conductor Jakob Lehmann on bringing traditionally knowledgeable Rossini to Cadogan Corridor with the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique

Jakob Lehmann (Photograph: Sercan Sevindik)

Because the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique makes its first foray into Rossini, we discuss to conductor Jakob Lehmann about his ardour for music of the interval, how we have to study to get pleasure from vitality, freedom and rubato within the music, his discoveries about steadiness within the bass line, working with fashionable orchestras and way more.

On 2 October 2025, conductor Jakob Lehmann joins the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique at Cadogan Corridor for Rossini’s Stabat Mater alongside excerpts from his opera Ermione. This would be the orchestra’s first foray into Rossini and the inaugural occasion in a deliberate main new exploration of Rossini’s music. Jakob was Affiliate Creative Director of New York-based opera firm Teatro Nuovo from 2019 to 2025 and is Creative Director of Eroica Berlin, a chamber orchestra he based in 2015.

Jakob’s latest expertise consists of conducting Les Siècles in Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony on the Worldwide Bruckner Pageant in Linz for the composer’s 2 hundredth anniversary celebrations, in addition to performances of operas by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. After we spoke, Jakob was in Bloomington, Indiana and about to make his debut with Indiana College Live performance Orchestra. The Cadogan Corridor live performance will probably be his London debut, while his UK debut was final month when he performed the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Rossini, Spohr and Schubert.

Traditionally knowledgeable performances (HIP) of Rossini’s music in London have nonetheless been comparatively uncommon, and I used to be keen on discovering out what Jakob thought HIP delivered to the composer. His ideas had been two-pronged. First, the added colors and textures of the interval devices enable a unique sort of storytelling by way of the brand new sound qualities. That is very true of Rossini. Jakob feels that, not like composers resembling Mozart and Beethoven, with Rossini, we’ve not totally grasped the sound and elegance of interval Rossini; we’ve not basically absorbed the model change that has occurred in different composers.

Jakob Lehmann & Anima Eterna Brugge (Photograph: Koen Broos)

The opposite aspect impact of HIP is that we come to understand the sheer high quality of the music in one other means. For example, Jakob mentions the Berlin Philharmonic, which, 30 years in the past, wouldn’t have dreamed of doing a night of music by Telemann or Vivaldi, however they do now, due to in depth interval performances. Now we have a unique view on the worth and high quality of the music. That is one thing that has not occurred in Rossini, but. Jakob feels that we nonetheless underestimate the composer. He was not simply writing for singers, and we must always recognize how he writes for the orchestra.

Jakob factors out that performing with interval devices is one factor, however traditionally knowledgeable efficiency follow is one other, and we nonetheless have extra to find about performances of Rossini’s period. HIP initially jumped again in time and checked out music from a selected perspective. Now, for various eras, we are able to juxtapose early recordings, writings of early commentators and notations on surviving elements.

Jakob feels that we have to study to understand the rhetoric wanted within the music and revel in Romantic melodies. He mentions an article, ‘Why has early music develop into so crisp’, and he feels that in Rossini and different bel canto music, we have to benefit from the vitality but in addition the liberty and rubato, the power to observe a bel canto line. For those who add within the sound of the interval devices, you get a brand new image.

Speaking to Jakob about Rossini, you are feeling that he’s passionately evangelical concerning the composer. For him, Rossini is a good composer, and he’s motivated to point out how unbelievable Rossini is.

Isabella Colbran who sang the title position in Rossini’s Ermione in 1819

Within the forthcoming live performance, he and the orchestra are aiming to point out the 2 sides to the composer, sacred and secular, with a assorted and attention-grabbing programme. It was determined fairly early on that the live performance could be a mixture, and since the Monteverdi Choir could be concerned, they wished a giant choral piece to offer ample alternative for the choir. They’re performing Rossini’s Stabat Mater, which was written between 1831 and 1841 and premiered in Paris in 1842. Alongside this, they’re performing substantial excerpts from his opera Ermione, written for Naples in 1819, the place Rossini was utilizing classical kinds and increasing them.

The live performance is meant to launch a long-term collaboration between the orchestra and Jakob, so this primary programme can also be supposed to point out what’s in retailer, to present an impression of the repertoire Jakob will probably be and the way they are going to current it. They’re performing complete scenes from the opera, thus celebrating the launch of a long-term sequence the place, in future, they hope for full performances of the operas.

So far as Jakob is worried, Rossini’s greatest work is in his severe operas, significantly these written for Naples between 1815 and 1822. Jakob describes the subject material of Ermione as being womanhood. Andromaca (Andromache), the widow of Hector, is attempting to avoid wasting her son, and Jakob sees her as the one winner. She is the one one of many protagonists that the viewers can like, and the one one who will get what she needs, as all of the others are destroyed by ambition and keenness. It is usually a strongly choral piece, with the refrain used to impact within the overture. This choral side and the final topic of motherhood are the hyperlinks between the 2 works within the live performance, Ermione and the Stabat Mater. The Stabat Mater was written a lot later than Ermione, after Rossini had retired from the theatre. Jakob says that the work nonetheless appears like Rossini, however you may hear how he has progressed as a composer.

Jakob is as captivated with voices as about devices. However he factors out that singing is totally different to instrumental efficiency. A singer’s approach is embodied within the physique, and you can’t change their model the way in which instrumentalists can change their efficiency. What Jakob has completed is use singers who can carry the presents wanted within the music. With HIP, the devices allow the singers to search for freedom, color and adaptability.

Listening to early recordings of singers and studying the writings of the pedagogue Manuel Garcia (1805-1906), who was the brother of the singers Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot, informs Jakob’s selection of voices. He doesn’t go for an Early Music sound within the music, however operatic and full-bodied singing. The instruments that the singers of the interval had had been rooted in bel canto with flexibility, a quick open vibrato, use of legato and portamento as an expressive gadget, together with the readability of textual content. Additionally, with sopranos and mezzo-sopranos, the usage of each registers, together with the chest, is a part of the model.

Discovering the best singers means on the lookout for these with a capability to be versatile, a willingness to experiment and a curiosity to search out out what they will do. This additionally means discovering acceptable ornaments within the music. Composers anticipated music to be ornamented, and we’ve examples of Rossini doing this. However to search out period-appropriate ornamentation takes research, together with a willingness for the singers to do issues in a different way than an ordinary efficiency of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Jakob describes his singers for the efficiency as being very curious, open and versatile, and he’s excited to have the ability to experiment with them.

Rossini in 1850

Jakob’s work in bel canto and Nineteenth-century Romantic music hyperlinks to his personal private liking for the music of the Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He had an ear-opening expertise when he first heard the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique within the overture to Weber’s Oberon, when he discovered the sound world unimaginable. This drew him into the Interval world. Early on in his profession, he was fortunate to be the concertmaster of Anima Eterna Brugge, an ensemble that was enjoying numerous Nineteenth-century music. They had been experimenting to search out the best model and devices, with many late-night conversations about such matters because the fingerings in Spohr. This led him to be inquisitive about discovering new issues and new challenges.

He was fortunate to work with musicologist Clive Brown and conductor Will Crutchfield, who based Teatro Nuovo, the American opera firm and coaching establishment specialising within the repertory and efficiency follow of bel canto opera. Jakob has simply completed as Affiliate Creative Director with Teatro Novo, and he appreciates the corporate’s mixture of younger singers and instrumentalists with basic analysis in model.

Certainly one of Jakob’s massive discoveries from working with Teatro Nuovo was the realisation of the character of the steadiness within the bass line in Italian orchestras of the time. Orchestras all the time had extra double basses than cellos (one thing that doesn’t occur in fashionable orchestras), resembling two cellos and 6 basses. At La Scala, that they had 12 double basses and eight cellos. Additionally, the double basses had been three-stringed devices (fashionable ones have 4 or 5 strings). Which means the devices are very resonant due to the decrease pressure of the thicker intestine strings. The result’s what Jakob refers to as an unimaginable bass sound. They tried it out at Teatro Nuovo and at Cadogan Corridor, Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique will probably be utilizing a lot of double basses, three-stringed ones. And Jakob hopes that everybody experiences the music the way in which he did. The totally different steadiness within the bass line has implications for the way in which Italian composers wrote for the orchestra, and Jakob sees it as altering the music so much. He feels that the invention is nicely value exploring and sharing with an viewers.

Jakob comes from a musical household; his father performed the trombone within the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin. Younger Jakob began studying the piano on the age of 4 and the violin on the age of seven. He was taken to concert events, music was there, and he grew to become captivated with it at a younger age. He was fortunate that his trainer in highschool nurtured his curiosity in interval efficiency, encouraging him to check out intestine strings and a interval bow. He got interested – having fun with analysis, manuscripts and enjoying from facsimiles. It was a means of approaching music that he discovered fascinating. It was a jump-in as concertmaster with Anima Eterna Brugge that helped launch his journey.

However Jakob is not only concerned in interval instrument efficiency. He does equal quantities of labor with interval devices and fashionable ones. He jokingly feedback that interval devices usually are not ‘the one fact!’ Greater than having the best devices, he feels that a very powerful factor is having the best mindset. He feels there’s sope for enchancment and extra analysis in interval instrument teams that transfer between eras but preserve one thing of their home model. He feels you can obtain a lot in the way in which of traditionally knowledgeable efficiency with fashionable orchestras which can be open to this now, and he appreciates the way in which fashionable orchestras are versatile on this respect. He additionally appreciates the logistical side of working with fashionable orchestras. Coming to them as a conductor is unbelievable, as every thing is in place and arrange. 

Jakob Lehmann (Photograph: Pauline Cluzeau)

From 31 October, Jakob will probably be conducting Les Siècles, the orchestra with whom he carried out Bruckner final 12 months, in Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust in a staging on the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, directed and designed by Silvia Costa with Benjamin Bernheim as Faust [further details]. Throughout November, he will even be conducting Symfonieorkest Vlanderen in a programme that features Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 [further details].

Additional forward, he’s working with the Swiss ensemble, La Banda storica Bern, the place members of the Bern Symphony Orchestra play on interval devices. Throughout February, March, April and Could 2026, Jaokob will probably be conducting fashionable instrument orchestras in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in a manufacturing by Simon Delétang, which excursions to French opera homes from Rennes to Compiègne. He will even be returning to Les Siècles to conduct them in a programme of music by Liszt and Wagner.

He describes his work as a mix of interval and fashionable, of opera and symphonic, the one lives off the opposite, and there aren’t any dividing strains.

Charles Motte: George IV greeting Rossini on the Brighton Pavilion, 1823

2 October 2025: Cadogan Corridor
Rossini: Scenes from Ermione
Rossini Stabat Mater

Monteverdi Choir
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Jakob Lehmann: Conductor
Thomas Guthrie: Stage Director

Soloists: Stabat Mater

Ana Maria Labin: Soprano
Hannah Ludwig: Mezzo-soprano
Alasdair Kent: Tenor
Anthony Robin Schneider: Bass

Ermione
Beth Taylor: Ermione
Hannah Ludwig: Andromaca
Alasdair Kent: Oreste
Anthony Robin Schneider: Fenicio
Rebecca Leggett: Cefisa
Elinor Rolfe Johnson: Cleone
Xavier Hetherington: Pilade
Marcus Swietlicki: Attalo