Eccles: Semele | Academy of Ancient Music [Full Opera]

[@AcademyofAncientMusic]

For more on our recording project and to get your copy of this undeservedly-neglected work, please visit: www.aam.co.uk/product/eccles-semele/ . Thanks for helping to make our work possible!

[@kashtonemiliano7054]

I guess Im quite off topic but do anyone know of a good site to watch new movies online?

[@ДмитрийКоростелев-н3в]

Absolutely fantastic performance! Great job, thank you! What a luxurious booklet to your CD recording of this opera. It is itself a piece of art. Voices, orchestra, continuo - all is beyond praise! And music - itself valuable and deep, it is a real bridge between Purcell epoch and Handelian time.

[@zakesters]

I only knew Eccles from his continuo songs: I had no idea he had _this_ in him--the Anglo-French opera we barrochistas have always wanted. Like, take the bit from 13:00 to 14:00 for instance, succeeded no less by a little string symphony representing a storm: it's like he's the English Lully!

[@moyaduffy4438]

What an absolute delight! Thanks to AAM for making this available-I was not able to go to the original performance but thoroughly enjoyed it.

[@AcademyofAncientMusic]

Glad to hear you liked it - we're only a few months away from full album release, so stay tuned!

[@spartigerodimos9062]

A gem! Excellent rendition! Thank you AAM & CHOC & CEM.

[@sethchan951]

It's nice to hear a different take on a beloved piece! Thanks!

[@mcburcke]

Beautifully done! I'd not heard of this piece before now...quite lovely.

[@shadcrow522]

This is wonderful thank you.

[@peterlucevan314]

This is really good. Thanks for making it available.

[@ralphallwood1634]

I’ve heard only the overture so far and that is stunning. How to set up a good sequence and just watch it cascade. So good. Thank you.

[@trishtraynor]

I didn't read the cast list. Anna Dennis. That's all really She is absolutely stunningly exceptional. 💖🎶

[@trishtraynor]

I love this . I've only seen the Handel performed once , by Edinburgh Studio Opera and I think Jerome Knox, Joe Doody and Louise Alder were in it?? I must confess though that I thought the line I heard was "Endless pleasure endless love, Semele enjoys a bath" It wasnt!!! They were great. 💖🙋

[@AcademyofAncientMusic]

Hi Trish - it's a great story. I think the ESO production you are thinking of was in 2012, with Joseph Doody as Jupiter, and Jerome Knox as Somnus. Emily Goad and Fay Jenet were the two leading female voices, I don't think Louise was in that cast (though she too is an excellent singer, and only the other year sang Monteverdi Vespers with us). The ESO production, though, was Handel's setting of Semele, which he wrote some 30 years after this one by John Eccles, to the same libretto by William Congreve. This setting, by Eccles, is thoroughly under=appreciated, and deserves to be much better known. It was never performed when he wrote it in the early 1700's, and possibly never saw a performance at all until the late 1900's! It's particularly interesting for us as it shows the direction English opera was developing in after Purcell, before Handel then arrived and took the opera world in a very strong, different direction. Delighted you enjoyed hearing this, and I highly recommend our new recording of the work which will be released in January 2021 - pre-orders now available (link in the top comment above) - it'll be the world-premiere CD recording complete and on period instruments, and will be presented in a deluxe package with a book of some 200 full-colour pages packed with interesting articles and illustrations. Thank you for listening!

[@trishtraynor]

@@AcademyofAncientMusic I saw lots of ESO productions which were wonderful up close and personal opera experiences. Lots of wonderfully talented young singers studied in Edinburgh and deputised or were singers in various church choirs. I sang in St Mary's Metropolitan Cathedral to make up the numbers.Plus, I'm so old that Latin is my first language. Will pre-order this work. It's a great discovery. Thank you . 🙋🎵

[@hdibart]

WOW !!!

[@trishtraynor1237]

I have my copy now. 😍💖

[@isaiasramosgarcia9771]

la overtura suena =k Luly. Tiene rasgos k me lo recordan mucho

[@samupnrunnin4616]

What a terrible shame it is to go to all the trouble of recording this and to use some singers with modern vocal technique. The instrumentalists have spent countless hours practising period playing, using a little vibrato to grace a note, and then modern classical singers are let loose on it and spoil the whole thing. If these singers are going to sing in a post-Baroque style, then please be consistent and have the strings play also with full constant vibrato. There can't be opposite styles in the same performance.

[@SignoraElvira1787]

For the past few decades, it has been trendy to hire singers with small, white, vibrato-less voices to sing early music. Many people have therefore come to believe this is how opera singers actually sang in the Baroque period. On the contrary, this is a style of singing that originates in English choral music, and was retroactively grafted onto opera. It's an interesting history and you can read a bit more about it here if you're interested: www.nytimes.com/1990/07/29/arts/the-spin-doctors-of-early-music.html

[@trishtraynor1237]

There most certainly can. For further authentication would you like some of them to have no teeth and a crop of boils?

[@peterholmes3011]

@@SignoraElvira1787 To me it's not so much about authenticity it's about which I feel sounds 'better' to me and that is without chunks of vibrato.

[@SignoraElvira1787]

​@@peterholmes3011 That's valid! Personally, I prefer big, uninhibited, full-body singing. We've all got our own aesthetic preferences though, and ideally there's room for all of them!

[@kennethlapointesongwriter3330]

I would include singers as part of the music...so if it is striving to be 'authentic' it should all sound as authentic as possible, including singers imo. It's difficult of course to not be retroactively influenced by modern styles. Notwithstanding boils, toothless, castratos, and many other things. I mean 300 years and how things change..