Graupner opera 'Antiochus' among BEMF new season offerings
The Boston Early Music Festival has announced a raft of new programs for the 2008-09 season, including "Antiochus und Stratonica" by the German composer Christoph Graupner as the operatic centerpiece for its biennial festival, to take place in June 2009.
The organization unveiled plans to add chamber opera to its annual concert series, beginning with a semi-staged double bill this fall of John Blow's "Venus and Adonis" and Marc-Antoine Charpentier's "Actéon." Among the other 2008-09 offerings will be visits from the Collegium Vocale Gent as well as Hespèrion XXI, led by the Catalan gambist Jordi Savall.
For the Graupner opera, the festival and its executive director, Kathleen Fay, have recruited the same creative team that mounted its 2007 production of Lully's "Psyché," including the French director Gilbert Blin, who recently signed a six-year contract to become the organization's first stage director in residence. In addition to working on an annual chamber opera and the biennial festival production, he will collaborate with BEMF artistic codirectors Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs on the organization's long-range artistic planning as it expands its commitment to opera.
Based in Paris and Amsterdam, Blin is a Baroque theater specialist who has worked primarily in Europe. Among his recent projects have been collaborations with a Czech stage director on Mozart operas presented with reconstructions of their original sets and costumes.
Though BEMF has until now produced only one opera every other year, it has been in the forefront of work in the more controversial area of period stage direction. Its productions go as far as attempting to integrate authentic period gestures along with the period dance and costumes onstage. "BEMF is a laboratory" for cutting-edge work in this area, Blin said in a recent meeting with his colleagues at the BEMF offices in Cambridge. Stubbs and O'Dette argued that, in the same way the use of period instruments once struck many as strange or antiquated but is now largely accepted and even preferred in certain repertoire by large portions of the concert-going public, so too will audiences learn to appreciate period approaches to stagecraft.
Early-music fans will at least have more opportunities to be exposed to this rarefied approach via the new chamber opera series. BEMF also hopes to begin producing DVDs of its work and to step up its national and international touring. This fall, Blin will direct the Blow/Charpentier double bill of one-act operas (Nov. 29) in Jordan Hall, with O'Dette and Stubbs presiding over the BEMF Chamber Ensemble. The cast for that performance will include Amanda Forsythe, Tyler Duncan, and Aaron Sheehan. Costume designer Anna Watkins and choreographer Lucy Graham have already begun work on both the double bill and the mainstage Graupner production, slated for the Cutler Majestic Theatre (June 9-14, 2009) and the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center (June 19-21) in Great Barrington.
Written in 1708, the Graupner opera has not been performed since the 18th century, according to the festival. With a German and Italian libretto by Barthold Feind, "Antiochus und Stratonica" is set in ancient Persia and recounts the Plutarchian story of the Syrian prince desperately smitten with his stepmother. British soprano Julia Doyle will sing the role of Stratonica. Her Antiochus has not yet been announced.
The organization's regular season of concerts will open in the fall with the Collegium Vocale Gent (Oct. 18) led by fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout and Savall's Hespèrion XXI (Oct. 25) performing reconstructed instrumental dances from the time of Cervantes. The Venice Baroque Orchestra, under Andrea Marcon, returns (Jan. 17) with violin soloists Giuliano Carmignola and Viktoria Mullova. Boston's own Sarasa Ensemble will be presented (Feb. 17) with soprano Dominique Labelle and countertenor Michael Chance. Concerto Palatino, devoted to reviving interest in the cornetto and the baroque trombone, appears (Feb. 14) under Bruce Dickey. Violinist Petra Müllejans and Bezuidenhout, whose Mozart duo recital was a highlight of the concert offerings at last year's festival, return (March 21) with more Mozart sonatas. And the Tallis Scholars appear (April 3) for their annual performance on the BEMF series. In other news, BEMF will release its recording of Lully's "Psyché" this June on the CPO label.
More information: 617-661-1812, bemf.org.
