tsarism, the Russian revolution the value of a human life. and a civil war in which she Her own. Mine. Yours. and her husband were on the losing side. Subsequently Richard Grace she lost one child to famine; her husband, having been a White officer, worked for the NKVD but was then, during the Nazi invasion, purged and shot; another child was sent to her death in the labour camps and a third, who survived Marina’s suicide in 1941, died in the defence of Stalingrad. Image Credit: Pyotr Ivanovich Shumov

74 75 Thomas Elwin Tenor

Ian Tindale Pianist

Richard Dowling The Heart’s Actor Bernadette Iglich Choreography

Assurance —

Tippett | Lewis & Keyes POEMS

Ideas on Atonal Music

Notes on ‘The Heart’s Assurance’

76 Image: ETO at Snape Maltings - Thomas Elwin, Ian Tindale and Richard Dowling perform Tippett’s The Heart’s Assurance 77 (October 24, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) The Heart’s 4 The Dancer (Lewis) Assurance ‘He’s in his grave and on his head I dance,’ the lovely dancer said, ‘My feet like fireflies illume 1 Song (Lewis) The choking blackness of his tomb.’ Oh journeyman, Oh journeyman ‘Had he not died we would have wed, before this endless belt began And still I’d dance,’ the dancer said, Its cruel revolutions, you and thee ‘To keep the creeping sterile doom Naked in Eden, shook the apple tree. Out of the darkness of my womb.’ Oh soldier lad, oh soldier lad, 2 The Heart’s Assurance (Keyes) ‘Our love was always ringed with dread Before the soul of things turned bad O never trust the heart’s assurance Of death,’ the lovely dancer said’ She offered you so modestly Trust only the heart’s fear, ‘And so I danced for his delight A shining apple from the tree. And what I’m saying is, Go back, my lovely And scorched the blackened core of night Oh lonely wife, oh lonely wife, Though you will never hear. With passion bright,’ the dancer said – Before your lover left this life ‘And now I dance to earn my bread.’ O never trust your pride of = He took you in his gentle arms. Trust only pride’s distress. How trivial then were life’s alarms. The only holy limbs are the broken fingers 5 Remember Your Lovers (Keyes) And though death taps down every street Still raised to praise and bless. Familiar as the postman on his beat For the careless heart is bound in chains Young men walking the open streets Remember this, remember this, And terribly cast down: Of death’s republic, remember your lovers That life has trembled in a kiss The beast of pride is hunted our When you foresaw with vision prescient From genesis to genesis And baited throughout the town. The planet pain rising across your sky And what’s transfigured will live on We fused your sight in our soft burning beauty: Long after death has come and gone. We laid you down in meadows drunk with cowslips And led you in the ways of our bright city. 3 Compassion (Lewis) Young men who wander death’s vague meadows, She in the hurling night Remember your lovers who gave you more than flowers. With lucid simple hands, Stoked away his fright When you woke grave-chilled at midnight Loosed his blood-soaked bands. To pace the pavement of your bitter dream We brought you back to bed and brought you home. And seriously aware From the dark antechamber of desire Of the terror she caressed Into our lust as bright as candle-flame. Drew his matted hair Gladly to her breast. Young men who lie in the carven beds of death, Remember your lovers who gave you more than And he who babbled Death dreams. Shivered and drew still In the meadows of her breath, From the sun shelt’ring your careless head Restoring his dark will. Or from the painted devil your quick eye. We led you out of terror tenderly Nor did she ever stir And fooled you into peace with our soft words In the storm’s calm centre And gave you all we had and let you die. To feel the tail, hooves, fur Of the god-faced centaur. Young men drunk with death’s unquenchable wisdom, Remember your lovers who gave you more than love.

78 79 A note on ‘The Heart’s Assurance’

The Heart’s Assurance, a Song Cycle on Poems by Sidney Keyes and Alun Lewis. By Michael Tippet Sidney Keyes and Alun Lewis, both young poets served as soldiers in the British army during WWII. Both died on active duty. Both were established poets before being soldiers. A dedication on the first page of the score reads “To the memory of Francesca Allinson (1902–1945)”. Alun Lewis Thread through this song cycle, in its creation and composition, is the conjunction of love and war. Both bearing elements of excitement, danger, fear, stimulation: The beauty of life made more enticing by the permanent shadow of loss. Beginning with the first poem, Song, and its declaration ‘from genesis to genesis’ through to the final poem pleading to Remember your Lovers, the sequence of the song cycle creates a personal narrative. One mans journey through remembered lovers. Lovers who never stayed or were lost. A song cycle of a remembered past. Bernadette Iglich

Sidney Keyes

80 81 Katie Stevenson Mezzo-soprano

Ian Tindale Pianist

James Conway Director

Charm Of Lullabies — Music and Text | Dominick Argento POEMS Notes on A Charm of Lullabies

Britten’s cycle of ‘A Charm of Lullabies’

82 Image: ETO at Snape Maltings - Katie Stevenson and Ian Tindale perform Britten’s Charm of Lullabies 83 (October 24, 2020 - Beki Smith, Britten Pears Arts) 4 A Charm A Charm (Thomas Randolph 1605-35) Quiet! Sleep! or I will make of Lullabies Erinnys whip thee with a snake, And cruel Rhadamanthus take 1 A Cradle Song Thy body to the boiling lake, (William Blake 1757-1827) Where fire and brimstones never slake; Thy heart shall burn, thy head shall ache, Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, And ev’ry joint about thee quake; Dreaming o’er the joys of night; And therefor dare not yet to wake! Sleep, sleep, in thy sleep Quiet, sleep! Little sorrows sit and weep. Quiet, sleep! Sweet babe, in thy face Quiet! Soft desires I can trace, Quiet! Secret joys and secret smiles, Sleep! or thou shalt see Little pretty infant wiles. The horrid hags of Tartary, O! the cunning wiles that creep Whose tresses ugly serpants be, In thy little heart asleep. And Cerberus shall bark at thee, When thy little heart does wake And all the Furies that are three Then the dreadful lightnings break, 3 Sephestia’s Lullaby The worst is called Tisiphone, From thy cheek and from thy eye, (Robert Green 1558-92) Shall lash thee to eternity; O’er the youthful harvests nigh. And therefor sleep thou peacefully Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; Infant wiles and infant smiles Quiet, sleep! 5 The Nurse’s Song When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee. Heaven and Earth of peace beguiles. Quiet, sleep! (John Philip flourished 1561) Mother’s wag, pretty boy, Quiet! Father’s sorrow, father’s joy; Lullaby baby, 2 A Highland Balou When thy father first did see Lullaby baby, (Robert Burns 1759-96) Such a boy by [him] and me, Thy nurse will tend thee as duly as may be. Hee Balou, my sweet wee Donald, He was glad, I was woe; Lullaby baby! Picture o’ the great Clanronald! Fortune changèd made him so, Be still, my sweett sweeting, no longer do cry; Brawlie kens our wanton Chief When he left his pretty boy, Sing lullaby baby, lullaby baby. What gat my young Highland thief. Last his sorrow, first his joy. Let dolours be fleeting, I fancy thee, I ... Leeze me on thy bonnie craigie! Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee; To rock and to lull thee I will not delay me. And thou live, thou’ll steal a naigie, When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee. Lullaby baby, Travel the country thro’ and thro’ , The wanton smiled, father wept, Lullabylabylaby baby, and bring hame a Carlisle cow! Mother cried, baby leapt; Thy nurse will tend thee as duly as may be Thro’ the Lawlands, o’er the Border, More he crow’d, more we cried, Lullabylabylaby baby Weel, my babie, may thou furder! Nature could not sorrow hide: The gods be thy shield and comfort in need! Herry the louns o’ the laigh Countrie, He must go, he must kiss The gods be thy shield and comfort in need! Syne to the Highlands hame to me! Child and mother, baby bliss, Sing Lullaby baby, For he left his pretty boy, Lullabylaby baby Father’s sorrow, father’s joy. They give thee good fortune and well for to speed, Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, And this to desire ... I will not delay me. When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee. This to desire ... I will not delay me. Lullaby lullaby Lullaby baby, Thy nurse will tend thee as duly as may be. Lullabylabylabylaby baby.

84 85 This lullaby is the most complex The haunting Nurse’s Song, of the five, and the only one setting a poem taken from Notes on A Charm with a narrative; the singer of Elizabethan dramatist John the lullaby tries to quiet a child Philip’s The Play of Patient she did not want, though the Grisell, is much treasured by of Lullabies father did, at least at first. Then British mezzo sopranos. It is the father left, and she was left hard to imagine anything more with the “wanton”, who she lonely, or more poignant (except Britten’s 1947 song cycle written Although Blake had no children warns “When thou art old, perhaps the final setting of for contralto Nancy Evans, A of his own, he was the third there’s grief enough for thee”. Pushkin in the same composer’s Charm of Lullabies, has long of seven children of a hosier, It reminded me of a highly A Poet’s Echo!). It calls to been a recital hall favourite. I largely home-schooled by his effective childhood warning mind the exhaustion of those expect that is because, in the mother, so he had an intense from my own kind mother, who attending infants in the middle context of his other song cycles, experience of family life. had five children before me: of the night, the insecurities and it is relatively easy on the ear. “Stop crying or I’ll give you premonitions of early morning The Highland Balou of Robert The title, too, suggests something something to cry for”. hours, the costs that accompany Burns (1759–1796) is an pleasant, soothing, and, the pleasures of care. frankly, sentimental. It conjures altogether heartier affair, and A Charm, by Thomas up nurseries in the days of scarcely conducive to sleep. Randolph (1605–1639) is an I confess that my idea for dedicated servants, whose own It seems more like a villain’s extended and elaborate threat, staging this song cycle domestic lives were irrelevant. blessing, wishing on the baby extended in this song from came from a dream that a successful career as a horse the hypothetical child to the was succeeded by sleepless Characteristically, Britten up- thief, profiting highland rogues audience. “Quiet, sleep!” we imaginings. I thought about a ends such expectation. He chose by harrying the lowland fools. It are warned, or all the hounds person who wanted, very much seven poems from an anthology is well matched in energy by the and furies of hell will be set — wanted silence, wanted of lullabies that is now held in central piece, called Sephestia’s loose on us, and every sort attention, wanted rest — and the archives at Snape, and later Lullaby, taken from the prose of malady afflict us. We are sang to exact it, but found that trimmed that to five. A number poem Menaphon by Robert far from the repetitive, tuneful solitary dominion not quite what of the texts are on the scary Greene (1558–1592). Greene softness of what we normally she anticipated. side, and not one is what you’d was a popular pamphleteer, think of as lullabies, and in the call sentimental. novelist and playwright, a world of the charm, or spell! It To charm is to chant a verse graduate of Cambridge and is a particular thing, isn’t it — a with magic powers. From the The Cradle Song of poet, painter a celebrated scapegrace; by song that is sung in order to time of the first Queen Elizabeth, and prophet William Blake his own account he married achieve (or enforce) silence? a charm is “a blended noise, as (1757–1827) testifies not only to a well-heeled woman, spent Perhaps with his ten siblings of birds, school-children, etc”; the smiles, joys and beauties on her dowry, and abandoned and half siblings knew about in Paradise Lost, Milton refers to infancy, but more insistently to her when she gave birth to his noisy houses; he seems to have the morning “rising sweet with “soft desires”, “cunning wiles”, child; by the accounts of others avoided having children of charm of earliest birds”. “little sorrows” and “dreadful he kept a mistress who was the his own. lightnings”. This lullaby singer James Conway sister of a notorious gangster at Director, ETO knows innocence and experience Shoreditch, and abandoned her are one life, viewed from two and their child, called Fortunatus perspectives — and there is a (or Happy). It seems at least strong sense that the singer longs likely he had little softness for rest herself, which the infant’s toward infants. liveliness prevents.

86 87 Britten’s cycle of ‘A Charm of Lullabies’

Britten’s song cycles can ‘Weep not, my wanton’, she rarely be described as simple, sings to a sighing suspension, particularly in terms of the and a downward swoop on psychological complexity and ‘there’s grief enough for thee’. ambiguity of his many song It resembles a Purcellian scena cycles, of which Charm of in its declamatory style and Lullabies (1947) is the seventh. changing moods. ‘A Charm’ The texts are all taken from A is a terrifying ‘lullaby’ which Book of Lullabies 1300–1900 would barely encourage (edited by F E Budd, 1930) and ‘Quiet! Sleep!’, as sung by in their various ways suggest the frustrated mother or nanny to the listener that you’re never threatening her charge with all too young to be told of life’s manner of horrors if it won’t dangers. Even after the first few pipe down. The cycle ends lilting bars of ‘Sleep, beauty on a more soothing tone. bright’, which at first seems to ‘The Nurse’s Song’ opens be a straightforward lullaby, the and (unusually) closes with piano lets us know we are in unaccompanied singing, and uneasy and dreamlike territory. when the piano joins in it Britten is perhaps drawn to the represents a lilting, reassuring poignancy of William Blake’s togetherness as the mezzo voice implication that sorrow is to sinks to the velvety depths of await the child in adulthood; its range. Some disconcerting and the lyrical and singable flurries in the piano unsettle vocal line is accordingly the calm flow towards the end, undercut by the unsettling as do the insistently repeated accompaniment. Even the phrases in the higher reaches cadence is irresolute, hanging of the voice, perhaps indicating questioningly at the top of a that even in peaceful times run of notes. ‘Highland Balou’ disturbing visions are not far (‘balou’ is Scots for lullaby) has from the surface. great charm, but while the child is being pacified his mother From a programme note by cherishes the rather forlorn hope Lucy Walker, originally for the that he may one day rise from Aldeburgh Festival, June 2015 poverty by stealing cattle. The narrator of ‘Sephestia’s lullaby’ Further Resources: Work of the Week, with Sarah Connolly is no less aware of hardship. From the Britten Opus Number project

88 Performer in image: Katie Stevenson 89 Biographies

Susan Bickley Director, A Waterbird Talk Edward Hawkins Bass, Romances on British Poetry Susan Bickley is regarded as one of the most accomplished mezzo-sopranos of her generation, Edward read music at King’s College, London, studying trumpet at the Royal Academy of Music. with a wide repertory encompassing the Baroque, the great 19th and 20th century dramatic roles, Having begun singing in his late twenties, Edward quickly began to develop a professional career, as well as contemporary repertoire. In May 2011 she received the prestigious Singer Award at studying privately with Russell Smythe and Gary Coward.From 2015 to 2018, Edward sang in the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, the highest recognition for live classical music in the UK. the Glyndebourne Chorus in various productions, including performances at the BBC Proms and Highlights of the 20/21 season include Mother in Hansel and Gretel at ROH, Fricka in Die Walkure worldwide cinema broadcasts.In 2019 Edward covered and performed the role of Banquo in at ENO and Kabanicha in Katya Kabanova at Rome Opera. She recently sang Marcellina in The Verdi’s Macbeth, and performed the role of the doctor, for ETO. He subsequently appeared as Marriage of Figaro at ENO and recorded the role of Auntie in Peter Grimes with Ed Gardner and Banquo at the Minack Theatre,before covering Sparafucile in Rigolettofor Glyndebourne. the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.

Rae Piper & Paul Chantry Choreography, Boyhood’s End (dance: Paul Chantry) Bernadette Iglich Choreography & Dancer,Holy Sonnets of John Donne; Rae Piper and Paul Chantry are a choreographic duo with extensive performance careers, including The Heart’s Assurance; Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Dancer) at The Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells, and London’s West End. They’ve choreographed Opera As a dance artist and performer Bernadette has workedwith various international and UK based and Operetta work for The Royal Opera House, Teatro Dell’Opera Di Roma, and the Royal Festival choreographers, directors and dance companies. Her performances included devised, improvised Hall. Other shows include Anyone For Tea (Les Enfants Terribles), Shadowbox (BESIX and the Prince and site specific theatre. She has choreographed and created commissioned works for students within of Belgium), and Birmingham Stage Company’s Horrible Histories, and David Walliams’ award- vocational colleges and universities, as well as choreographing and facilitating movement and physical winning, Olivier-nominated Gangsta Granny and Billionaire Boy. Paul and Rae are Co-Artistic embodiment for opera and theatre with various productions and companies. From 2001 to 2016 Directors of Chantry Dance, whose creations include Chinese Calligraphy Concert (Sadler’s Wells), Bernadette was a Lecturer on BA (hons) Contemporary Dance courses in the UK. With ETO, Bernadette and multiple UK tours. has been director, assistant director and movement co-coordinator on a number of productions since 2002.

James Conway Director,La voix humaine; Tel jour, telle nuit; Charm of Lullabies; Ella O’Neill Pianist, A Waterbird Talk; Songs and Proverbs of William Blake Romances on British Poetry; The Poet’s Echo Ella O’Neill graduated from the Royal College of Music last year, where she studied with Simon As Director of ETO for 17 years, James Conway has directed productions of operas by Lepper. During her final year there she won the Accompanist Prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Awards Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, Donizetti, Janácek, Puccini, Debussy, Ullmann, Britten and Tippett, at Wigmore Hall, as well as multiple college competitions. Recent recital venues include the Royal as well as a world premiere by Alexander Goehr. Before coming to ETO he was General Director Opera House Crush Room, Cadogan Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Sage Gateshead and Buxton of Opera Theatre Company in Dublin; his productions for that company travelled to New York Festival. Ella is a Samling Artist. Away from the concert platform, she has worked as a répétiteur (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and to festivals in Melbourne, London, Buxton, Paris, Dusseldorf, for Grange Park Opera, Tête à Tête Festival, Mid Wales Opera and will next year join Waterperry Prague, Brno, Lisbon and Porto. Notable among his freelance directing is the long-running Festival for their postponed 2020 season. production of The Cunning Little Vixen at the Janácek Theatre, Brno.

Richard Dowling Tenor, Holy Sonnets of John Donne; The Heart’s Assurance (Actor) Sergey Rybin Pianist, La voix humaine; Romances on British Poetry; Richard is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music’s Opera Courseand is now generously The Poet’s Echo; Tel Jour, telle nuit supported by Opera Prelude.Richard returns here for his second season, having played an Since completing his studies the Royal Academy of Music in London under tutelage of Malcolm Evangelist in their productions of Bach’s St Matthew Passion and roles in their triple Bill of Purcell, Martineau, Sergey has worked extensively for City of Birmingham Opera, English Touring Opera, Carissimi and Gesualdo. More recently he travelled to Tokyo with ‘Diva Opera’ to perform as Garsington Opera, Opera Holland Park and Grange Park Opera. Sergey has been elected an ‘Pedrillo’ in their production of Mozart’s ‘Entführung aus dem Serail’.Richard originally studied Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London and joined the coaching staff at Jette Parker Chemical Engineering at The University of Manchester, where he completed a PhD in the field Young Artists Programme at ROH, Covent Garden. After working as a chef repetiteur on the Royal of crystallisation. Opera House’s production of Eugene Onegin he joined the music staff team for the productions of Lucia di Lammermoor, Nabucco, The Nose, Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Der Rosenkavalier. Maintaining various coaching commitments throughout the year, Sergey has traveled to La Monnaie Thomas Elwin Tenor,Boyhood’s End; The Heart’s Assurance in Brussels for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tale of Tsar Saltan and will return and to Glyndebourne in 2021. Thomas Elwin returns following his company debut at this years spring tour, in which he performed the roles of Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte (“the outstanding voice” – Rupert Christiansen, Telegraph) and Tenor soloist in Bach’s John Passion. A former young artist at Oper Stuttgart, Thomas has sung lead roles across Europe including Belmonte/Die Entfuhrung in Bregenz, Ferrando/Cosi Fan Tutte in Stuttgart, Sam Kaplan/Street Scene in Cologne, and Don Ottavio/Don Giovanni at English National Opera. Thomas was recently appointed an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, and lives in Herefordshire with his wife, Amy, and 2 year old Labrador, Lyra.

90 91 Biographies

John Savournin Director, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake Julien Van Mallaerts Baritone,A Waterbird Talk;Tel jour, telle nuit; John enjoys a varied career as a director and singer. As a director, he has created productions Songs and Proverbs of William Blake for companies including Opera North, Opera Holland Park, Iford Arts, the National G&S Opera Winner of the 2017 Wigmore Hall / Kohn Foundation International Song Competition, the 2017 Kathleen Company and Charles Court Opera, of which he is the Artistic Director. He has devised and Ferrier Awards and the Maureen Forrester Prize at the 2018 Concours musical international de Montréal, delivered a broad range of Education/Outreach projects for the Royal Opera, Opera North and Julien Van Mellaerts represented New Zealand at Cardiff Singer of the World 2019. Career highlights Opera Holland Park, CBBC and for BBC’s Opera Passion. As a performer, he has sung roles for include Figaro Le nozze di Figaro (Salzburg MozartWoche), Papageno Die Zauberflöte (Verbier Festival), companies including English National Opera, Opera North, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Schaunard La bohème (New Zealand Opera) and Elizabeth (Royal Ballet). Recital engagements include Opera and Opera Holland Park. touring for Chamber Music New Zealand; London’s Wigmore Hall; Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal; the Juan March Foundation, Madrid; LIFE Victoria, Barcelona; and NI Opera’s Glenarm Festival of Voice.

Paula Sides Soprano, La voix humaine Rachel Vonmoos Director, Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva Paula Sides was awarded the Tagor Gold Medal from the Royal College of Music and was the winner Swiss-British independent dance, performance and film maker Rahel Vonmoos has created of the Karavoitis Prize in the Les AzurealInternational Competition. Recent highlights include Donna a substantial body of work for theatres, galleries, festivals and site-specific venues nationally Anna (Longborough Festival Opera) and a recital for the Royal Opera House, broadcast by Classic FM. and internationally, including the Hayward Gallery and Dance Umbrella. She has worked Other roles include Thais (Chelsea Opera Group), Tosca and many other lead roles for English Touring collaboratively with dancer/choreographer Wally Cardona and filmmaker Ruth Schlaepfer Opera, Cunegonde (Iford Opera). and Sombra, The Arcadians (Opera Della Luna).Concert work amongst others, and has worked with Rosemary Butcher, Iztok Kovac (for film), Philippe includes Mahler 8, Britten’s War Requiem, Rutter’s Requiem, Dona Nobis Pacem, Vaughan Williams, Gehmacher, Charles Linehan, and Philippe Saire. Rahel has been commissioned by Tanzhaus Beethoven 9, Dvorak’s 9th Symphony. Upcoming engagement: Eurydice from Orphée et Eurydice by Zurich, CH and Joyce SoHo, US and was a Compass Commission recipient in 2015 for to find Gluck, a feature film to be streamed online by the Washington DC based opera company IN Series. a place which was performed in UK and abroad.

Jenny Stafford Soprano, Tel jour, telle nuit; The Poet’s Echo Louie Whitemore Design Consultant Jenny Stafford was born in Yorkshire and trained at the Royal Academy of Music (where she won Offie Nominated for Best Costume Designer for The Daughter-in-Law at the Arcola Theatre and the Isabel Jay Operatic Prize and Dame Eva Turner Operatic Award), at ENOOpera Works and Best Set Designer for Tonight at 8.30 at Jermyn Street. Associate Designer to Jermyn Street Theatre. at the Georg Solti Accademia di Bel Canto.Opera highlights include: Sarah MacMillan’s Clemency Credits include Messiah (Danish opera, Frankfurt opera); Banished (Blackheath Halls); Serse / Der (Dutch National Opera), Tisbe Isouard’s Cendrillon and Eginia Storace’s Gli sposi malcontenti Kaiser (RSC Glasgow); The Magic Flute, Carmen, La Bohème, Albert Herring, The Marriage of (Bampton Classical Opera), Pied Piper Willcocks’ The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Opera North), Figaro (costume design for Co Opera Co). Nora (English National Ballet); Egle (Lithuania National Micaëla (North Aldborough Festival), Vitellia (Cadogan Hall), Fiordiligi (Bury Court Opera), Sāvitri Ballet); Beckett Triple Bill, (Jermyn Street Theatre); Handbagged, Single Spies, Miss Julie, Creditors, Holst’s Sāvitri and Alison in Holst’s Wandering Scholar (Grimeborn Festival) and Adina and Mimì Lady Killers, Little Voice, Dear Uncle, (Theatre by the Lake); The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson (Woodhouse Opera). (The Park Theatre, UK Tour); Three Birds (Bush Theatre/ Royal Exchange Manchester); The Daughter- In-Law,The Dog, the Night and the Knife (Arcola Theatre). Katie Stevenson Mezzo-Soprano, Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva; Charm of Lullabies As a Harewood Artist with English National Opera, Katie Stevenson has appeared in Harrison Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus, as Kate Pinkteron in Madam Butterfly, and as Nefertiti in Akhnaten. This season she sings her first Grimgerde for the company in The Valkyrie, as well as for Longborough Festival Opera. On the concert platform, Katie made her BBC Proms debut in Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, and joined Orquesta Sinfónica Del Principado De Asturias for Kindertotenlieder. In competition, she won all three prizes at the Wagner Society Singing Competition, culminating in an invitation to attend the Bayreuth Young Scholars Programme.

Ian Tindale Pianist, Boyhood’s End;Holy Sonnets of John Donne; The Heart’s Assurance; Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, Charm of Lullabies British pianist and song specialist Ian Tindale was awarded the Pianist’s Prize in the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation Song Competition in 2017, following studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music. Ian is a Samling Artist and a Britten Pears Young Artist. Ian has performed across the UK and Europe, at venues including the Wigmore Hall, London with Soraya Mafi, and with baritone Josep-Ramon Olivé in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Palau de la Música in Barcelona. Other recent highlights include giving the world premiere of Daniel Kidane’s cycle Songs of Illumination with Nick Pritchard at the Leeds Lieder Festival, and a ‘Rising Star’ recital with Harriet Burns in the International Lied Festival Zeist.

92 93 Julia Hill Lindsay Baldock Susan Jane Joyce Peter Hirschmann Philip & Kathryn Barton Anthony Kelly Acknowledgements L Hodgkin Dr Ralph Bateman J.M Kelsey Paul Howarth Tim & Elaine Beckett Amanda Keys Dr David Hunt David Biscoe Jonathan Langridge Autumn 2020 Syndicate Frederick Bone Richard Roberts Alan Jackson Richard Bowyer Mark Le Fanu Jane Davies David Burke & Valerie Graham Bob & Lindsay Rough Linda & Charles Jones Ian & Margaret Cartwright David & Sylvia Leathard Christopher FitzGerald John Byrne Philip Savage Pauline Keith Llyr Carvana Alizon Ling Clive Gabriel Kate Caldwell OBE HJ Simms Patricia Kilpatrick Frank Clayton Valerie Lowings & Brian Cozens Richard Jackson Jane Caplan & Susan Loppert Jeremy Simons Rita Kneeshaw Sir Anthony Cleaver Susan Maddock Jeremy Simons Laurence Carlisle Trevor Stammers Mary & Peter Ledgard Michael Coleman Stella Mason Martin Staniforth Murray Clayson James Stratford Robin Leggate & Ken Cordeiro CJ & DE Cossey Patrick Meehan Sally Walton Jill Coningham Ian & Janet Sutherland Rebecca Lewis Alan Cousins Munira Mirza & Douglas Smith & 1 anonymous supporter Kieran Cooper John & Madeleine Tattersall Dr Janet Lockwood Jerry Cowhig Kath Moser David Craig Jane Thompson Bryan Coxson John Moxon With thanks to those recently Simon and Pauline Malpas William Lewis Dann Janet Thornto Nicholas Denyer Dr Christine O’Brien departed who remembered Dr Alison McHardy Jane Davies Adrian & Miyoko Thorpe Colette Depla Ann O’Kelly us in their will Fiona McWilliams Dr Moya Duffy Keith Wallace Brent Mendelsohn Christine Douse & Peter Stevens Colin Palmer Judith Ackrill Robert Dufton Sheila Wison Jo Meredith Robin Drake Martin Parrott Desmond Donovan Jack Dunstone Sam Younger William B Nelson Julie Draper Jim Peers Martin Pritchard Duncan Fielden Vivien Yule Martin Perry CBE Dr Diana Drife Geraldine & Richard Pinch & 4 anonymous supporters Broadcast Circle Mark & Ros Flinn Alan Pike Gillian duCharme Marilyn & Richard Pocock Nick J Forman Hardy Michael & Mary Bamford Silver Supporter Marianne Poen Andrew Ellis Sarah Priday John & Elizabeth Forrest Christopher Purser Sir Anthony Cleaver Nicholas Allan Frederick Pyne Raymond Ellison Clive Gabriel Martin Purser Dr Monica Frances White Michael & Mary Bamford Simon Renton David & Lynda Ewing Peter Gerrard Dr John Rea Gareth & Jenny Jones Douglas Battersby Keith & Susan Richards Jeannie Farr Myra Green James Redshaw Nigel Jones & Francoise Valat-Jones Maggie Bellis Robert Ricks Harriet Feilding Robert D Harris Kevin Ren Eric & Rowena Winkler Patrick & Pameli Benham Mark and Liz Roberts Nick & Sue Finer Robert Hendra E K Roberts Celia Boyle Bernard Ross Sioux Fisher Director’s Circle Mark & Sarah Holford Margaret Ryder David & Hilary Bradley Alan Sainer Mary Fitton Mark & Nicola Beddy Professor S Huck & Dr H Harmgart Prof Roy Foster Arnold Browne Henning & Barbara Sieverts Christopher FitzGerald Andrew Fletcher OBE Dr Peter Hughes Elizabeth Sains Susan Burdell Professor Derek Smith Jill Streatfeild Mr & Mrs Joseph Karaviotis Chris & Nick Hunn Sally Schweizer David Burgess Ian Spiby Dr Danial Fox Eric & Rowena Winkler Paul & Jennie Huntington Ian Sharman Richard Buscall Martin Staniforth R Foxall Tim & Christine Ingram Janet Ainsworth Benefactor Anthony Callender Hilary Thomas Nicholas Gold Margaret Jackson Toby Simon Dr Catherine Alexander A & J Cattermole Ann Tilley Michele Golding David John & Lady Hunt John Sims Christopher Ball Dr Peter Cave Christopher Tonge Barrie & Janice Goodey Martin Kaufman H J Sims-Hilditch Joanna Dickson Leach Tom Chandos Alan & Maddy Tongue Donald Gott, Sheffield Christopher & Sarah Knight David Smith David & Patricia Elliott Greg Chapman Bill Willard James H Gregory Rosalind Krieger Martin Steiger Jennifer Helfrecht Stephen Charlton Richard & Mary Williams Alan Grundy Beck Laxton D G Stevens John Hilton Jeffrey Coates John Wilman Thomas Hamor Rebecca Lewis Brian Stevenson Gareth & Jenny Jones Nancy & Phil Colclough Sheila & John Wilson Jenny Hill Anne Lowe Patricia Stokes Christopher & Clare McCann Roger Crowther D Wilson Dr Christine Hodgson The Hon. Richard Lyttelton M.J. Stowell Roger & Jane Reed Rosemarie Cunningham Gerard Wynne Roger Holden Peter Mackie Scollick Dr Clive Stubbings Geoff & Sarah Roberts Judith De Witt Richard & Rosemary Wynne Anne & Peter Hollindale Dr Natalie Mears Phyl Swindlehurst Ginny & Richard Salter Hilary Stephanie Dixon-Nuttall & 8 anonymous supporters Alan Hollway Susan Mensforth Roger Temple Christopher Sloan Brian Dotson Ralph Huckle J W Money Bronze Supporter Dr & Mrs Michael & Susan Tilby Sally Walton Oliver Doyle Mark Hudson F L M Morris Rachel Aldred Deirdre Sandra Wakefield Alan and Sue Warner Kate Eberwein & Tom Melluish Emrys Hughes Dr David Moss Simon Allen Paul Watts Dr Monica White Roger Everett Andrew Hughes Jeremy Noakes David & Cath Allwood Professor Tony Watts & 1 anonymous supporter Mary Fallowfield Joyce Hytner Martin & Ruth Oinn Ian Anderson OBE Roger & Penny Webster Antony Feeny Jane Isaac Gold Supporter Leon Perdoni Paul & Sandra Ashforth Ian Welham Roger Fellows Rita James Andy & Janet Pilborough-Skinner John Ashworth Sam Wilson Priscilla Abbott Michael Gee Dr & Mrs Jeans Dr Eva Poen Janet Auckland Philip Winterbottom E & R Bain James Heath Meg Jeffrey Keith & Sondra Pratt Arthur Baber Ernest Yelf Desmond & Victoria Belam Aidan Hicks Juliet Johnson Dr Peter Blake & Mr Nicholas Lodge Ruth Rattenbury Shirley Joyce Baker Michael Joseph & 3 anonymous supporters

94 95 Acknowledgements Production Credits

ETO Friends Production Manager Phil Bentley Thanks also go to the 87 Friends from all over the UK and further afield for their ongoing support. Company Stage Manager Emily Milne With the friendly support of Ernst von Siemens Technical Stage Manager Drew Turner Music Foundation and The Golsoncott Foundation Production Electrician Joe Kirk Wardrobe Supervisor Claire Nicolas Trusts and Foundations Props Supervisor The Aspinwall Educational Trust Leche Trust Sunny Smith The Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust L. G. Harris Trust Health & Safety Consultant Richard Beale for RB Health & Safety Ltd Boshier-Hinton Foundation Linbury Trust Lighting Equipment Supplied by Limelight Lighting Ltd The Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust Chivers Trust Macfarlane Walker Trust Rehearsal Transport & Stores Logistic Adam Pearson John S Cohen Foundation Michael Tippett Musical Foundation Transport Supplied by Southern Van Lines The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust The Polonsky Foundation EME Foundation P F Charitable Trust With thanks to: Forman Hardy Charitable Trust Rainbow Dickinson Trust Garrick Charitable Trust The Rhododendron Trust Danny Lennon and all at Footprint Scenery, Ed Railton, David Luckin, Garfield Weston Foundation Rix Thompson Rothenberg Foundation Theme Traders, Flints Theatrical Chandlers, Mountview, Theatre Deli, Le Mark, The Golsoncott Foundation R K Charitable Trust Rory Beaton, Ben Nichols, Tom Bexon, Primo Digital Video, Bobby Williams Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Split Infinitive Trust The Fidelio Charitable Trust The Steel Charitable Trust BROADCAST International Music and Art Foundation St James’s Place Charitable Foundation The John Ellerman Foundation The Thistle Trust Director Tim Van Someren John Horniman’s Children’s Trust Three Monkies Trust Camera Supervisor Mike Callan John Thaw Foundation The Wakefield Trust Joyce Fletcher Charitable Trust & 1 anonymous supporter Camera Operator Lewis Mutongwizo Camera Operator Derek Pennell Trustees Development Board Camera Operator Nicki Graves Mark Beddy (Chair) Mark Beddy (Chair) Camera Assistant Mat Cowley David Burke Viv Bellos Bill Bush Murray Clayson Sound Supervisor Robin Hawkins Anita Datta Tim Ingram Radio Mic Supervisor Cristina De Lama Jane Davies OBE Sir Richard Shirreff Darren Joyce Unit Manager Richard Stevenson Joseph Karaviotis Finance Committee David Burke (Chair) Vision Supervisor Paul Nye c/o One Box David Lasserson Bill Bush Laura Liede VT Operator Chris Slater c/o One Box Laura Liede Ursula Owen Tech James Lockhart c/o One Box Richard Salter QC Richard Salter QC Tech James Botting

96 97 Tour Schedule

23 - 25 Oct Snape Maltings 1 Nov Assembly Hall - Tunbridge Wells 5 - 7 Nov Hackney Empire 15 Nov Assembly Hall - Tunbridge Wells 20 - 22 Nov Altrincham Garrick 27 - 28 Nov Poole Lighthouse 29 Nov Saffron Hall - Saffron Walden 6 Dec Assembly Hall - Tunbridge Wells 12 Dec Lancaster Priory

Lancaster

Altrincham Garrick

Saffron Snape Hall Maltings

Hackney Empire

Tunbridge Poole Wells Lighthouse

ENGLISH TOURING OPERA Mountview Ground Floor, 120 Peckham Hill Street, London SE15 5JT REGISTERED CHARITY: 279354 COMPANY NUMBER: 1458501