Opera Lectures Return With A New Host

Ross Alley explores how music conveys emotion from arias to duets

Opera lovers in Chiswick have received some good news with the announcement that a new host has been found for the regular series of lectures.

Barry Jobling, who had been presenting talks on opera for the last 15 years, was forced to stand down due to ill-health forcing him to move to Spain.

In a new ten-week series Ross Alley (former music lecturer at Birkbeck College) takes over. He has given numerous guest lectures for the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Wigmore Hall, the Wagner Society, the Gustav Mahler Society, and NADFAS.  He will begin an exploration of how music conveys emotion, followed by an investigation into the standard operatic structures to enhance your opera enjoyment.

The second half will uncover the marvels of Puccini's magic touch.

The lectures take place at St Michael & All Angels, Bath Road.

1 October: "Opera as expression - the language of music"
Taking 20 adjectives, the secrets of musical expression will be revealed in opera

8 October: "The Aria"
A quintessentially melodic outpouring in which a character dreams of love or triumph, unburdens anxiety, or mourns grief.

15 October: "The Duet"
Not only as a bond of love or friendship, but also of outrage or vengeance.

22 October: "The Ensemble"
Opera’s trump card is the ensemble, an extraordinary musical device not possible in spoken drama, in which the characters can express conflicting emotions yet be united by the music.

29 October: NO SESSION

5 November: "The Chorus"
In the final part of operatic structures, we revel in the magnificence of the operatic chorus, be it rousing and war-like, downtrodden and vilified, indignant and wrathful, or joyous and jubilant.

12 November: "Puccini's style"
What do his operas share in common? What are the musical fingerprints that make us recognise Puccini's music?

19 November: "Manon Lescaut"

26 November: "La bohème"

3 December: "Tosca"

10 December: "Madama Butterfly"

Lectures begin at 2.00 sharp and end at 4.15.£10 per lecture, coffee or tea and biscuits included.

For more information email louisenaomikaye@gmail.com or call 07930 365518.

September 26, 2015