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16 11 23

8PM

Sloane Street Auctions’ two-room gallery packed more than a Tube carriage..


The fourth Opera Rara Donizetti Song Project concert:


Roger Parker, its curator, introduces the programme. The songs being performed for the first time since the parties Donizetti wrote them for, in the 1820s, show a daring minimalism. We are to hear them against the ornate arias of Rossini which Donizetti was rebelling against.


Soprano Elena Zamudio, traveling from Spain, is reuinited with, on the piano, her former teacher at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, conductor James Southall.

Part One Film
red dress couple

9PM

As many remark that Ms. Zamudio’s interpretation of Bellini, also heard as a breakaway from Rossini, was the highlight of the performance, soprano Helen Lacey and pianist Stella Marie Lorenz arrive for their encore:


Eleven Selections from Hugo Wolf’s Italianisches Liederbuch (1892 - 96)


Misses Lacey and Lorenz play the pieces as Wolf wished, in an order that suits the evening.


What unites Wolf’s approach to songwriting with Donizetti’s is delicacy, fragility. Their songs remind us of the paintings by Watteau and Manet of street performers. Romanticizing them, indeed, but more importantly unveiling the essence of their lives, establishing magic and emotions surrounded by dirt and cruelty.


The noise of Chelsea’s Lower Sloane Street, reemerging whenever a song became too quiet, became an uncanny asset to the many such songs of the earnest by Donizetti and Wolf.

Helen
Part Two Film

9:33PM

Guests and artists waltzed next door to Chucs, which had been hired for the night.

His final week at the restaurant group, executive pastry chef Cosimo de Fusco surprised us with each of the cakes he had ever conceived, making a last minute delivery of tropeziennes from Birley Bakery a bit ridiculous.

Every surface served just one purpose: to hold cakes.

Party Row 1
Group Photo
Party Row 4

10PM

As the cakes were devoured wine began its fifteen minutes of fame.

Top Cuvée, the fashionable (dare we use that word?) Highbury, London wine shop and bar, generously provided us two wines by the off-the-grid young winemaker Ugo Lestelle, whose Saint-Chinian vineyard is just seven hectares.

These were P'tit Bonhomme, a Cinsault, and Cuvee B, a Vermentino.

10:30PM

Are the curbside interviews William Walsh films at each concert genuine or a ruse?

Some, chaperoned by the painter Simon Bejer, who then appears himself as an innocent guest, are editorials on the advertorial realm. Meanwhile, soprano April Koyejo-Audiger, Opera Rara CEO Henry Little and Ms. Zamudio herself, translated from Spanish by our film editor Kamila Gazda, comment on details of the music and programme.

11pm Upper Row
11pm Lower Row
Interviews

11PM

A core group of photographer Sophie Stalder, sponsorships procurer Sofia Tsetlin, and the performers returned to the hotel room at Sloane Place where earlier Wilma Stigson had done makeup and hair for Stella, Helen and Elena.

From the window we could see across the street Alessia Tiddia, who had planned the party, directing the bartenders and waiters of Chucs sweeping and setting up for breakfast with all the yellow lights of the bistro now turned on; at Sloane Street Auctions, still dimly lit, the company was already moving the larger paintings and sculpture back to where they perhaps were --- there would be an auction two weeks later --- and in the middle, in front of the small lobby for the apartments above, stood Opera Rara's Zachary Vanderburg, with his iPad, waiting to send James and Elena back to the Bermondsey house of a magnificent trustee.

Final-Image-Row

The Music Performed

The evening ocassioned the de facto premieres of, from
Donizetti’s early career,

  • “Perché, se mia tu sei”

  • arietta “Ah! che il destino” and

  • “Licandro pastorello,” the song played in
    the Part One Film above.

From Donizetti’s later years in Paris the de facto
premieres were

  1. La rosa dei sepolcri “Una vergine donzella”

  1. and

  1. La Bohémienne “Sono nata in Oriente.”

The Donizetti Song Project is based on a new edition of
the composer’s complete solo songs, concluded in 2023
by Roger Parker and Ian Schofield.

Mr. Efraim interviewed Mr. Parker in October 2023 about the project.

Donizetti

  • Perché, se mia tu seiPietro Metastasio
  • Ah! che il destino Pietro Metastasio
  • Licandro pastorelloUnknown
  • Perché due cori insiemePietro Metastasio
  • D’un genio che m’accendePietro Metastasio
  • Su l’onda tremola, ride la lunaUnknown

Rossini

“Come dolce all’alma mia”
from Tancredi
“Una voce poco fa”
from Il barbiere di Siviglia

Donizetti

  • Or che !’eta ne invitaVincenzo Monti
  • La sedeva, sull’erto verone Leopoldo Tarantini
  • Or ch’io sono ate rapitaFelice Romani

Bellini

“Eccomi in lieta vesta, oh quante volte”
from I Capuleti
“Tutto e goia, tutto e festa”
from La Sonnambula

Donizetti

  • Fra l’erbe cosparseCarlo Guaita
  • Vieni, la barca e prontaUnknown
  • Una vergine donzellaGiuseppe Regaldi
  • Sono nata in OrienteUnknown

All eleven selections from the Italienisches Liederbuch are unknown Italian poems translated to German by Paul Heyse. Richard Stokes, the British authority on Wolf, reviewed Misses Lacey and Lorenz’s rehearsals. The Part Two Film mainly shows Misses Lacey and Lorenz playing “Auch kleine Dinge können unsentzücken.”

Wolf

Auch kleine Dinge können unsentzücken

Gesegnet sei das Grün und wer es trägt!

Mein Liebster singt am Hausim Mondenscheine

Mir ward gesagt, du reisest in die Feme

Man sagt mir, deine Mutter wolle es nicht

Du sagst mir, dass ich keine Fürstin sei

Wenn du, mein Liebster, steigst zum Himmel auf

Ich hab’ in Penna einen Liebsten wohnen

Wie lange schon war immer mein Verlangen

Du denkst mit einem Fädchen mich zu fangen

Wer rief dich denn? Wer hat dich herbestellt?

Adlee Efraim Presents

Opera Rara Donizetti Song Project
Roger Parker, Curator

Concert IV,
Rebellion Against Rossini and Donizetti in Paris
Elena Zamudio
James Southall

and

Selections from Hugo Wolf’s
Italianisches Liederbuch
Helen Lacey
Stella Marie Lorenz

at Sloane Street Auctions’ Private Sales Showroom
69 Lower Sloane Street, Chelsea

Thursday 16 November 2023

Opera Rara
Henry Little, CEO | Charles Alexander CBE, Chairman
Zachary Vanderburg, Development

Sloane Street Auctions
Daniel Hunt, Founder


All photos (with four exceptions via Sofia Tsetlin) by Sophie Stalder

All videos
by William Walsh and editor Kamila Gazda

Performance planning
by Lara Bader of Opera Rara and Sofia Tsetlin

Catering planned
by Alessia Tiddia for Chucs / Cosimo de Fusco

Makeup and hair
by Wilma Stigson

Selection of wines
by Brodie Meah, co-founder of Top Cuvée