preMieRe Recording jonathan dove SiReNSONG CHAN 10472 siren ensemble henk guittart 81 CHAN 10472 Booklet.indd 80-81 7/4/08 09:12:19 CHAN 10472 Booklet.indd 2-3 7/4/08 09:11:49 Jonathan Dove (b. 199) Dylan Collard premiere recording SiReNSong An Opera in One Act Libretto by Nick Dear Based on the book by Gordon Honeycombe Commissioned by Almeida Opera with assistance from the London Arts Board First performed on 14 July 1994 at the Almeida Theatre Recorded live at the Grachtenfestival on 14 and 1 August 007 Davey Palmer .......................................... Brad Cooper tenor Jonathan Reed ....................................... Mattijs van de Woerd baritone Diana Reed ............................................. Amaryllis Dieltiens soprano Regulator ................................................. Mark Omvlee tenor Captain .................................................... Marijn Zwitserlood bass-baritone with Wireless Operator .................................... John Edward Serrano speaker Siren Ensemble Henk Guittart Jonathan Dove CHAN 10472 Booklet.indd 4-5 7/4/08 09:11:49 Siren Ensemble piccolo/flute Time Page Romana Goumare Scene 1 oboe 1 Davey: ‘Dear Diana, dear Diana, my name is Davey Palmer’ – 4:32 48 Christopher Bouwman Davey 2 Diana: ‘Davey… Davey…’ – :1 48 clarinet/bass clarinet Diana, Davey Michael Hesselink 3 Diana: ‘You mention you’re a sailor’ – 1:1 49 horn Diana, Davey Okke Westdorp Scene 2 violin 4 Diana: ‘i like chocolate, i like shopping’ – :52 49 Sanne Hunfeld Diana, Davey cello Scene 3 Pepijn Meeuws 5 Jonathan: ‘Dave Palmer? Jonathan Reed, Diana’s brother’ – :41 52 double-bass Jonathan, Davey Ying Lai Green Scene 4 piano/celesta 6 Davey: ‘Dear Diana. Dear Diana’ – :0 53 Maurice Lammerts van Bueren Davey, Diana harp 7 Davey: ‘i dream of a house and a garden’ – :12 54 eva Tebbe Davey, Diana percussion Jeroen Geevers 7 CHAN 10472 Booklet.indd 6-7 7/4/08 09:11:50 Time Page Time Page Scene 9 Scene 5 14 Davey: ‘A dream house, Diana!’ – :11 60 8 Diana: ‘Davey, Davey, when i’m your wife…’ – :25 55 Davey, Jonathan Diana 15 Jonathan: ‘i’m hungry, my feet hurt’ – 1:8 62 9 Davey: ‘Oh! Oh!’ – 1:0 55 Jonathan, Davey Davey, Diana Scene 10 Scene 6 16 Regulator: ‘is she there?’ – :40 63 10 Davey: ‘Hello? Hello? This is Davey’ – 1:46 55 Regulator, Davey Davey, Jonathan, Wireless Operator Scene 11 Scene 7 17 Jonathan: ‘Did you see the flamingos?’ – :43 63 11 Davey: ‘is she still in hospital?’ – :33 56 Jonathan, Davey Davey, Jonathan 18 Jonathan: ‘Very soon she’ll be with you’ – :18 65 12 Jonathan: ‘Sure, i’ll give you an education’ – :53 57 Jonathan, Davey Jonathan, Davey Scene 12 Scene 8 19 Regulator: ‘Captain, there’s something funny’ – :4 65 13 Regulator: ‘Palmer, it’s your ship-to-shore’ – :7 58 Regulator, Captain, Jonathan Regulator, Davey, Jonathan 20 Captain: ‘“i love you, Jonathan”?’ – :7 66 Captain, Regulator, Davey, Jonathan, Diana 8 9 CHAN 10472 Booklet.indd 8-9 7/4/08 09:11:51 Jonathan Dove SiReNSong Time Page Since 1998, when his first full-scale opera, the community cantata that incorporated local children, Scene 13 airport comedy Flight, lifted off to great public amateurs and professional performers into a 21 Davey: ‘Say it again’ – 1:9 67 and critical acclaim at Glyndebourne, Jonathan seamless evening, and won the education Award of Davey, Jonathan Dove has become a being many thought extinct or the Royal Philharmonic Society in 00. anachronistic for this age: a full-time professional Prior to that, Dove had extended associations Scene 14 opera composer. Though not yet fifty, he has written with several companies and theatres, notably the twenty-one operas of all shapes and sizes, genres Birmingham Opera Company, Musica nel Chiostro 22 Regulator: ‘Off cap!’ – :03 68 Regulator, Davey, Captain and moods – a rate of productivity more associated at Batignano, Glyndebourne and the Almeida. This with the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, and enabled him to perfect his craft on the front line, as it shared nowadays by only a very few, Philip Glass for were, and not in the seclusion of an ivory tower. For Scene 15 one. He has an ability to compose in an up-to-the- Birmingham, Dove reduced a number of repertoire 23 Regulator: ‘This is Stone’ – 1:40 69 minute idiom that is challenging but not abstruse, operas for chamber forces, a project that climaxed with Regulator, Jonathan combining grateful vocal writing with sure-fire Janácˇek’s The Cunning Little Vixen and a two-evening theatrical timing. His operas tell stories, and do so distillation of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. For Scene 16 without affectation, in a direct and compelling way. Batignano he wrote a series of theatrical and vocal Opera forms the backbone of his œuvre and covers works of diverse scale, most notably his first full-length 24 Davey: ‘i don’t believe you’ – :53 70 a wide range of subject matter, from legendary to chamber opera, L’augellino belverde, based on a Davey, Captain, Regulator, Jonathan contemporary, fairytale to sexual politics, catering to fable by Carlo Gozzi (1994; premiered in england all audiences, children as well as adults. as The Little Green Swallow, 00), and a triptych Scene 17 Jonathan Dove makes his home in the east end of of one-act pieces, Racconti di speranza e desiderio 25 Davey: ‘On the ocean keep a look-out’ :23 7 London, and was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields (Tales of Hope and Desire, 001–0). At the Almeida Davey, Diana Festival from 001 to 00, contributing much Theatre, Dove was Associate Composer, writing TT 77:37 to local music making and education. His festival many scores of incidental music for theatrical programming highlighted the diverse immigrant productions and two notably successful chamber populations residing in east London, and a children’s operas, Siren Song (1994) and Tobias and the Angel opera, The Hackney Chronicles, was designed for (1999), the latter a church community opera that has local schools to perform. Dove’s Spitalfields period become one of his most widely performed works. At culminated in On Spital Fields, a vastly ambitious Glyndebourne, where he was appointed Assistant 10 11 CHAN 10472 Booklet.indd 10-11 7/4/08 09:11:51 Chorus Master in 1987, his latent compositional competitions. No matter in what form Dove writes, Honeycombe (familiar to many also for being an punctuated by a xylophone tattoo possibly suggesting talent was soon recognised and developed through there is almost always a dramatic lens, or a musical iTN newscaster in the 1970s and a broadcaster for the ship’s searchlight traversing becalmed waters, or a a series of community operas, often site-specific, source. One group of works is based on his beloved TV-AM in the 1980s). This book, an account of a true radar signal. Davey, a sailor, is answering a lonely- that combined professional and amateur performers. Mozart – Figures in a Garden as well as An Airmail life scam perpetrated on a Royal Navy sailor, Davey hearts ad in the Navy News, posted by Diana. She Glyndebourne also commissioned a wind octet, Letter from Mozart (199) and the flute concerto Palmer, was published in 199, and permission to responds, to a rippling harp ostinato, and as he reads Figures in the Garden, for the Mozart bicentenary in The Magic Flute Dances (000) – and material adapt it for opera was given by both Palmer and her letter, she appears in his thoughts. They start a 1991, and finally, for the main house, the large-scale by J.S. Bach is tellingly diffracted in the Köthener Honeycombe. The compelling narrative has echoes of correspondence: she tells him she is a model, but opera Flight which has since received productions in Messe (00), written for the Akademie für Alte classic stories of vulnerability and deception in love, that inside she is just an ordinary girl. europe, North America and Australia. Musik, Berlin – one of several works that use period such as those surrounding Cyrano de Bergerac, and Scores of incidental music have been written for instruments, other examples being The Middleham the marital ruse that tricked Francesca da Rimini into Scene 2 the Royal Shakespeare Company and also been Jewel (00), written for an ensemble that includes marrying a hunchback. Siren Song was premiered The exchange of letters continues. We see Davey heard at the National Theatre where one of his harpsichord and theorbo, and the opera L’altra as part of Almeida Opera’s 1994 season, and warmly in his bunk reading ‘sweet nothings’ – the minutiae most notable successes was his contribution to the Euridice (001). received by both public and press. The Almeida is that enable him and Diana to get acquainted. A more theatrical adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Among Dove’s notable orchestral works are a one of London’s smaller theatres, and the opera has animated ostinato pervades this scene, yielding to Materials. Dove has also written two television operas trombone concerto, Stargazer (001), recently a compact scale, requiring a cast of five singers, an Davey’s phrase ‘sweet nothings’, a yearning mantra, for Channel 4: When She Died (Death of a Princess), premiered by ian Bousfield and the London actor, and a band of ten players (flute/piccolo, oboe, sweetened with almost blues-derived harmony – it which when aired in 00 achieved record ratings Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson-Thomas; clarinet/bass clarinet, horn, piano/celesta, harp, is a phrase that will recur through the opera. Diana because of its controversial subject matter – dealing Work in Progress (00), a large-scale composition percussion, violin, cello and double-bass) and plays chatters about her room and offhandedly expresses a with the unprecedented mourning that gripped the for piano and orchestra, accompanying a film of the in one continuous act, divided into seventeen short, desire for a clock-radio.