Handel - Susanna

Sunday 29 July at 7.30pm
Handel: With Care – Susanna
Hilary Finch The Times ‘Pick of the Year’ Radio 3
Tickets £25/£22 concs

The Holburne, in collaboration with Iford Arts, presents a concert of some of Handel’s most exquisite arias from the opera/oratorio Susanna, retelling a tense and fast-paced drama from the Apocrypha of Susanna and the Elders. Performed by Iford Young Artists under the direction of Christian Curnyn and members of the Early Opera Orchestra.

Iford Arts is dedicated to promoting the careers of promising young professional musicians. Alongside acclaimed opera productions the company runs a cover scheme for a select number of young professional singers who we are delighted to welcome to the Holburne.

The concert will be based on music from the opera conducted from the harpsichord by Britain’s renowned Christian Curnyn, an inspiring young Handelian who is rapidly building a truly international career as a conductor. With his Early Opera Company he is also creating an acclaimed series of recordings by Chandos of Handel and other baroque masters.

Handel’s Susanna is sometimes described as a ’nasty little shocker’. The story of Susanna and the Elders from the Apocrypha became a popular subject for renaissance artists and audiences, who focussed particularly on the voyeuristic scene of the two lustful Elders spying hopefully on a naked Susanna as she cools herself in the river. The drama builds as she angrily repudiates them, is brought to trial on a trumped up charge of adultery, is sentenced to death but exonerated through the wisdom of the clever young future prophet, Daniel.

It is beautiful, mature Handel. Written in English, originally for concert performance, Handel  imbues his work with all the profound and intensely moving qualities necessary to opera. Though often described as a ‘chamber opera’ it is rarely staged. We offer you the chance to hear one of our country’s most distinguished Handelians, the international conductor and harpsichordist Christian Curnyn, appearing at Iford for his twelfth season together with a small period ensemble from his acclaimed and much recorded Early Opera Company . He, alongside the director Pia Furtado will bring to the Holburne museum for this concert a foursome of rising young singers, Carris Jones, Elaine Tate, Andrew Boushell and Oliver Hunt, the Iford Young Artists for 2013, who will sing key arias and scenes from the opera.

Sponsored by Mr & Mrs I Hay Davison

"With Christian Curnyn's conducting so vibrantly alive to every nuance of Handel's score [Rodelinda] there was an immediacy to the action that was wholly involving …… But it is the outstanding playing of Curnyn's Early Opera Company orchestra that underpins the evening, dynamic and heart-rending and as fresh as if Handel had composed it last week." The Guardian

To book Tel 01225 388569