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sinfonia ViVA ensemble with Dame Ann Murray

Monday 23rd June 2008 at 7.30pm
St. Andrew's Parish Church, Aldborough, North Yorks.
Tickets: £25 Premium, £20 Standard; £2 off Standard ticket for under 16's and Friends of ViVA
Postal bookings from April 22nd. Telephone bookings open June 1st.
Box Office: 01423 322586

Dame Ann Murray - Mezzo Soprano

sinfonia ViVA makes a welcome return to the Northern Aldborough Festival with Nicholas Kok as Conductor and in the sparkling company of Dame Ann Murray (mezzo-soprano) for a tour-de-force of a programme celebrating the operatic genius of Richard Wagner.

The triangular relationship between Wagner, Mathilde Wesendonck and her husband Otto, one of Wagner's patrons, is strongly reflected in his opera Tristan and Isolde. Wagner saw the theme of the Prelude & Liebstod, which opens tonight's concert, as being: "endless yearning, longing, the bliss and wretchedness of love; world power, fame, honor, chivalry, loyalty and friendship all blown away like an insubstantial dream; one sole redemption: death, surcease, a sleep without wakening…". The Wesendonck Lieder song-cycle which follows is equally reflective, being based upon a set of poems written by Mathilde. Jumping ahead for a moment to the Siegfried Idyll, this was composed as a birthday gift to Wagner's own wife Cosima to celebrate the birth of their eponymous son Siegfried in 1869. Elements of the Idyll echo in the subsequent 1876 opera Siegfried, the third of the four operas that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen. Tonight's programme features one of the most famous excerpts from Siegfried – the Forest Murmurs from Act 2 – and in between we have the Prelude from Act 3 of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg which, although ostensibly a comedy has, as here, less comedic elements to savour.

Visit the Aldborough Festival website for further booking details.

Supported by Olav and Elizabeth Arnold