Singer

Mystical figures dance in the night as Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. This adaptation of celebrated playwright William Shakespeare’s work follows the consequences of a falling out between Oberon and Tytania, the fairy-king and queen.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre

With La Chapelle de Québec and four specially selected soloists, Jonathan Cohen offers the complete Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach as an invitation to the holiday festivities. Flamboyant music and spectacular choruses celebrate an age-old tradition.

L'Oratorio de Noël de Bach

Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church

Palais Montcalm – Maison de la musique

The Handel matinee concert by Harry Bicket and The English Concert is one of Carnegie Hall’s most popular annual traditions. Combining exquisite ensemble work, charismatic singers, and an irresistible penchant for theatricality, it’s the perfect way to experience Baroque opera and oratorio in the 21st century. In this anticipated event, hear the first full concert performance of Handel’s Rodelinda at Carnegie Hall in more than 50 years.

The English Concert

Carnegie Hall

The English Concert, a globe-crossing period instrument orchestra led by conductor Harry Bicket, returns to Los Angeles for a single not-to-be-missed concert performance. This masterpiece of baroque opera is full of brazenly amoral characters doing dastardly deeds. As the men surrounding her plot to take the throne, the grieving queen Rodelinda tries to stay one step ahead of them all, while remaining faithful to the memory of her husband, presumed dead.

Don't worry: Handel’s endlessly inventive score makes sense of it all. It’s one of his greatest operas—and he wrote dozens of them, so that’s saying something.

The English Concert: Rodelinda

Los Angeles Music Center

Britain’s premier early-music ensemble returns in its annual season engagement, for a concert performance of Handel’s masterwork Rodelinda, with star soprano Lucy Crowe in the title role. Among the composer’s greatest achievements, Rodelinda is a story of enduring marital love that remains steadfast through every adversity. Crowe lends her clarion voice to the beloved arias “Ombre, piante” and “Ho perduto il caro sposo,” and riveting countertenor Iestyn Davies fills the shoes of Handel’s star castrato Senesino as the exiled husband Bertarido, with Eric Ferring cast as the lustful and vicious usurper Grimoaldo. The ensemble’s 2021 recording of Rodelinda with Crowe and Davies earned rave reviews across the board: Gramophone praised, “The singing is first-rate, while Harry Bicket has an unerring ear for pacing and instrumental color,” and BBC Music Magazine put it simply, “Harry Bicket has gifted us the best-ever recording of Rodelinda.”

The English Concert Handel’s Rodelinda

University of California, Berkeley

Bernard Labadie, one of today’s most prominent Baroque-era interpreters, leads a particularly regal all-Handel program with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the outstanding La Chapelle de Québec with soloists. Handel’s quintessential coronation anthems, composed for King George II, are to this day the standard-bearers of this celebratory tradition. His most-popular Music for the Royal Fireworks distills the pride of a nation into orchestral form, while Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne utilizes the featured singers’ appropriately majestic voices to uplift and delight.

Handel’s Royal Fireworks

Grammy-winning countertenor Iestyn Davies and "Eric Clapton of the lute" Thomas Dunford (BBC Magazine) unite for an intimate evening of music for solo voice and lute. In their acclaimed recital, A Musical Banquet, the two friends present some of the greatest hits of the 17th century, featuring the music of Dowland, Holborne, Guédron, Caccini and more.

A Musical Banquet with Iestyn Davies and Thomas Dunford

Stanford University

We honor Handel’s intended ‘wow factor’ of Radamisto with a new staging by Christophe Gayral, a familiar name in some of Europe’s most prestigious opera houses, giving us a fitting close to our 21/22 season.

Handel’s Radamisto

Bach’s B Minor Mass is one of the towering achievements of the Baroque, and indeed of all classical music. It is the summation of Bach’s creative output, but likely never performed in his lifetime.

Iestyn Davies

Countertenor

Events

2 - 10 Mar, 2024

A Midsummer Night’s Dream · Atlanta Opera

14 - 16 Dec, 2023

L'Oratorio de Noël de Bach · Les Violons du Roy

Dec 10, 2023

The English Concert · Carnegie Hall

Nov 21, 2023

The English Concert: Rodelinda · LA Opera

Nov 19, 2023

The English Concert Handel’s Rodelinda · Cal Performances

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