CityLife

Classical highlights: June 18 to 24, 2010

A new opera has its premiere tonight (June 18) in Macclesfield – and it’s by a local composer. It has been written and directed by Nicholas Smith, a busy orchestral conductor and director of several Bollington Festivals in the past.

There’s a second performance on Sunday at 5pm, both in Christ Church, Bridge Street, all part of the ‘Barnaby’ Festival, celebrating the old tradition of the mill workers’ holiday. In the opera professional and community singers, accompanied by the Silk Opera Ensemble, portray the 1930s courting ritual of ‘the Monkey Run’. 

Mr Smith says: “The guys would go up one side of a street and the girls the other, and occasionally they’d pair off.

“In my story – he’s written the words, too – there’s a rich mill owner’s son, Harry, from Prestbury, who wants to see if he can pull one of the girls, and she falls for him, hook, line and sinker. She gets pregnant … but this is an opera, so she dies, though her baby survives. There’s quite a lot of comedy in it, too, though, with nosey neighbours and so on.”

The cast is led by soprano and Macclesfield resident, Jayne Carpenter. The two protagonists are Philip Ravenhill as Harry and Eleanor Sutton as Maggie. Four professional singers represent the neighbours, other roles are taken by Macclesfield people training for theatre careers – plus a ‘millworkers’ chorus.

“I’ve hardly written anything in my life before, but I’ve really enjoyed doing this,” says Nicholas. “I decided to make the style of the music follow the characters. So Maggie’s music is a little bit cheesy, but other characters have something more dissonant. I wrote it over a period of about four months, doing the 13 individual numbers in one or two days each.”

*****

Former BBC Symphony Orchestra conductor and Last Night of the Proms expert Sir Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Philharmonic on Wednesday, in a programme of Elgar (Coronation March and Sea Pictures) and Holst (The Planets). He’s an organist, too, and on his CD of The Planets with the BBC Symphony is credited both as conductor and organ-player – done by dubbing the organ part on to the recording made with them the previous day.

But he promises no such double act this time. His soloist is Catherine Wyn-Rogers, whom he describes as ‘an artist I have worked a lot with over the years, especially Elgar. We’ve done Sea Pictures many times, and I just love the way she sings’.

*****

Rossendale Male Voice Choir and Rossendale Ladies Choir team up with the Black Dyke Band at the Bridgewater Hall tonight to raise money for Christie’s cancer programme.

Peter Kelly, a member of the male voice choir for more than 28 years, wanted this event to be his thanks for the care he received at hristie’s. Peter died in October 2006, but the choir were determined not to let him down. They hope to raise more than £25,000 for the operation of a new scanner at the Christie radiotherapy centre at the Royal Oldham Hospital.

*****

The final concert of the season for Stockport Symphony Orchestra is tomorrow at 7.30pm in Stockport Town Hall. Edward Warren conducts Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture, Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto (soloist Leland Chen), and Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

*****

Bolton Choral Union’s summer concert is tomorrow at 7.30pm in Bolton Parish Church. With organ and piano accompaniment, works include Feel The Spirit (spirituals arranged by John Rutter).