Programme in the Autumn NSO Is Staging the Travelling Companion, a Romantic Masterpiece by Charles Villiers Stanford

Programme In the autumn NSO is staging The Travelling Companion, a Romantic masterpiece by Charles Villiers Stanford. We need a strong chorus to tackle the ambitious score. There will be five touring performances, the last of which will be recorded for release on the SOMM label, a first for NSO, in this its fortieth anniversary year. If you love singing, here is a chance to join in this exciting project. Chorus rehearsals are in Lewes, beginning on July 11, 12 and 22 to get to know the music, before the summer break. Operatic or stage experience is not essential, but enthusiasm is! There will be some step-out roles for chorus members too - after auditions. Whether you’re a keen singer or would like to help backstage, or just want to find out more, email us: [email protected]. New Sussex Opera Chorus presents the elixir of love Comic opera in 2 acts by GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797-1848) Libretto by Felice Romani, after Scribe’s text for Auber’s Le Philtre First performance: 12 May 1832, Teatro Canobbiana, Milan First performance of this production: Portrait of Donizetti 26 May 2018, All Saints Centre, Lewes attributed to Girolamo Induno Then at The Capitol Theatre, Horsham; St George’s Kemp Town; Birley Centre, Eastbourne; Chequer Mead, East Grinstead NSO is supported by The John Lewis Partnership, The Behrens Foundation, Lewes Town Council A vintage anniversary year In 1978 a fledgling opera group moved from its initial home at Breaky Bottom vineyard to a redundant church in Lewes, and New Sussex Opera was born. The first production of the new company was of Fidelio at what is now All Saints Centre, and that production also toured to Worthing and to the Capitol Theatre in Horsham (the previous Capitol of course, not the present one which this production visits forty years on). Fidelio 1979 Over the next forty years NSO has built up “one heck of a tradition”, locally based but nationally acclaimed. It is one of the few companies to concentrate on giving audiences the chance to discover neglected or lesser-known works, always with high musical standards and in imaginative but not bizarre productions. In the early years there was the memorable Peter Grimes, directed by the young Nicholas Hytner, and later an epic Tannhäuser, and UK premières of works by Weill, Tchaikovsky, von Einem, Offenbach and Puccini. Peter Grimes 1981 The heart of this community-based company has always been its chorus and the expert but unpaid team who do the administration and behind-the- scenes work. In recent years, in parallel with an annual major production, we have launched “New Sussex Opera Chorus presents...” smaller scale productions such as the current one, which give the chorus a chance to shine and also to take on some of the solo roles. These projects have included The Indian Queen and King Arthur by Purcell, Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice, Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury in the ideal setting Tannhäuser 1990 of the Crown Court in Lewes. Watch our website for news, follow us on social media, and please do sign up to receive news by email. This is especially important as we use a variety of venues and we would like to keep in touch and send you our latest news. Opera is the most expensive of art forms and for forty years NSO has survived without subsidy. If you like what we do, and would like to see more of it, please help us to achieve even more. Please see the information about the Easyfundraising scheme on the next page. Current special projects include The Beggar’s Opera 2014 a bursary scheme to support young singers and musicians, our educational workshops and an appeal to purchase our own lighting equipment. We do need your help, and never more so than in the current financial and political climate. To keep in touch with our plans via email, to become a supporter, or to become actively involved, please email us. We promise not to pass on you details to any other organisation or to bombard you with too frequent emails: we would simply like to keep you informed of our forthcoming events and productions. The Indian Queen 2015 Our next major production is Easyfundraising scheduled for a tour in the autumn (see back cover of this programme). A great way of supporting NSO which New venues include the De La Warr costs you absolutely nothing. Pavilion in Bexhill and the fine new Please join, and support our fund-raising Saffron Hall in Saffron Walden. efforts. The Travelling Companion is the Every time you shop online with last of Charles Villiers Stanford’s thousands of retailers, they pay a small nine operas: the story is a fairytale percentage of your purchase price to by Hans Christian Andersen and the NSO. It couldn’t be simpler. excellent libretto by Henry Newbolt. The system is supported by most of the Those who have started work on this big names (John Lewis, M & S, Amazon, fine opera in recent months are very eBay, Tesco, Argos, Boots, Currys and excited at the prospect of reviving many more) as well as travel agents, and recording it for the first time. airlines, rail ticket sites, stationery suppliers – pretty well every sort of Our new Music Director is Toby company from which you can buy online. Purser, Mackerras Conducting Fellow at ENO, and founder of The The instructions are extremely easy to Orion Orchestra; our director is Paul follow: see www.easyfundraising.org.uk and if you download the Easyfundraising Higgins, who has worked at the Donation Reminder too, it will remind you RSC, Chichester Festival Theatre, every time you shop online to click the Glyndebourne, ROH and ENO as well EF option.There are also apps for Apple as on films such as The Madness of and Android. King George and Star Wars. It is safe and you will not receive a flood An outstanding team of soloists of advertising. includes Daniel Norman as John So please, help us by going online and (NSO’s Hugh the Drover), Julien van registering now. Mellaerts in the title role - he has recently been awarded the Tagore Gold Medal at RCM, Kate Valentine www.NewSussexOpera.org as The Princess (Armgard in NSO’s [email protected] The Rhine Fairies) and Simon Thorpe as The King (John the Butcher in NSO’s Hugh the Drover) and Joseph Padfield as the Wizard, who recently The Old Stables, sang Golaud for Garsington Opera. 5 De Warrenne Road, NSO is very grateful for the support Lewes BN7 1BP of The Stanford Society on this phone +44 (0)1273 471851 exciting project. The recipe for love if not for happiness The background to the musical scene Bellini, were born within nine years charitable institution to found a free in Italy at the time when Donizetti of each other. Rossini outlived the music school. Donizetti continued achieved his earliest successes can other two, but all of them wrote to to love and respect Mayr all his life. be detected through the rather please audiences intrigued by the Apprentice works poured out of sententious descriptions of Michael new fashion for romantic melodrama him, but his first notable success Balfe’s biographer. The cherubic while still attuned to opera buffa. was an opera for Rome at the age of Balfe, aged seventeen, was being twenty-five after Mayr had assigned They were served, too, by a group introduced to the country in 1825 the contract to him. The result of that of singers whose names and voices by his patron at a time when Rossini success was an invitation to Naples are fabled because those operas were was still writing ‘in the zenith of his where Rossini’s seven-year reign was written with their special qualities fame and power’, his works ‘executed ending. in mind: brilliance and clarity with a perfection and a reverence for of coloratura for the soprano in After some twenty works with their integrity’ that was ‘deliciously particular; range and agility for the indifferent libretti he wrote Anna appreciated’. Pacini was ‘in command ‘patter song’ and the buffo/comic Bolena for Milan in 1830 and, some of the stage’, and Bellini’s ‘sweet, arias. Oh, for the days of Grisi (‘bless six operas and two years later, he tender and unapproachably…graceful her beautiful face!’, exclaimed one composed The Elixir of Love also for vein of melody was filling all Italy admiring critic), Tamburini and Milan, at the Teatro della Canobbiana. with the intoxication of…delicately Lablache, and for Mario, Malibran His librettist was Felice Romani. sublimated pathos – moving without and Pasta, was the lament of older Between them they worked, laughed laceration, dramatic without depth.’ contemporaries by the middle of the and wrangled their way through the At the same time, according to this nineteenth century. So essential were book and then Donizetti dashed off near-contemporary view, ‘Donizetti’s these names to the genres that the the music in less than a month. They imaginative vigour, comprehensive singers would travel the Continent to only wrangled over the composer’s range of fancy, light and stirring perform those operas that were all the wish to include ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ (‘A variety of invention, versatility of style rage, newly composed for the most furtive tear’) in the second act. This and copiousness of melodic ideas part but with occasional revivals. became an instant favourite in spite of were beginning to draw attention to a slowing the dramatic action, although Donizetti’s life had begun in extreme genius whose upward flight towards it could be argued that it serves to poverty, as he was one of six fatherless regions of dazzling and ethereal characterise Nemorino as more than a children living in a basement in splendour was so soon to be hidden peasant simpleton.

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