Christmas Double Bill
"The Selfish Giant" and "Amahl & the Night Visitors"
Tour Dates for Christmas 2007
November 23rd - 24th at 7pm
Waddesdon Manor, Near Aylesbury, Bucks.
Box Office: 01296 653226
Price: £14.50, Child £9.00
December 1st at 7.30pm
Abingdon Baptist Church, Ock Street, Abingdon.
Box Office: 01865 305305
Price: £15/£12.50, Under 18s £5.00
December 2nd at 2.30pm
Witney Methodist Church, High Street, Witney.
Box Office: 01865 305305
Price: £15/£12.50, Under 18s £5.00
December 15th at 7.30pm
Sulgrave Manor, Near Banbury.
Box Office: 01865 305305
Price: £15/£12.50, Under 18s £5.00
December 20th - 21st at 7.30pm
Hollywell Music Hall, Oxford.
Box Office: 01865 305305
Price: £15/£12.50, Under 18s £5.00
The Selfish Giant
A chamber opera with music and lyrics by Deborah Rose
Additional lyrics for ‘Frost’ song and script by Rebecca Moseley-Morgan.
I started work on The Selfish Giant in May of this year. It was my intention to create a chamber opera with a Christian message that left audiences with a feeling of well being as Menotti's Amahl does so wonderfully.
Oscar Wilde’s heart-warming story of the ungenerous and disagreeable giant’s metamorphosis from tyrannical enemy to friend and patriarch is a thoroughly compassionate and beautiful one. The idea of a divine transformation executed via the innocence and vulnerability of children, with Jesus appearing as a little boy, evokes the utmost pathos in the reader.
I was so inspired by the subject matt er that melodic themes came thick and fast, and much of the work was completed within a month.
Musically, the ideas are drawn from my major infl uences, the English sacred and secular choral music repertoire – Tallis, Gibbons and Purcell through to Holst, Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten – and the English folksong tradition.
My love of popular music is a feature also, and pianistic accompaniment patterns reminiscent of Elton John together with melodic touches of Genesis, Pink Floyd and the like, plus the odd jazz chord progression, all make up the musical menagerie!
I wanted the children’s joy and exuberance to mark the beginning and end of the opera. Various musical moods are explored through the changing seasons and weather patt erns. Snow brings a bleak mysteriousness, Frost, an otherworldly impishness, the North Wind blows all blusterous in fast and furious 6/8, while hail hammers in pesante ostinato quavers. I liked the idea of gentle Spring, as a recurring theme signifying rebirth and hope, being instrumental in the giant's epiphany – it occurs as a madrigal, as birdsong and as a folk-style ballad.
The choruses are musically challenging for young people with three and four-part close harmony and melodic lines calling for very sustained singing. Rebecca Moseley-Morgan’s creation of the ‘Frost family’ personified the wintry elements perfectly, and her colourful script paints a picture of a timeless Eden where happiness and good prevail.
Songs:
1. Let us play
2. Giant's entrance
3. How happy we were
4. Spring has forgotten this garden
5. Frost
6. The North Wind will blow
7. Hail!
8. Madrigal
9. Spring has come at last
10. Kyrie Eleison
11. Knock down the wall
12. We’ll dance the maypole round
13. Where is he?
14. Age is upon him
15. O, my child
16. O, for a closer walk with God
17. Celebrate this joyful day
Stage Director: Rebecca Moseley-Morgan
Music Director: Deborah Rose
Accompanist: Emma Lowe
2nd Pianist: Michiyo Machida, Robert Legge
Cast:
ACORN: Benedict Goodall
BORA: Bethan Rose
BROOK: Daniel Shackleton
CLEMMIE: Rebecca Goldie
CONSTANCE: Amber Carter
CRYSTAL: Lydia Shaw
DAISY: Becky Barkham
FROST: Hugo Tucker
GIANT: Nick Gee
HAIL: Thomas Edmonds
JOSHUA: James Bailey
PETER: Emma Shepherd
POPPY: Lotti e Tucker
ROSE: Rhianna Johnson
SKY: Francesca Davie
SNOW: Vanessa Woodward
SPARKLE: Gemma Pizzey
VIOLET: Lucy Hole
Production Team:
Repetiteurs: Michiyo Machida, Lyndall Dawson
Lighting Designer: John Alcock
Stage Management: Mike Woodward, Sam Belk, BenjaminEdmonds
Costumes: Wacky Wardrobes
Make up: Heather Calvert-Fisher, Pippa Allen
Photography: Vanessa Woodward
Film Crew: Radley College Video Unit
Amahl and the Night Visitors
By Menotti
The tender, heart warming story of Amahl & the Night Visitors, is one of the most popular of American operas. It is performed internationally every Christmas season and remains one of the most frequently performed operas of the 20th century.
Expressly written for television it premiered on NBC on Christmas Eve, 1951 and was repeated thereafter for sixteen Christmas seasons. It has become an annual tradition for many in the US to view this magical musical production featuring the poor crippled shepherd boy, his devoted mother and the knock on the door which changed their lives forever.
Amahl & the Night Visitors was written by the Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti who as a young boy became lame. The doctors had no cure for him. He was taken to be blessed at the holy Sanctuary of Sacro Monte and thereafter, miraculously, the young Menotti was cured of lameness.
In 1951 when NBC commissioned the 40 year old Menotti to write a Christmas opera he could not come up with a subject. He despaired until one day, while strolling through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he chanced upon and was inspired by the famous painting “The Adorati on of the Magi.” The idea of the Night Visitors was born and in less than two months Menotti finished the score. He wrote into it some of the magical sounds he remembered from his youth during St. Nicholas's festive visits to his mountain village in Italy where he was born.
Less than an hour in length the one act opera “Amahl” with its beautiful score and touching libretto (the opera is sung in English) is appealing to all ages and musical backgrounds. It was written specifically for young imaginations which can easily relate to a child with a head full of dreams. It remains an inspiring story of how faith, charity, unselfish love and good deeds can work miracles.
Stage Director: Rebecca Moseley-Morgan
Music Director: Deborah Rose
Accompanist: Emma Lowe
Cast:
AMAHL, A Shepherd Boy: James Allen
MOTHER: Elizabeth Cameron
BALTHAZAR, a king: Thomas Kennedy / Russell Matthews
KASPAR, a king: Hugo Tucker / James Lonsdale
MELCHOIR, a king: Nick Gee
PAGE: Hugo Tucker / James Lonsdale
SHEPHERDS: Ensemble (see The Selfish Giant cast)
Production Team:
Repetiteurs: Michiyo Machida, Lyndall Dawson, Peter Cowdrey
Lighting Designer: John Alcock
Stage Management: Mike Woodward, Sam Belk, Benjamin
Edmonds
Costumes: Wacky Wardrobes
Make Up: Heather Calvert-Fisher, Pippa Allen
Photography: Vanessa Woodward
Film Crew: Radley College Video Unit
