www.retrospectopera.org.uk Registered Chari ty no. 1164150 Newsletter # 10 , 10 July 201 8 Reviews, endorsements, and the release of Raymond and Agnes! We have spent a long time getting to this, but it has definitely been worth it and the result In this Newsletter : looks – and sounds – fantastic! We’re • The release of Loder’s Raymond and immensely proud of it. Agnes • R ecent reviews of The Wreckers Raym ond and Agnes is priced at £17.95 if • Shakespeare’s Garland : updates and purchased on our website – but don’t forget endorsements that s ubscribers benefit from the discounted • E xciting upcoming Smyth events price of £14.95 ! To obtain the discount, please either e - mail us direct or pay through the S hop page on our website , putting in th e Our latest release: Loder ’s Raymond and discount price. Agnes We are delighted to announce that our latest A reminder of our subscriber rates: disc , the 2 - CD recording of Edward Loder’s Raymond and Agnes , will be released on £14.95 for 2 - CD sets Friday 3 August 2018 . However, we’ll be ( The Boatswain’s Mate , The Wreckers , sending copies out to our subscribers a few NEW Raymond and Agnes ) days before that, so you should receive yours early! £8.95 for single CDs ( Pickwick , Christmas Gambols ) To whet your appetite for Loder’s gloriously Gothic opera , we are pleased to give you an advance look at the album cover art . Reviews of The Wreckers In our last Newsletter, we re ported on the re - issue on the Retrospect Opera label of the live recording of the 1994 performance of The Wreckers at The BBC Proms, originally release d by Conifer Classics. Although a re - release, it has nonetheless come to the attention of several reviewers, and it has received some fantastic write - ups: “This Prom s performance of Ethel Smyth’s three - act magnum opus was among the most hotly anticipated operatic events of 1994, not least given the ardent enthusiasm of its conductor, Odaline de la Martinez. [...] Retrospect Opera : Newsletter # 10 , 10 July 201 8 [email protected] 1 82 Queens Road, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, SK8 5HH, UK Retrospect Opera [has] reissued Conifer’s while her score [...] exudes energy and 1994 CD set in a chic slimline package, with momentum [...] The cast here give a good Ronald Crichton’s sp lendid original notes, account of their roles, with Justin Lavender the full libretto – and a useful 2017 and Anne - Marie Owens impassioned as retrospective by Christopher Wiley [...] This adulterous love rs Mark and Thirza, Peter issue bridges the gap nicely between Sidhom striking as Thirza’s husband, the local Retrospect’s revelatory complete recording preacher Pascoe, and Judith Howarth of The Boatswain’s Mate and their eagerly - thrillingly malicious as Mark’s cast - off awaited revival of Smyth’s slice of girlfriend, Avis. The Huddersfield Choral neoclassical Grand Guignol, Fête Galante [...] Society [...] hurl themselves into the fray as I was especially impressed by Smyth’s choral the crazed villag ers, while Odaline de la and orchestral imagination, convincingly Martinez brings flair and commitment to retailed by the zesty Huddersfield Choral realising the regularly memorable score. Society and Martinez’s buoyant direction, Good sound. ” which shines through undimmed. The – George Hall, BBC Music Magazine , July 2018 villagers, rapacious wreckers to a man (and woman) yet imbued with fiery, self - righteous Shakespeare’s Garland Cornish Chapel piety, are at the heart of Henry Brewster’s thought - provoking libretto Finalising the plan s for our new Charles and have much of the most inventive music. Dibdin - David Garrick project, which we’re Of the principals, the two main w omen – now calling Shakespeare’s Garland , has taken Anne - Marie Owens as the self - sacrificing a little longer than we ’ d hoped . W e ’ re heroine and Judith Howarth as a vengeful, delighted to announce that the recording will predatory adolescent [...] – stand out, with take place from 17 – 19 July, at the Richard Peter Sidhom’s steely, religio - maniacal pastor Burnett Heritage Collection in Tunbridge close behind. [...] The Wreckers remains Wells: http://www.finchcocks.co.uk/ required listening. It is good to welcome it collection.html back.” – Christopher Webber, Opera , June 2018 The Burnett collection includes a beautiful Broadwood grand piano dated 1801, which “This historic first recording of Ethel Smyth’s we believe is as cl ose as we can possibly get masterpiece The Wreckers derives from a to the original sound of Dibdin ’ s famous Sans meticulously prepared 1994 Henry Wood Souci Theatre performances. Two of the Promenade Concert [...] in studio - quality BBC works, Datchet Mead and The Jubilee , exist sound, it returns in this finely annotated only in vocal score but since Queen Mab has reissue [...] [Thomas] Beecham thought so survived in full score (most unusually for highly of the piece he feared that ‘no Anglo - theatre music of this period), we have Saxon singer’ could rise t o the challenge of engaged a small group of period instrument the ‘splendid and original’ role of Thirza or specialist s to help us accurately realise this catch ‘a tithe of the intensity and spiritual charming music . We’re trying as hard as we exaltation’ which Mark exudes. Well, Anne - can to capture the actual sound of the late Marie Owens and Justin Lavender come close eighteenth century, when Dibdin and Garrick in this 1994 performance, with powerful were truly household names. support from Peter S idhorn as Pascoe [...] [Smyth’s] orchestral writing is especially fine, As we progress into the recording studio, this as the present performance eloquently project is still in need of funding, and if there confirms.” are people you know, who are interested in – Richard Osborne, Gramophone , July 2018 Shakespeare and/or the music of the eighteenth century, do please recommend it “the piece comes over impressively in this to them. As alway s, if anyone you introduce live performance recorded at the Proms in to us donates £50 or more, you can claim a 1994 a nd first issued that year [...] Smyth free copy of any of our single CD releases. shows a keen instinct for musical drama, 2 Retrospect Opera : Newsletter # 10 , 10 July 201 8 [email protected] 82 Queens Road, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, SK8 5HH, UK Endorsement of Shakespeare ’s Garland F rom 30 July to 1 August 2018 , Spectra Following on from the endorsement of our Ensemble will be performing The Boatswain’s Shakespeare’s Garland project by the author Mate at the Arcola Theatre in London, as part Flora Fraser in our last Newsletter, we have of the ‘Grimeborn’ Opera Festival (each received further kind endorsement s . performance starts at 8pm). Directed by Cecilia Stinton, the production i s set in June Professor Stephen Greenblatt, one of the 1953 against the backdrop of the Queen’s world’s leading Shakespeare scholars, the Coronation. Further information is available author of such acclaimed studies as here: https://www.arcolatheatre.com/ Renaissance Self - Fashioning: From More to event/the - boatswains - mate - grimeborn/ Shakespeare (1980), Hamlet in Purgatory (2002), and Will in the World: How Arcadian Opera has recently announced a full Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (2005), has stage production of Smyth’s The Wreckers to endorsed Shakespeare ’s Garland as follows : be performed at T he Roxburgh Theatre, Stowe, Buckinghamshire on 27 – 28 October “To paraphrase Falstaff, Shakespeare is not 2018 . Justin Lavender, who s a ng the role of only a creative genius in himself but the cause Mark in the 1994 recording reissued by that creative genius is in others. The Retrospect Opera in April, is serving as exploration of that genius in the sister arts – musical director and conductor for this in painting, dance, and above all the music production . Further information is available inspired by Shakespeare – has bee n one of at http://www.arcadianopera.com . the great enterprises of our times. Thanks to the initiative of Retrospect Opera, we now have a chance to recover a key part of the eighteenth - century response and thus enhance our own imaginative reception of Shakespeare’s enduring achievement. I do hope people will support them.” And Professor Ewan Fernie of The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford - upon - Avon , author of Shake speare for Freedom: Why The Plays Matter , has said the following: “This important initiative will allow us to hear Shakespea re's first - ever jubilee as if for the first time. Other than the plays and poems themselves, nothing made Shakespeare the world - historical figure we honour today more than David Garrick's all - singing, all - dancing 1769 tribute in Stratford. This is an opp ortunity to tune in again to the processes by which the very idea of genius came into Finally, you may already have heard that the being.” BBC National Orchestra of Wales will be performing Smyth’s ‘On the Cliffs of Upcoming productions of Smyth’s operas Cornwall’ (the Prelude to Act II of The Wreckers ) at T he BBC Proms in the Royal We have received further details of Albert Hall at 7:3 0pm on 1 August 2018 , in productions and performances of Smyth’s Prom 24, ‘A Hero’s Life’, alongside Dvo ř á k ’s works, on which we reported in the last Cello Concerto in B minor and Richard Newsletter . Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben . For further information, please see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ebx n5v . Retrospect Opera : Newsletter # 10 , 10 July 201 8 [email protected] 3 82 Queens Road, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, SK8 5HH, UK The BBC Concert Orchestra are performing Stevens and Marcus have also recorded and the Overture to The Boatswain’s Mate at released a superb CD of songs included in another Prom, on 1 September, at Alexandra their show, very reasonably pri ced at £12 Palace, London, one of the ‘Proms at…’ including UK postage.