Mostly Mezzo Mondays: Fleming, Crebassa, de Bique, Prina (x2), Imbrailo, Davies; Vivaldi and A. Scarlatti operas
Mostly Mezzo Mondays: a recurring (though not weekly) feature where, on Monday nights, I blog a list of the upcoming broadcasts that have caught my eye on World Concert Hall. My interests: baroque vocal music, art song recitals, and a list of favorite singers.
I’ve got a place in my heart for the Beaune Festival after attending a few performances there last summer. A performance of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Mitridate Eupatore from this year’s festival is scheduled for deferred broadcast. There are a few names I recognize in the cast list—including Blandine Staskiewicz, who made a good impression when I saw her in last year’s festival—but most of my interest in this broadcast is in hearing “one of the finest of Scarlatti's operas” (if you take Wikipedia’s word for it). Wednesday, July 26 on France Musique (should be archived for a while after).
After this astonishing video of Jeanine de Bique made the rounds on Tumblr, I added her to my list of artists I keep an eye out for on World Concert Hall. Personally, I’d rather hear her as Handel’s Semele (please, o casting gods, pleeeeease) than as Mozart’s Annio but I’ll take what I can get. She appears in the Salzburg Clemenza along with Marianne Crebassa (Sesto), Golda Schultz (Vitellia), et al. Live broadcast Thursday, July 27 on Ö1.
Jacques Imbrailo only recently came to my attention in the small role of Horatio in Brett Dean’s Hamlet at Glyndebourne; it wasn’t quite enough for me to really make up my mind about him, but it’s encouraging to see him cast along with a couple of my established faves—Sonia Prina and Iestyn Davies—in a BBC Proms concert. To add to my interest, the programming appears to make an impassioned appeal for European unity: MacMillan’s European Requiem is to be followed by Beethoven’s Ninth. Live broadcast Sunday, July 30 on BBC Radio 3 (should be archived for a while after). This prom is also scheduled for live television broadcast on BBC Four, but only in-country viewers will have access to it.
Fans of Renée Fleming will want to hear her singing Michael Tilson Thomas’s settings of selections from the poems of Emily Dickinson at the Aspen Festival. Live broadcast Sunday, July 30 on Colorado Public Radio.
The day after her Proms appearance in London, the well-traveled Sonia Prina is also scheduled to take the title role in a performance of Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso in Apulia. Let’s hope the Rai Radio 3 sound engineering is better than it was when I tried to catch an obscure baroque opera broadcast from Turin. Live broadcast Monday, July 31 on Rai Radio 3.