Guildhall School presents an opera double bill: Handel’s Aminta e Fillide and Blow’s Venus and Adonis

Monday 3, Wednesday 5, Friday 7, Monday 10 June 2018, 7pm
Milton Court Theatre

Aminta e Fillide
Music by George Frideric Handel

Venus and Adonis
Music by John Blow

Chad Kelly conductor
Victoria Newlyn director
Madeleine Boyd designer
Andrew May lighting designer

Cast

Aminta e Fillide

Harriet Burns (Aminta); Carmen Artaza (Fillide)

Venus and Adonis

Siân Dicker (Venus); Matthew Palmer/Andrew Hamilton (Adonis); Collin Shay (Cupid); Katherine McIndoe (Shepherdess); Damian Arnold (Shepherd)

Chorus: Josephine Lockwood; Manon Parry; Elsa Rosengren; Frederick Buchanan; Robert Martin; Josh Saunders; James Leadbeater; Aina Miyagi Magnell; Matina Tsaroucha; Charles Broad; Alaric Green; Leif Tse

The award-winning Opera department at Guildhall School presents a double bill of early operatic works exploring romantic love: pursuit and passion, happiness and heartbreak. Opening Monday 3 June for four performances the production is conducted by Chad Kelly and directed by Victoria Newlyn.

Handel’s pastoral cantata Aminta e Fillide was commissioned by Rome’s Academy of Arcadia when the composer was just 22, and follows Aminta on his campaign to woo the nymph, Fillide. The theme of Cupid’s arrow also runs through John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, an opera in three acts composed 25 years earlier for the court of King Charles II and considered by many to be the earliest known English opera.

Victoria Newlyn works as an actress, having trained at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and as a Movement and Drama teacher, specialising in working with singers.

She began her teaching career assisting and training with Mandy Demetriou, teaching movement on the Postgraduate Vocal Studies and Opera Courses at the Royal Academy of Music, and assisting at the National Opera Studio and the Royal Opera House.

Newlyn joined the staff at Guildhall School in 2005 and currently teaches movement and drama on the Opera Course. She also works with singers from undergraduate to postgraduate level, teaching drama, directing Opera Scenes programmes and creating performance projects in collaboration with other staff. Newlyn also leads performance studies and historical dance sessions for the Department of Historical Performance.

Choreography and movement direction includes Don Giovanni (Opera North), La Wally and Un ballo in maschera (Opera Holland Park), Le nozze di Figaro and The Rape of Lucretia (British Youth Opera), Die Walküre and The Rake’s Progress (St Endellion Festival), Ariodante (Cambridge Handel Opera), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor and Le nozze di Figaro (Guildhall School), and Eugene Onegin, Mansfield Park, Die Zauberflöte, Die Dreigroschenoper, La Calisto and Rinaldo (Royal Academy Opera). Newlyn’s future plans include La Cenerentola (West Green House Opera) and Death in Venice (St Endellion Festival).

Chad Kelly enjoys a rich and diverse career as a performer and director, spanning almost all genres of music, from historically-informed performance and chamber music to opera and musical theatre. He is increasingly in demand in the world of opera having been a musical director for the Olivier Award-nominated West End production of Farinelli and the King with Mark Rylance, as well as the award-winning production of The Blank Canvas at the King’s Head Theatre. He has also directed at The Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Theatre, Göttingen Handel Festival and the London Handel Festival. In 2016, Kelly helped create the world premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel at the Salzburg Festival. He has held the posts of Assistant Chorus Master at the English National Opera and Assistant Conductor and Repetiteur as the Lucille Graham Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music.

Tickets: £25 (£15 concessions), available from the Barbican Box Office.