Wednesday 12 November 2025
6pm
Milton Court Concert Hall
Vocal Scenes
music direction by Linnhe Robertson
stage direction by John Ramster
Welcome
Each year our undergraduate BMus 4 (honours) and postgraduate vocal students rehearse and perform sets of Opera Scenes. Tonight’s performance is our first set of scenes for this academic year. Almost all the singers performing tonight are in their fourth and final undergraduate year. They are joined by three visiting singers: undergraduate baritone on the Erasmus course from Germany Luis Weidlich; postgraduate Erasmus soprano from Poland, Magdalena Wegielnik and on the postgraduate Short Course, soprano Ana Salaridze.
In preparing these scenes, our young singers have the opportunity to try out a small section of an opera role where they can combine their stagecraft skills, their language skills, their musicianship skills and their performance ensemble skills. All skills which are important for the world of opera singing.
Tonight, the singers are also joined by a two postgraduate student pianist from the Collaborative Pianist course PAAC, Niall Townley and Paul St-Georges, both of whom are using this opportunity to ‘test the waters’ in the specialist repetiteur area of opera.
Tonight’s scenes cover a wide range of music periods and have been musically prepared by Linnhe Robertson.
Linnhe Robertson | music director
John Ramster | stage director
Michael Wardell | vocal department manager
Kimia Allahyari | rehearsal observer
Daniel Whewell | lighting
Viktor Volaric-Horvat & Anthony Wood | performance venues
With thanks to Paolo Carlotto, Camilla Direk, Katie Higgins and Jo Holmes.
Director's Note
Our scenes tonight have, as ever, all been picked to challenge and maximise the individual talents of our performers, but we seem to have happened upon some kind of theme, as so many of the extracts deal with women in dire need of cheering up: Mélisande, Agathe, the Countess, Lucretia, Charlotte, Miss Todd, Laetitia, Miss Pinkerton, Rosalinda, even the two merry wives of Windsor. The issue seems to be either the toxic presence or toxic absence of men – all grist to the mill for the recent media focus on the role and impact of patriarchy in opera and the opera industry. No opera here is passing the Bechdel Test, the film industry's index which checks if two female characters can talk to each other about something other than a man, because, for centuries, we have been fascinated by stories of new or decaying Love, of fidelity and infidelity. Many of the male characters are destined for their eventual comeuppance, of course, whether eventually seen onstage in the operas or after the opera is over – the Count, Eisenstein, Tarquinius, the unseen Sir John Falstaff, Werther, even Cherubino – but, through whichever gendered or political lens one chooses, at this point in the various stories we will see and hear tonight, it is the women who are front and centre, facing dramatic and emotional problems and quandaries with varying degrees of exasperation or stoicism, despair or excitement. I hope you enjoy the performance.
– John Ramster
Programme
Claude Debussy
Pelléas et Mélisande
Premiere: 1902, Paris
Act 1 Scene 1: A forest (in French)
Prince Golaud, grandson of a king, has become lost while hunting. He discovers a frightened, weeping girl sitting by a spring in which a crown is visible. Golaud finds her beautiful. She says her name is Mélisande but little else about her origins. She refuses to let Golaud retrieve the crown from the spring. Golaud persuades her to come with him before it becomes too dark in the forest. Lost together, they depart.
Golaud
Luis Weidlich
Mélisande
Lana Ben Halim
Piano
Paul St-Georges
Carl Maria von Weber
Die Freischütz
Premiere: 1821, Berlin
Act 2 Scene 1 (in German)
The room of Agathe, a young woman tested by Love. In an odd and eerie moment, a portrait of one of Agathe’s ancestors has fallen off the wall and slightly injured her, only adding to her woes. Her cousin Äanchen tries to cheer up Agathe, cracking a joke about telling off the errant nail for being disrespectful. At first Äanchen succeeds a little in lightening the mood but ultimately fails miserably. Agathe is worried she will never be able to marry the man she loves (plus a mystical hermit has told her she is in danger!).
Äanchen
Ana Salaridze
Agathe
Magdalena Węgielnik
Piano
Linnhe Robertson
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Le nozze di Figaro
Premiere: 1786, Vienna
Act 1 Scene 2: Recit, Aria, Recit, Duet (in Italian)
Marcellina needs her former employer and noted lawyer Bartolo’s help in her lawsuit against her beloved Figaro - she is running out of time, for this is Figaro’s wedding day and her contract states that if he cannot repay her the money he owes, he must marry Marcellina instead. It’s a very odd desire - Figaro is old enough to be Marcellina’s son! Bartolo agrees to help her, looking forward to getting his revenge on Figaro for past grievances. Susanna (Figaro’s bride-to-be) enters and is stopped short when she overhears Marcellina gossiping about her, implying Susanna is having an affair with their employer, the Count. They pretend to be civil for as long as they possibly can but soon start insulting each other.
Bartolo
Saul Rothwell
Marcellina
Iona Woods
Susanna
Júlia Guix i Estrada
Piano
Linnhe Robertson
Jules Massenet
Werther
Premiere: 1892, Vienna
Act 3 Scene 1 (in French)
Charlotte, a young married woman, is home alone on Christmas Eve, obsessively reading and re-reading the letters sent to her by Werther, a young and unstable poet who loves her. As the scene begins, her younger sister Sophie arrives, busy with Christmas plans. She rapidly becomes concerned for Charlotte’s mental state, and tries to rouse her from her depression. Charlotte explains that she needs to weep because the tears you don’t cry cause a person’s heart irreparable harm. Sophie, now profoundly alarmed, implores her sister to come to the family home for Christmas. Charlotte remembers that she and Werther had made a tentative arrangement to meet on Christmas Day. She bids farewell to her sister, potentially for the last time.
Sophie
Borbála Gunyits-Kenesey
Charlotte
Isabella Dawson
Piano
Linnhe Robertson
Giuseppe Verdi
Falstaff
Premiere: 1893, Milan
Act 1 Scene 2 extract (in Italian)
Two respectable (but merry) wives who live in Windsor, Alice Ford and Meg Page, have both received love letters from the seductively rotund knight, Sir John Falstaff. They compare the letters and find, to their dismay, that they are identical. Together with Alice’s daughter Nanetta and the local pub landlady, Mistress Quickly, they plot elaborate revenge on the naughty knight.
Meg Page
Iona Woods
Alice Ford
Sophie Whelan
Nanetta
Lily McNeil
Mistress Quickly
Tabitha Jane Smart
Piano
Linnhe Robertson
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Le nozze di Figaro
Act 2 Scene 2 (in Italian)
The young nobleman Cherubino has been conscripted into the army by the Count, much to his horror. He comes to say farewell to his beautiful godmother, the Countess, with whom he is in love (very inappropriately) and is made by Susanna to sing the Countess a song about his confusions about love and desire, a song he has written himself. The love song awakens some not-so-dormant feelings between him and the neglected Countess, who has been made distraught by her husband the Count’s attempted seduction of Susanna, her valued maid and confidante, a seduction Cherubino overheard and the reason he is being sent away. They all set into motion a plan engineered by Figaro, Susanna’s vengeful fiancé, to catch the Count in a honey trap by dressing Cherubino as a girl to tempt the Count and thus catch him in the act of adultery. Left alone, Cherubino and the Countess begin to act upon their feelings. Then the Count knocks on the door....
Countess
Nora Ervik
Susanna
Júlia Guix i Estrada
Cherubino
Molly Baker
Piano
Linnhe Robertson
Benjamin Britten
The Rape of Lucretia
Premiere: 1946, Glyndebourne
Act 1 Scene 2 (in English)
Ancient Rome: observed by two narrators from our modern age, the noblewoman Lucretia spends an evening in the domestic tasks of spinning, sewing and folding with her two faithful servants Bianca and Lucia: the essential tasks (but forgotten to history) tasks that women have always undertaken. The female narrator introduces them all: Lucretia is missing her husband Collatinus, who is away fighting a war; Bianca regards Lucretia as a daughter and only wants her to be happy; Lucia idolises Lucretia and wants to be just like her. Lucretia thinks she hears a knock at the door but nobody is there. She just wants this stupid war to be over. They fold linen, a scene of domestic calm before the storm.
Female Chorus
Sophie Whelan
Lucretia
Isabella Dawson
Bianca
Tabitha Jane Smart
Lucia
Lana Ben Halim
Male Chorus (silent)
Luis Weidlich
Piano
Niall Townley
Gian Carlo Menotti
The Old Maid and the Thief
Radio Premiere: 1939, NBC
Stage Premiere: 1941, Philadelphia
Act 1 Scene 1 (in English)
Miss Todd, an older unmarried woman, and her younger maid, Laetitia are entertaining the similarly unmarried spinster Miss Pinkerton to an afternoon tea. The two older women exchange gossip and agree many times that the weather is awful – but that seems to indicate a deeper unhappiness and need in the women. Bob, a wandering hobo, knocks at the back door. Laetitia is much taken by Bob’s beauty, and convinces Miss Todd to let him stay.
Miss Todd
Iona Woods
Miss Pinkerton
Lily McNeil
Laetitia
Borbála Gunyits-Kenesey
Bob
Ambrose Chiu
Piano
Niall Townley
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Le nozze di Figaro
Act 3 Scenes 1–2: Recit and Duet (in Italian)
At the urging of the Countess, who is keen to teach her husband the Count a lesson, Susanna approaches the Count on a pretext and makes clear to him that she is in fact available to become his lover that very night after she marries Figaro. The Count is astounded at her promise to meet him later – in the morning she firmly rejected him, now she says she wants him? On her wedding day? It seems too good to be true so the Count repeatedly asks for confirmation. Susanna becomes more upset at the deception, begging the audience’s forgiveness for the lie. The Count is over the moon.
Susanna
Júlia Guix i Estrada
Count
Charles Brocklebank
Piano
Linnhe Robertson
Johann Strauss II
Die Fledermaus
Premiere: 1874, Vienna
Act 2 Party Scene: Aria, Aria, Duet, Ensemble, linked by dialogues (in English)
Gabriel Von Eisenstein, a Viennese man-about-town, is meant to report to prison to serve a short sentence for assaulting a court official. Instead he has been persuaded by his good friend Falke to first attend a lavish party (disguised as a French Marquis), a party given by the eccentric and decadent Prince Orlofsky. Eisenstein is excited, promises have been made of free food and free love. In fact, Falke is after revenge for a terrible humiliation inflicted on him by Eisenstein a few years before. Falke has thickened the plot by also inviting Eisenstein’s maid, Adele (pretending just for the night to be an upper-class actress), the prison governor Frank (also disguised as a French nobleman for reasons he doesn’t understand) and Eisenstein’s wife, Rosalinda (disguised as a mysterious Hungarian Countess). Prince Orlofsky explains how he deals with his guests and how he expects them to behave; Adele and Eisenstein recognise each other but cannot reveal each other’s identitities, Adele outwitting her employer; Eisenstein and Frank (who are meeting for the first time) convince each other they are in fact French: Eisenstein attempts to seduce the Hungarian Countess with a tried and tested technique but she outwits him. The sordid story of Falke’s humiliation is recounted by Eisenstein and we learn why the opera is named ‘The Bat’. Everyone sings in praise of Love.
Ida
Júlia Guix i Estrada
Adele
Molly Baker
Gabriel Von Eisenstein
Ambrose Chiu
Dr Falke
Saul Rothwell
Prince Orlofsky
Tabitha Jane Smart
Rosalinda
Nora Ervik
Ivan
Luis Weidlich
Party Guests played by other members of the company
Piano
Linnhe Robertson
Dialogue
John Ramster
Forthcoming Events
Cantata Project with Academy of Ancient Music
13 November 2025
Milton Court Concert Hall
Harpsichordist James Johnstone leads Guildhall Historical Performance students in an intimate programme of music for voice and continuo from around the turn of the eighteenth century, joined by vocalists from the Academy of Ancient Music.
Songs at Six: Postcards from Italy
25 November 2025
Milton Court Concert Hall
Eugene Asti leads this Songs at Six recital of songs with an Italian connection by composers including Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Brahms and others.
Autumn Opera Scenes
27, 28 November & 1, 2 December 2025
Silk Street Theatre
Rising opera stars perform a dynamic mix of classic and modern scenes with piano accompaniment.
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