The Poisoned Kiss

Last updated

The Poisoned Kiss
Opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Librettist Evelyn Sharp
LanguageEnglish
Based on Richard Garnett's The Poison Maid and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter
Premiere
12 June 1936 (1936-06-12)

The Poisoned Kiss, or The Empress and the Necromancer is an opera in three acts by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The libretto, by Evelyn Sharp, is based on Richard Garnett's The Poison Maid and Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1844 short story Rappaccini's Daughter .

Contents

Performance history

The opera was completed in 1929, first performed by the Intimate Opera Company at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, United Kingdom, on 12 May 1936 (conducted by Cyril Rootham), and premiered in the United States on 21 April 1937 by the Juilliard Opera Theatre at the Juilliard School's theatre on Claremont Avenue. [1] The cast included Annamary Dickey as Angelica, Marvel Biddle as Tormentilla, Glenn Darwin as Gallanthus, Mary Frances Lehnerts as the Empress, David Otto as Dipsacus, Albert Gifford as Amaryllus, and Signe Gulbrandsen and Athena Pappas as the mediums. [2]

In 1968 a broadcast on Radio 3 replaced Sharp's dialogue with a linking narration by Ursula Vaughan Williams; conducted by Maurice Handford, showing "a real feeling for the score, keeping everything shapely, giving the tunes their head and allowing the many delightful touches in the orchestral core to make their full effect", the cast was led by Patricia Clark, Ann Hood, Ronald Dowd and John Heddle Nash. [3]

The Bronx Opera staged the work in January 2012. [4]

Roles

Roles, voice types, premiere cast
Role Voice type Premiere cast, 12 May 1936
Conductor: Cyril Rootham
Angelica soprano Margaret Field-Hyde
Tormentillasoprano Margaret Ritchie
Gallanthus baritone Geoffrey Dunn
Dipsacus bass Frederick Woodhouse
Empress Persicaria contralto Meriel St Clair
Amaryllus tenor Trefor Jones

Recording

A complete recording was made by Chandos in Brangwyn Hall, Swansea in 2003, with Pamela Helen Stephen (Angelica), Roderick Williams (Gallanthus), John Graham-Hall (Hob), Richard Suart (Gob), Mark Richardson (Lob), Neal Davies (Dipsacus), James Gilchrist (Amaryllus), Janice Watson (Tormentilla), and Anne Collins (Empress Persicaria), with the Adrian Partington Singers and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Richard Hickox. [5]

The overture had been recorded by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta under George Hurst in 1975, and by the Northern Sinfonia under Hickox in 1983.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opera Australia</span> Principal opera company in Australia

Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, New South Wales, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent at the Arts Centre Melbourne, where it is accompanied by Orchestra Victoria. In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, Victoria, attended by more than 294,000 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ralph Vaughan Williams</span> English composer (1872–1958)

Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.

The Juilliard School is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became the Juilliard School, named after its principal benefactor Augustus D. Juilliard.

Ralph Vaughan Williams dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to Arnold Bax.

A London Symphony is the second symphony that Ralph Vaughan Williams composed. The work is sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 2, though the composer did not designate that name for the work. First performed in 1914, the original score of this four-movement symphony was lost and subsequently reconstructed. Vaughan Williams continued revisions of the work into its final definitive form, which was published in 1936.

<i>Ormindo</i>

L'Ormindo is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Cavalli to an original Italian libretto by Giovanni Faustini. The manuscript score is held at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, while a copy of the original libretto has been digitized by the Library of Congress. The opera has set numbers with recitative, and is set in Anfa (Casablanca), in the Mauri kingdom of Fessa (Fez).

The Pilgrim's Progress is an opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams, based on John Bunyan's 1678 allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. The composer himself described the work as a 'Morality' rather than an opera. Nonetheless, he intended the work to be performed on stage, rather than in a church or cathedral. Vaughan Williams himself prepared the libretto, with interpolations from the Bible and also text from his second wife, Ursula Wood. His changes to the story included altering the name of the central character from 'Christian' to 'Pilgrim', so as to universalise the spiritual message.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Hickox</span> English conductor

Richard Sidney Hickox was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music.

Laura Claycomb is an American lyric coloratura soprano singer.

Jeffrey S. Carlson was an American Broadway, film, and television actor and singer, known for his role as the transgender character, Zoe Luper, on the long-running daytime soap opera All My Children.

<i>Sāvitri</i> (opera) Chamber opera

Sāvitri is a chamber opera in one act with music composed by Gustav Holst, his Opus 25, to his own libretto. The story is based on the episode of Savitri and Satyavan from the Mahābhārata, which was also included in Specimens of Old Indian Poetry and Idylls from the Sanskrit. The opera features three solo singers, a wordless female chorus, and a chamber orchestra of 12 musicians. Holst had made at least six earlier attempts at composing opera before arriving at Sāvitri.

Riders to the Sea is a short one-act opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams, based on the play of the same name by John Millington Synge. The composer completed the score in 1927, but it was not premiered until 1 December 1937, at the Royal College of Music, London. The opera remained largely the province of students and amateurs until it entered the repertoire of Sadler's Wells in 1953.

Sir John in Love is an opera in four acts by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The libretto, by the composer himself, is based on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and supplemented with texts by Philip Sidney, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher. The music deploys English folk tunes, including "Greensleeves". Originally titled The Fat Knight, the opera premiered at the Parry Opera Theatre, Royal College of Music, London, on 21 March 1929. Its first professional performance was on 9 April 1946 at Sadler's Wells Theatre.

Paul Ukena was an American operatic baritone and musical theatre actor who had an active career from the 1940s through the 1970s. After beginning his career entertaining American troops as a part of the Special Services during World War II, his first critical success was as the baritone soloist in the American premiere of Frederick Delius's Requiem in 1950. He was one of the founding members of the NBC Opera Theatre, a company he performed with throughout the 1950s in such productions as Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd and the world premiere of Norman Dello Joio's The Trial at Rouen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew McKinley</span> American opera singer

Andrew McKinley was an American operatic tenor, violinist, arts administrator, music educator, and school administrator. Although he mainly performed in the United States, he had an active international singing career with major opera companies and symphony orchestras from the 1940s through the 1960s. His repertoire spanned a wide range, from leading tenor parts to character roles.

Martha Lipton was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and music educator who is best known for her career performing at the Metropolitan Opera from 1944-1961. A native of New York City, she began her training as a vocalist with her mother who had a brief career as a concert soprano under the name Estelle Laiken. She later studied both privately and at the School of Musicianship for Singers, Inc and the Juilliard School. She made her professional concert debut while still a student in 1933 at Carnegie Hall, performing in a concert of light opera excerpts with the New York Light Opera Guild. In 1936 she began working as a church vocalist at both Riverside Church and Temple Emanu-El of New York.

Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE is a British baritone and composer.

This is a summary of 1936 in music in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annamary Dickey</span> American soprano and actress

Annamary Dickey, also known as Annamary Dickey Laue, was an American soprano and actress in operas, operettas, musicals, night clubs, and concerts who had an active performance career from the 1930s through the 1960s. She began her career as a regular performer with the Chautauqua Opera and the St. Louis Municipal Opera in the mid to late 1930s. In 1939 she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air which earned her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera (Met). She was a soprano in mainly secondary roles at the Met from 1939 to 1944; appearing in productions of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Massenet's Manon, Delibes' Lakmé, Charpentier's Louise, Bizet's Carmen, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Her most significant role at the Met was as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème. A strikingly beautiful woman with a passion for fashionable clothes, she gained the moniker the "Glamour Girl of the 'Met'" and headlined a fashion campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1945.

Geoffrey Thomas Dunn, usually referred to as Geoffrey Dunn, was an English tenor, actor, librettist, director and translator whose wide-ranging career encompassed opera and operetta, theatre and film.

References

  1. Olin Downes (22 April 1937). "Juilliard School Gives New Opera: Premiere of Poisoned Kiss by Vaughan Williams Is Offered by Students". The New York Times . p. 19.
  2. "Programs of the Week: Operas by Copland, Hindemith, Williams". The New York Times . 18 April 1937. p. 172.
  3. Kennedy, Michael. Poisoned Kiss. Radio 3, November 21. Opera , January 1969, Vol.20 No.1, p83-84.
  4. "Performances of The Poisoned Kiss, Bronx Opera Archived 2012-01-23 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 25 December 2011
  5. Vaughan Williams (The) Poisoned Kiss (review), Edward Greenfield, Gramophone online (published in magazine, January 2004), accessed 2 August 2024.