Armonico Consort
Evening
Tuesday
27 June 2023
18:30
St Jude-on-the-Hill
Christopher Monks
Opera Night with Armonico Consort
Christopher Monks conductor
Eloise Irving and Hannah Fraser-Mackenzie sopranos
William Towers countertenor and alto
Ben Thapa tenor
Alex Jones bass
Giovanni Pergolesi Stabat Mater with Eloise Irving soprano and William Towers countertenor
Henry Purcell Dido and Aeneas with Eloise Irving soprano, William Towers alto, Hannah Fraser-Mackenzie soprano, Ben Thapa tenor and Alex Jones bass
Armonico Consort is renowned for its inspiring concerts and imaginative education programme.
Tonight’s programme features Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Pergolesi’s Stabat mater is a transcendently beautiful and deeply personal musical meditation on suffering and redemption, written by the 26-year-old composer as he himself lay dying. Dido and Aeneas, performed at St Jude's with minimal staging, is a Baroque operatic treat populated by witches, drunken sailors and spurned lovers. The aria known as Dido's Lament is arguably the saddest piece of music ever written. It is an outpouring of melancholic beauty possibly unsurpassed in all opera. It is played annually at the Cenotaph during the National Service of Rememberance and inspired Annie Lennox to record a version.
Link to the artist's own website: https://www.armonico.org.uk
Supported by the Edwards Family Foundation