Singer

Whether encountered in opera, oratorio or song, the artistry of the leading mezzo is admired worldwide. A recent Wigmore programme included, in the words of the critic of Music OMH, ‘a devastating performance of the Rückert Lieder, in which every sentiment was laid bare. A singer at the peak of her powers, Coote infused each song with a wealth of feeling and tonal colour.’

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Alice Coote mezzo-soprano; Julius Drake piano

Wigmore Hall

Both Gustav Mahler and Friedrich Rückert lost children. When Mahler came to set Rückert’s grief-stricken poems on the subject as his five Kindertotenlieder, he did so with music that appears emotionally stunned and radiantly consolatory. Leading international mezzo-soprano Alice Coote lends her glowing voice to these devastating songs, after Ryan Wigglesworth conducts his BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a symphony by Brahms that is both menacing and mellifluous. At the heart of the programme is Schoenberg’s sumptuous tone-poem Verklärte Nacht (‘Transfigured Night’), filled with crepuscular angst and decadent late-Romantic harmony.

Prom 9: Mahler, Brahms and Schoenberg

Royal Albert Hall

Judgement Day: drums roar, trumpets blast, and hundreds of voices cry to heaven. Arguably no composer had a deeper understanding of the human heart, or a more potent sense of drama, than Giuseppe Verdi. Blazing with emotion and conceived on the grandest possible scale, Verdi’s Requiem has been described as the greatest opera he never wrote. It’s raw sonic theatre, and 150 years after its first performance, our Chief Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth has assembled the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, the BBC SSO and a stellar team of solo singers – all ready to storm the ramparts of death itself.

Verdi’s Requiem in Edinburgh

The Usher Hall

Verdi’s Requiem

Glasgow City Hall

For Sir Mark, it’s the closest Elgar came to writing an opera and he particularly admires its opening – ‘the mystical introduction, then dawn over Jerusalem, setting the scene for an epic.’ Elgar again skilfully uses leitmotifs in his portrayal of the characters, particularly the powerful music for Judas. Among the exceptional soloists are Sophie Bevan, Alice Coote, Clive Bayley and Ed Lyon, who makes his Hallé debut. In its review of the Hallé’s recording of The Apostles, BBC Music Magazine commented ‘Elder has perfect control of the large forces and dramatic pacing’.

The Apostles

The Bridgewater Hall

Elgar adapted Cardinal Newman’s poem of the death and resurrection of ‘a man like us … a sinner’, creating the work’s dynamic through Wagnerian leitmotifs and superb, varied choral writing. Sir Mark’s personal high spot is Elgar’s masterly control of momentum from the moment when Gerontius’s soul encounters the Angel, performed by Alice Coote who also appears on the Hallé’s Gramophone award-winning recording, to his split-second vision of the Almighty, a huge musical span including two of the work’s marvellous set pieces, the ‘Demons’ Chorus’ and ‘Praise to the Holiest’. Singing Gerontius for the first time in the UK is the American tenor, Michael Spyres, whom Sir Mark describes as ‘an amazing artist’.

The Dream of Gerontius

Poulenc’s devastating tragedy returns, with soprano Ailyn Pérez as the young woman at the center of the harrowing, quasi-historical tale of an order of Carmelite nuns martyred in Paris during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. The remarkable cast also features soprano Sabine Devieilhe in her Met debut as Blanche’s fellow novice Constance, soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as the unshakeable Madame Lidoine, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as Mère Marie, and mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in her role debut as Madame de Croissy. Maestro Bertrand de Billy conducts John Dexter’s striking and timeless staging.

Dialogues des Carmélites

Lincoln Center

This event sees the launch of Goethe: His Faustian Life (Bloomsbury Continuum), the new book by a leading literary figure of our time whose wide range has already taken in studies of Milton, Tolstoy, Dickens, CS Lewis and Iris Murdoch. A.N. Wilson now turns his attention to one of the giants of German literature and to what is surely Goethe’s greatest and most influential creation – known to music lovers from the innumerable song settings, operas, choral works and programmatic pieces it has inspired.

Alice Coote

Mezzo-soprano

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 20, 2024

Goethe: His Faustian Life · Wigmore Hall

Jun 30 - Jul 18, 2025

Semele · Royal Opera House

Past events

Sep 16, 2024

Alice Coote mezzo-soprano; Julius Drake piano · Wigmore Hall

Jul 14, 2024

Prom 9: Mahler, Brahms and Schoenberg · BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in Ständchen by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Schwanengesang by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Juno in Semele by Handel

Royal Opera House

Singer in Erlkönig by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Im Frühling by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Lachen und Weinen by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Seligkeit by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Nacht und Träume by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Der Musensohn by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Wandrers Nachtlied II by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in An Silvia by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

Singer in Abendstern by Schubert

Wigmore Hall

About

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