Latest news with #Pimpinone
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A quick guide to this year's Boston Early Music Festival
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up There are at least three offerings packed into most days of the festival. Sometimes there are more. It's a maybe-overwhelming array of options, so if you don't know where to start, here are some picks for events I wouldn't want to miss. Advertisement OPERATIC OFFERINGS The elaborate centerpiece opera, which will be performed four times during the week (June 8-June 15), is an institution of the festival. Usually, musical directors Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs and stage director Gilbert Blin put up a deep cut from the Baroque repertoire that even seasoned opera-goers may never have heard of, let alone seen performed. No effort is spared in the production, which features a full baroque orchestra in the pit, sumptuous sets and costumes, and a dance company led by Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière in addition to the cast of singers, which features Hungarian soprano and BEMF veteran Emőke Baráth in the title role this year. Advertisement It's also a 3-hour time commitment, so if that's more than you want to bite off, consider the chamber opera double bill of Telemann's short and snappy comedy 'Pimpinone' and dramatic cantata 'Ino,' going up at Jordan Hall on June 14 with more performances in Great Barrington later in June. THE REGULARS ARE COMING! This year's biennial marks the 23rd for the festival, and it has nourished a network of world-class performers and ensembles that have become regular visitors. Violinist Robert Mealy, head of Yale University's respected early music program, leads the festival's in-house orchestra, which is primarily occupied in the pit for the opera, but it takes center stage with its own program of water-inspired works by Handel and Telemann (June 12). The 'Octavia' singers are booked and busy as well on their off nights - tenor Aaron Sheehan joins Paul O'Dette for a wine-soaked recital program (June 9), soprano Sherezade Panthaki teams up with Austria-based Ensemble Castor (June 10), and nearly the whole gang piles on stage for Saturday evening's post-chamber-opera extravaganza. (June 14) BEMF presents the Tallis Scholars in a Yuletide concert most years, but they're on hand during this summer festival for two programs – one with the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble (June 9) and a Sistine Chapel-inspired program on their own (June 11). And I'm personally biased because I have a friend in period string ensemble ACRONYM, but I never pass up a chance to see them – and going by the fact that this is the group's fourth consecutive festival, neither do the BEMF organizers. Advertisement RARER SIGHTS & SOUNDS Boston Camerata is hardly an unfamiliar name around town, but for BEMF, the ensemble is rolling out the local debut of 'A Gallery of Kings,' which premiered to acclaim at France's Reims Cathedral several years ago. Stephen Stubbs is also known around these parts for being one of BEMF's creative head honchos, but he also artistic directs the Seattle-based Pacific MusicWorks, which makes its BEMF debut in the late-night slot on June 10 with the intriguingly titled 'Murder, Mayhem, Melancholy, and Madness,' featuring soprano Danielle Reuter-Harrah. The relentlessly creative Norwegian ensemble Trio Mediaeval is returning to the festival after several years away, with an intriguing lineup of chant by Hildegard von Bingen and elaborate songs by English composer Leonel Power; their arrangements feature a miniature organ, hurdy-gurdy, and Hardanger fiddle – a Norwegian violin variant known for its haunting, resonant sound (June 11). Montreal-based Constantinople, helmed by Kiya Tabassian on the setar (three-stringed Persian lute), is behind the Bach and Khayyam program; soprano Hana Blažíková lends her voice to the group, which incorporates classical Middle Eastern instruments alongside the Baroque European. BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL June 8-15. Various venues. A.Z. Madonna can be reached at
Times
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Pimpinone review — Telemann's Royal Opera debut, 300 years later
The Royal Opera has taken a few centuries to stage an opera by Georg Philipp Telemann. With this production of Pimpinone, by the company's Jette Parker Artists at the Linbury Theatre, downstairs at the Royal Opera House, it's a case of one down, 34 to go. And that's just the number of Telemann operas for which manuscripts have survived. He probably wrote more than 50 in all. He really was a one-man factory of baroque music. It's just a pity he delivered quantity more than quality. That said, I'm not sure he is well served by Sophie Gilpin's staging of Pimpinone. Premiered 300 years ago as comic relief between the acts of Handel's tragic Tamerlano, it riffs on the classic Italian comedy
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pimpinone review – hot-to-trot comic opera from the underperformed Telemann
Spare a thought for Georg Philipp Telemann. Friend to Bach and Handel, and godfather to Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel, he penned more than 3,000 works including 29 extant operas. Yet, for all his fecundity of invention and consistent quality, we hear his sparkling music far less often than he deserves. If people are unsure where to begin, how about Pimpinone? First performed 300 years ago in Hamburg, its three acts were intended as comic intermezzi for a production of Handel's opera seria Tamerlano (total running time a gruelling five hours!) With an easy to follow plot and laugh-out-loud musical numbers, it would have come as welcome light relief, assuming people stuck around to listen. The Royal Ballet and Opera's staging, with singers, conductor and director drawn from its Jette Parker Artists programme, reveals a work that's on the slight side, but one with plenty of charm and sexual politics not a million miles from our own time, hence its interest beyond the recording studio. The work is subtitled 'The Unequal Marriage Between Vespetta and Pimpinone or The Domineering Chambermaid', which pretty much sums it up. In Act I, working-class Vespetta – the name means little wasp – lands a job as housemaid to Pimpinone. Gifts aside, by Act II she's ready to quit until he offers to marry her. In Act III, after much comic quarrelling, he grudgingly grants her some genuine freedoms. Sophie Gilpin sets it in the 1960s, bringing a modern slant to issues of equality and female emancipation. It works well. Vespetta is first discovered performing as part of a festive bash at Pimpinone's pad. With lights and tinsel, she's literally done up like a Christmas tree (witty set and costumes by Anna Yates). Isabela Díaz has great fun with her lively opening aria, slipping into flats to soothe sore feet. A playful actor, her bright soprano with attractive upper extension does the rest. Pay rises, prenups and miniskirts attend her shimmying up the greasy pole of social mobility, and we root for her all the way. Grisha Martirosyan is her nice-but-dim Pimpinone complete with porn tash and dubious taste in multicoloured shirts. His thrusting baritone has depth and power at the top, and he's funny too, especially in the panting syncopations of his hot-to-trot opening aria. Later on, he reveals a nice line in comedy falsetto, while Díaz shows off her nimble technique in a pair of teasing vocal minuets (though both might have sung more softly at times). Peggy Wu conducts a crisp performance with players drawn from the English National Opera Orchestra. Continuo pickups might have been quicker off the mark and more imaginatively decorated, but otherwise her approach, like Gilpin's, allows Telemann's neatly revived confection to shine. At Linbury theatre, London, until 17 May
