Saturday November 9th - Wexford Festival Opera presents Stanford's Veiled Prophet
7pm An Oriental Romance : Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh.
200 years after it was published, An Oriental Romance tells the story of Thomas Moore's epic poem Lalla Rookh, a tale of Arabian princesses, adventure and the exotic East, and explores the music it inspired. Most people associate Thomas Moore with his Irish Melodies, some of which are still very well known centuries after they were written, but his work Lalla Rookh has been largely forgotten. At the time, however, it was a cultural phenomenon, repeatedly reprinted, translated into various languages, and a source of inspiration for painters, playwrights and, above all, composers, including Robert Schumann, Charles Villiers Stanford, Félicien David and many others. Contributors include mezzo sopranos Martha O'Brien and Helen Aiken, pianist Aoife O'Sullivan and music students at Queen's University Belfast who perform some rare musical works inspired by Moore's poem.
Huh? On their website it says 28 Oct... unless I'm missing something?
Oh I see now, my apologies. ''too be broadcast'' sometimes my brain doesn't work to well like today...
How wonderful. I'll try to record it, but will you too, Colin?
Oh, please someone record it please. This site is getting very slow lately, is it just me?
No, it's not you and I'm live chatting with Tech. Support of the host company as I type this message....
I believe a recording is scheduled to follow it.
Terrific!
I believe the opera is in a ''Meyerbeerian vein'' which is awesome because I've just recently began to appreciate Meyerbeer. Heck, I now think Les Hugenuots, Le Prophete and Vasco de gama should be in top 100 performed operas worldwide! ;D
Well, certainly the first two.
I dunno hey, after listening to the CPO recording of Vasco I was convinced(it had too take half a dozen times to be honest)
I've recorded the broadcast, and will post it in our Downloads Board later today with any luck.
Thank you Mark.
It's now available in our Downloads Board here (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,7465.msg78545.html#new). For some reason the broadcast has more audience/stage noise in Acts 2 and 3 than at the start of the recording, but once the music gets going it's not too intrusive. I haven't yet listened to the whole work, but it seems to be well sung, so let's hope there's a commercial recording. With The Travelling Companion, we do at least now have recordings of two Stanford operas. Only eight to go...
This is good, worth a listen. After listening to two of his operas now Stanford happily seemed to have had a strong sense of pacing, nothing seemed dull or drawn out to my ears. Nicely melodic too. Here's a positive review if anyone is interested .https://operawire.com/wexford-festival-opera-2019-review-the-veiled-prophet-of-khorassan/
Now hopefully Wexford can do the Travelling Companion and the Critic and offer recordings too(They did Much ado about Nothing way back in 1964, so going by their never twice policy I doubt they'll do that one ever again.)
Thank you so very much! Wow, my first two full Stanford operas in the space of a few weeks!
Well that's a beautiful work! Absolutely wonderful to hear it: love the orchestral and choral passages and look forward to getting to know it more.
Yes, there's much to admire in The Veiled Prophet, especially bearing in mind Stanford's youth when he wrote it. For me, Act I was competent and tuneful but not particularly inspired. The work really came to life in the second act as Stanford's dramatic instinct took over and the pacing matched his melodic gift. The vocal writing is exciting, the orchestral colour vivid (as you'd expect) and the lengthy build up to terrific climaxes shows that he clearly knew his Meyerbeer. This, his first opera, is a very different type of work to The Travelling Companion, and it gets an appropriately gutsy, no-holding-back performance here. The sound via the internet stream is a little thin-toned, but it's to be hoped that a commercial recording (if there is to be one) will rectify that. All in all, even after hearing The Travelling Companion, something of a revelation.
Yes, another winner from Stanford, not a surprise at this point. I'm probably the only one but as far as English composers are concerned I prefer him to Elgar(who IMO overshadows just about everyone else unfairly, sadly)
QuoteI prefer him to Elgar
Fair enough. But I could never do that; did Stanford ever reach the heights of the two symphonies,VC or CC?
Mind you, I prefer Raff or Draeseke to Brahms, so who am I to talk?
Here's a link to a streamed version of the opera(doesn't look like their will be a recording after all, hope I'm wrong)
https://www.rte.ie/player/movie/the-veiled-prophet/131026471997