The Society aims to involve as many students as possible not only in the running and organisation, but also from the creative side of things (set design, tech, stage management). As far as possible we like to involve students in the direction and musical direction, although this is sometimes difficult with the latter as many students have little experience of opera. This is why we try where possible to have a young professional directors and musical directors taking overall responsibility for the production. The opportunity to work with professional artists is invaluable experience for our members, provides a richer final production for the audience, and helps further young professionals’ career paths.

Our production of The Rake’s Progress (Stravinsky) in 2003 saw a shift in the reputation of ESO. As The Herald said “…at no point did they seem to have taken on more than they could handle…”. And in 2009 our production of La Clemenza di Tito directed by the wonderful Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones received our best reviews yet, with a comment from the Scotsman nationally recognising our ‘wealth of outstanding young singing talent’. Our premiere production of Julian Wagstaff’s opera The Turing Test on the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe was a sell-out success, becoming one of the hottest tickets on the Fringe. The production also received excellent reviews in the national and theatre press. Following on from this, in 2009 we decided to undertake another Fringe show, a fully-staged production of Karl Orff’s Carmina Burana, devised by fantastic director Antonia Alonzo.

“Edinburgh Studio Opera deliver a solid and vastly entertaining production of this fantastical tale, effectively communicating its conflicting themes of comedy, love and tragedy whilst paying tribute to its unique and distinctive qualities.”…

“Edinburgh Studio Opera are well-renowned and considered to be an extremely competent company, and with productions such as ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ it is easy to understand why. Not only does everybody involved dedicate themselves to the success of the show, but the company itself are committed to performing not just popular classics but also reviving and introducing older and newer productions alike. ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ is an enthralling show with many commendable attributes, and it is well-worth supporting and going to see.”

- www.thepublicreviews.com

27th February, 1st, 2nd and 3rd March 2010

The Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, 7.30pm

Production team:

• Director: Nicholas Bone
• Musical Director: Nicholas Fletcher
• Assistant Director: George Ransley
• Producer: Nick Morris

Cast:

• Forester – Philip Smith (27th Feb, 1st, 2nd March), Alex Knox (3rd March)
• Forester’s Wife – Anna Churchill
• Schoolmaster – Francis Powlesland
• Parson – Gareth McGuigan
• Haraschta, the Poacher – Jerome Knox
• Pasek, the Innkeeper – Andrew Bennett
• Mrs. Pasek – Laura Reading
• Franzl – Colleen Nicoll
• Seppl – Meghan Ghent

• Vixen – Louise Alder
• Fox – Suzanne McGrath
• Young Vixen – Julie Moote
• Dog – Olivia Nathan
• Cock – Laura Reading
• Headhen – Colleen Nicoll
• Cricket – Lusanda Donnelly
• Grasshopper – Katie Tobin
• Frog – Naomi Baker
• Woodpecker – Julia Fuchs
• Mosquito – Andrew Bennett
• Badger – Jerome Knox
• Owl – Colleen Nicoll
• Jay – Lusanda Donnelly

Hens, Fox Cubs, Forest Animals:

• Naomi Baker
• Andrew Bennett
• Lusanda Donnelly
• Julia Fuchs
• Meghan Ghent
• Emily Goad
• Alice Hunter
• Marta LisbetLoman
• Tim Martin
• Gareth McGuigan
• Emma Middleton
• Amelia Smith
• Katie Tobin

What is often viewed as a Czech version of Shakespeare’s masterpiece ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Leoš Janáček composed The Cunning Little Vixen by turning a serial comic strip in a 1920s local newspaper into one of his most touching and inventive operas. The ingenious story tells the adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears set in a world populated by humans as well as forest and barnyard animals.

This wonderful opera is a masterful amalgam of operatic dialogue, songs, chorus, wordless singing, ballet, mime, and orchestral interludes. He combines the mythic, the tragic and the comic, creating a philosophical reflection on the cycle of life and death. It is one of the 20th century’s most imaginative excursions into a fantasy.

Synopsis:

Act 1

In the forest, the animals and insects are playing and dancing around. The Forester enters and lies down against a tree for a nap. A curious Vixen Cub inquisitively chases a frog right into the lap of the surprised forester who forcibly takes her home as a pet. Time passes (in the form of an orchestral interlude) and we see the Vixen, now grown to a young adult, tied up in the forester’s yard with the conservative old dachshund. Fed up with life in confinement, the vixen chews through her rope, attacks the chickens, and hops the fence to freedom.

Act 2

The vixen takes over a badger’s home and kicks him out. In the inn, the pastor, forester, teacher and schoolmaster drink and talk about their mutual infatuation with the gypsy girl Terynka. The drunken schoolmaster leaves the inn and mistakes a sunflower that the vixen is hiding behind for Terynka and confesses his devotion to her. The forester, also on his way home, sees the vixen and fires two shots at her, sending her running. Later, the vixen, coming into her womanhood, meets a charming boy fox, and they retire to the badger’s home. An unexpected pregnancy and a forest full of gossipy creatures necessitate their marriage, which rounds out the act.

Act 3

The poacher Harasta is engaged to Terynka and is out hunting in preparation for their marriage. He sets a fox trap, which the numerous vixen cubs mock. Harasta, watching from a distance, shoots and kills the vixen, sending her children running. At Harasta’s wedding, the forester sees the vixen’s fur, which Harasta gave to Terynka as a wedding present, and flees to the forest to reflect. He returns to the place where he met the vixen, and sits at the tree grieving the loss of both the vixen and Terynka. His grief grows until, just as in the beginning of the opera, a frog unexpectedly jumps in his lap, the grandson of the one who did so in act one. This reassurance of the cycle of death leading to new life gives his heart a deep peace.

About the opera:

According to Janáček’s servant, Marie Stejskalová, it was her laughing at the newspaper cartoons of the adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears that drew her master to the subject of Příhody Lišky Bystroušky. The popular newspaper Lidové noviny had commissioned Rudolf Tĕsnohlídek to write a novel to be serialised, which was to be based around a series of drawings by Stanislav Lolek telling the tale of the adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears.

Tĕsnohlídek’s novel became the basis for the libretto. Janáček began work by meeting with the author and beginning a study of animals. With this understanding of the characters involved, his own 70 years of life experience, and an undying, unrequited love for the much younger, married Kamila Stösslová, he began work on the opera. Writing his own libretto, he transformed himself into the forester, Kamila into the vixen and Terynka and the originally comedic cartoon into a philosophical reflection on the cycle of life and death by including the death of the vixen. As with other operas by older composers, this late opera shows a deep understanding of life leading to a return to simplicity.

Janáček moves away from pure traditionalism by pioneering a fantastic musical language for the forest, based on his ‘notebook’ of animal sounds and a bitter sweet lyricism for the Vixen and the Fox. These stylistic innovations are married with a moving pantheistic close where the Forester realises, in one of Janáček’s most tender passages that nature has a cyclical basis, which goes much beyond the traditional mirrors of the fairy-tale opera genre, such as found in Dvořák’s Rusalka. It has, unsurprisingly received a large number of performances across the world.

Despite the vixen’s death at the end of the work, it is arguably Janáček’s lightest opera, and musically it stands in contrast to the often brutally serious nature of operas such as Jenůfa and Káťa Kabanová.

Book now: email secretary@edinburghstudioopera.com or 07551932767

St. Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh

Singers: Louise Alder, Suzanne McGrath

Programme to include: Strauss Der Rosenkavalier -Presentation of the Rose, Duets from La Clemenza di Tito and Cosi Fan Tutte, Arias from many well loved operas and beautiful songs by Debussy, Strauss and Berg.

Reid Concert Hall

£5 (£3 concessions)

Tickets available from October 1st from secretary@edinburghstudioopera.com or 07551 932767.

Programme

Colleen Nicoll, with Fraser Wright

• Un moto di gioia (Le Nozze di Figaro) – Mozart
• Endless Pleasure – Handel

Anna Churchill, with Fraser Wright

• Nina- Pergolesi
• Un moto di gioia (Le Nozze di Figaro) – Mozart

Laura Reading, with Chris Charles

• S’altro che lacrime (La Clemenza di Tito) – Mozart
• It was a lover – Dring

Julie Moote, with Chris Charles

• L’ultima canzone- Tosti
• Nell – Fauré

INTERVAL

Naomi Baker, with Chris Charles

• Nuits d’étoiles – Debussy
• All mein’ Gedanken – Strauss

Catriona Morison, with Nick Fletcher

• Parto, parto (La Clemenza di Tito) – Mozart
• Chacun a son gout (Die Fledermaus) – J. Strauss II

Suzanne McGrath, with Nick Fletcher

• Donde lieta (La Boheme) – Puccini
• L’amerò, sarò constante (Il re pastore) – Mozart

Louise Alder, with Nick Fletcher

• Durch Zärtlichkeit (Die Entfürhung aus dem Serail)- Mozart
• Depuis le jour (Louise) – Charpentier

Arlene Rolph

Arlene Rolph studied at Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, received a distinction in the Postgraduate Opera course at the Royal College of Music and attended the National Opera Studio in the 1999/2000 season. She is a Kathleen Ferrier Award prize winner.

For Scottish Opera she created the role of Jane Claremont in the world première of Monster by Sally Beamish where she has also sung Dorabella/Cosi fan tutti, Irene in Tamerlano, and Hansel/Hansel and Gretel for Scottish Opera Go Round. For Glyndebourne Festival she has sung Cherubino/Figaro, and for the tour Annio/La Clemenza di Tito. From 2003 to 2005 Arlene Rolph was Associate Artist at Welsh National Opera where she sang Rosina /Il barbiere di Siviglia,Cherubino/Le nozze di Figaro and Varvara Katya Kabanova. For English Touring Opera she sangComposer/Ariadne auf Naxos and for Classical Opera Company extracts of Idamante/Idomeneo and Giacinta/La finta semplice and Annio in a concert performance of Gluck’sLa Clemenza di Tito at the 2005 Lufthansa Festival. In 2007 she sang the title role in a new production of Philipe Boesmans’ chamber opera Julie for Music Theatre Wales at the Lindbury Theatre, ROH and on tour. For Oper Frankfurt she has sung Speranza and Messagiera/Orfeo and Annio. At the Staatsoper Berlin she sang Speranza/Orfeo with Rene Jacobs, also in concert in Vienna.

Arlene Rolph’s concert repertoire includes Bach St Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor, Mozart Requiem and Mass in C Minor, Monteverdi Vespers, Handel Messiah and Judas Maccabeus, Vivaldi Magnificat, Duruflé Requiem, Mendelssohn Elijah, Sibelius Christmas Songs, Elgar The Dream of Gerontius and Tippett Child of our Time. She has worked for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St John’s Smith Square and at the Leith Hill Music Festival as well as many choral societies. Other engagements include a recital at St David’s Hall, Cardiff and in December 2006 she took part in ROH2 OperaGenesis workshops on a new opera by James Barrett at Covent Garden.

In 2008 Arlene Rolph will return to Frankfurt to sing Bianca/The Rape of Lucretia, and will sing Kitchen Boy in Rusalka for Grange Park Opera.

St Cecila’s Hall, Edinburgh

Production team:

Director: Antonia Alonzo
Musical Director: Susannah Wapshott
Assistant Musical Director: Nicholas Fletcher

Cast:

The Magic Flute, Mozart

• Tamino –  Francis Powlesland
• Papageno – Jerome Knox
• 1^st Lady – Colleen Nicoll
• 2^nd Lady –  Laura Reading
• 3^rd Lady –  Debbie Miller
• Papagena –  Julie Moote
• 1^st boy –  Lusanda Donnelly
• 2^nd boy – Julia Fuchs
• 3^rd boy – Meghan Ghent

L’elisir d’amore, Donizetti

• Nemorino – Jonathan Cooke
• Adina – Louise Alder
• Bel Core –  Owain Brown

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Britten

• Titania – Louise Alder
• Oberon – Olivia Nathan
• Peaseblossom – Naomi Baker
• Cobweb –  Julia Fuchs
• Moth –  Meghan Ghent
• Mustardseed – Lusanda Donnelly

Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss

• Sophie – Louise Alder
• Marschallin – Suzanne McGrath
• Octavian – Susan McNaught
• Faninal – Jerome Knox

The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart

• Countess – Suzanne McGrath
• Susanna – Julie Moote
• Cherubino –  Colleen Nicoll

Dialogues des Carmelites, Poulenc

• Blanche –  Colleen Nicoll
• Constance –  Naomi Baker
• Mother Gerald –  Olivia Nathan
• Sister Claire – Debbie Miller
• Sister Antoine – Martalisbet Loman
• Sister Catherine – Katie Tobin
• Sister Felicity – Laura Reading
• Sister Gertrude – Emma Middleton
• Sister Alice – Anna Churchill
• Sister Valentine – Amelia Smith
• Sister Ann of the Cross – Julia Fuchs
• Sister Martha – Suzanne McGrath
• Sister St. Charles –  Lusanda Donnelly

Tickets available from October 1st from secretary@edinburghstudioopera.com or 07551 932767.

Alison House, Nicolson Square, Edinburgh

Open to any amateur singers interested in opera in the area of Scotland.

Please prepare two contrasting arias or songs. Auditions are for any or all of the below:

• Opera Scenes
• Recital Series
• Opera Masterclass
• Cunning Little Vixen

To arrange an audition time please contact our secretary on secretary@edinburghstudioopera.com or 07751932767.

St Andrew’s and St George’s Church, Edinburgh

FRINGE SUCCESS!

“Musically it is superb… with impeccable rhythm and a sublime blend… this really is a vocally stunning performance” – THE HERALD, 2009

Please see the Press page for more reviews of our fantastically popular 2009 Fringe production of Carmina Burana.

Following the Fringe sell-out success of the Turing Test in 2007, Edinburgh Studio Opera returns to the Fringe Festival presenting a dramatic new staging of Orff’s powerful masterpiece, Rat-Pack style. As the roulette wheel spins, fortunes are found and fates decided.

Production Team:

Director: Antonia Alonzo
Musical Director: Susannah Wapshott
Assistant Music Director: Nicholas Fletcher
Production Manager: Oli Dimelow

Cast:

Naomi Baker, Alexia Betancourt, Joe Doody*, Rosha Fitzhowle, Jerome Knox, Richard Latham*, Henry Manning*, Ruaridh Maxwell, Debbie Miller, Julie Moote*, Catriona Morison, Claire Nicoll, Colleen Nicoll Aimee Penman, Laura Reading*, Jack Swanton, Katy Thomson, Ben Weaver*

* denotes principal cast

Director’s Note – by Antonia Alonzo

Carmina Burnana is one of the most renowned pieces of 20^th century classical music.  The famous “O Fortuna” is recognised by everyone from its commercial use in films, adverts; even the X Factor.  Yet, there is so much more to this work than the dramatic scene which encapsulates it .

Carl Orff composed this scenic cantata in 1935/6 after discovering Scheller’s edition of Carmina Burana, the “Songs of Benediktebeurn.  A Latin codex of 13^th century songs was found at a monastery at the foothills of the Bavarian Alps and was published by Scheller in 1847.  The songs are a collection of poems and songs by jesters and minstrels from France, Germany, England and Italy, and vary in language accordingly. These poems differ in theme, covering all aspects of human life: the defects of the church, decline of society, and the power of money. There are also lighter lyrics about love and spring; dancing and drinking songs, which would have originally been set to music.

Orff saw the potential in poems and decided to create a theatrical work, involving gesture, song and drama. He had created a concept called “theatrum mundi”, where music, speech and movement were interlinked, and this theatrical concept is visible in the whole of his work. When the work was originally staged in Frankfurt in 1937 the production used dance, mime and vivid designs to bring to life the work. Nowadays Carmina Burana is sung as a cantata in concert halls, although there have been ballet and circus productions too, which closer reflect Orff’s original intentions.

Having sung Carmina Burana at school I was struck by the drama and theatricality of the music, and saw the potential for staging it.  When I examined the lyrics to the poems, the themes seemed very relevant: love, dissolution, greed, corruption, gluttony and loss of control.  I also discovered drew characters from the lyrics, from lovers to priests, enabling me to create a narrative for the work.

The setting of the production in 1960s Las Vegas seemed appropriate. Not only for the hedonism and immorality the city represents, but also for the fast glamour of the Ratpack era. The parallel between the wheel of fortune and the roulette wheel is obvious, and more poignant at the moment with our lack of control over the fate of our money! Hopefully this production will be more in keeping with Orff’s vision, where the poems come to life through songs, choruses and dance.