Evening vocal concerts

A new series of vocal chamber concerts will begin on 28 March in the dress circle foyer. Leading opera soloists will continue to demonstrate the various facets of the art of singing: they will trace the evolution of Viennese opera from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Richard Strauss, bring to life the masterpieces of Italian bel canto, and delight audiences with the frivolity of popular operettas. Here, Senior Concert Master Natalia Dudik and Concert Master Maria Kopyseva talk about the programme of vocal concerts.

“The first concert will be held on 28 March and will be dedicated to Viennese opera”, says Natalia Dudik. “First, there will be extracts from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan tutte. Natalia Mironova will perform the incredibly complex concert aria for coloratura soprano which Mozart dedicated to Aloysia Weber, the woman he was in love with before he married her sister Constanze. This aria not only requires perfect technique, it also shows the ironic attitude that Mozart had towards the divas of his time.”

It is well known that following Mozart’s death, opera vanished from Vienna for 50 long years. Beethoven’s Fidelio flopped at its première and was not performed for a long time afterwards, as symphonies became the most popular type of music. One of the people who continued the tradition of opera in the Austrian capital was Carl Zeller, who wrote singspiele — comic operas with spoken dialogue.

“An aria from his operetta The Chief Mine Inspector will be sung in German, followed by rare extracts from works by the exceptional Viennese composer Johann Strauss the Younger”, says Dudik, continuing her journey through the history of music. “The twentieth century will be represented by extracts from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Dead City, and the evening will be rounded off with works by Richard Strauss. His Der Rosenkavalier is a unique bridge to the future of opera, but also a nod to the work of a particularly renowned Austrian composer. The piece has nuances and devices that are clearly inspired by Mozart. For example Strauss’s protagonist, Count Octavian, is sung by a woman, as is the role of Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro.”

The second concert in the vocal series will take place on 11 April. It will feature romantic arias from operas by Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Massenet, and Saint-Saëns.

“Spring is a time of love, which is why we want to talk about love and its various forms”, says Maria Kopyseva. “All aspects of love will be covered — jealousy, flirtation, and tenderness. This will be an interesting concert because our soloists — Ekaterina Egorova, Maria Litke, and Dmitry Golovnin — will anticipate the music, expressing themselves through solos and duets.”

On the evening of 23 May, the dress circle foyer will play host to masterpieces of Italian bel canto. This unique performance follows on from a similar concert held in the autumn, which was enthusiastically received by the audience.

“This time we will be performing extracts from Il barbiere di Siviglia, with singers who were not involved in the recent concert performance”, says Natalia Dudik with an air of mystery. “And the role of Rosina will be sung by a mezzo-soprano, as written in the original. We will definitely be performing the second act of Don Pasquale, and there may well be a few rare works by Rossini too.”

The final concert of the series on 6 June will include operettas by Jacques Offenbach, Franz von Suppé, Johann Strauss the Younger, and Imre Kálmán.