National Symphony Orchestra Summer Lunchtime: Aebh Kelly Mezzo-Soprano

National Symphony Orchestra Summer Lunchtime: Aebh Kelly Mezzo-Soprano

Tuesday, 28 June 2022, 1.00pm

National Symphony Orchestra
Jonathan Bloxham conductor
Aebh Kelly mezzo-soprano
Presented by Liz Nolan, RTÉ lyric FM
Rossini The Barber of Seville Overture
Rossini ‘Una voce poco fa’ (The Barber of Seville)
Mozart ‘Ah scostati! Smanie implacabili’ (Così fan tutte)
Verdi Un ballo in maschera Act II Preludio
Schubert Entr’acte after Act III Andantino from Rosamunde
Meyerbeer ‘Nobles seigneurs, salut!’ (Les Huguenots)
Saint-Saëns Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila

With summer’s passions in the air, take a lunchtime visit to the opera for a rollercoaster ride around the corkscrew affairs of the heart. Making her National Symphony Orchestra debut is the stunning young mezzo-soprano, Aebh Kelly, 2020 winner of the Maura Dowdall Concerto Competition at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and also a Veronica Dunne Bursary winner, with the NSO led by the ‘natural conducting talent’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine) of Jonathan Bloxham.
The Overture to Rossini’s comic masterpiece, The Barber of Seville, is an exhilarating display of orchestral colour, ‘Una voce poco fa’, lit up by firework coloratura displays, one of opera’s most memorable arias. Mozart has his cake and eats it with Così fan tutte’s ‘Ah scostati! Smanie implacabili’; a parody of opera seria’s high passions that is also a searing expression of grief.
The Preludio from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera is the Italian master at his most assured: a poetic midnight tryst in which passion is final declared noisily framed by the danger that surrounds the star-crossed lovers. Schubert’s incidental music for Rosamunde survives the potboiler-melodrama it was written for, the Act III Entr’acte a charming, lyrical interlude amidst the madness.

From the most performed opera of the 19th century, Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, ‘Nobles seigneurs, salut!’ is an exercise in brilliant vocal gymnastics, the Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila a sinuous, sensual, wild, pagan dance as exotic as it is fevered.

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Published by nationalconcerthall on 31 May 2022

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