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| Augusta Holmès’ La Montagne noire at Theater Dortmund in 2024 |
While finest recognized for her orchestral symphonic poems, the French composer (of Irish descent) Augusta Holmès wrote 4 operas in complete, although just one was carried out. This was La Montagne noire which was staged on the Paris Opera in 1895, one of many few operas written by a lady to be produced there through the nineteenth century. A 4 act lyric drama, Holmès wrote the libretto herself. She wrote the opera in 1884-1885, when she was dwelling with the poet Catulle Mendès who wrote librettos for Chabrier, Messager, Hahn and Massenet.
She first heard Wagner’s work on the age of 13 and was influenced by Wagner all through her life. La Montagne noire was poorly obtained, partly as a result of Holmès’ Wagnerian inspiration was seen as old style. Nonetheless, the gender rhetoric of the nineteenth century got here into play too. When reviewing her symphonic poem, Les Argonautes, Saint-Saëns remarked on her “extreme virility – a frequent fault with girls composers – and flamboyant orchestration during which the brass explodes like fireworks…” When contemplating the opera, critics criticised her for crossing the boundary into kinds which had been regarded as masculine territory. The critic Arthur Pougin mentioned that the perfect pages of the opera had been the passages of “gentleness, grace and tenderness”, happening to remark that the noisier passages had been banal!
The opera obtained a uncommon trendy revival in 2024 at Theater Dortmund in a manufacturing that was nominated for the Finest Rediscovered Work by the Worldwide Opera Awards.
Now UK audiences are getting an opportunity to listen to the opera for themselves. That enterprising group the Opera Makers, who carried out Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald in 2023 [see my review] is giving the UK premiere of La Montagne noire at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge on 8 March 2026. Panaretos Kyriatzidis conducts with Francesca Lauri on the piano and a forged together with Matthew Curtis, Felicity Buckland, James Newby, Becca Marriott, Masimba Ushe and Lauren Easton.
For this live performance the corporate has curated a forged that features three feminine leads whose careers have all been deeply affected by their option to turn out to be moms. The choice to begin a household stays an obstacle to the careers of many singers, notably these with bigger voices whose devices blossom at exactly the time when it’s most probably they are going to be beginning their households. There may be additionally a various refrain of scholars and volunteers, supported by Trinity Laban.
Full particulars from the corporate’s web site.
