Our Season 2023 is over! We’ve done even more than we had planned, with our thirteenth and final production of the year in December. As always, we aimed to present lesser-known repertoire, and to explore the music in innovative ways, using cutting edge period performance practice of the 17th century for 21st century performances. Our goal has been to make meaningful connections with you, our audience, and to summarise the words of Quantz, to make ourselves masters of the hearts of our listeners, to arouse or still your passions, and to transport you now to this sentiment, now to that. We hope over the year we’ve delighted, entertained and moved you.
The Shows
Echoes: Musicking Across the Centuries, 24th February. Music by Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten. St Peter’s on Willis as part of Mahi Toi.
Musicking with Several Friends, 4th/5th March, NZ Fringe 2023. Series of four individual one-hour programmes in a small and informal setting: Dolcissima!, (Restoration) Songs, Alla Bastarda!, and Chvalte Boha
Decodance & TrumpetWars, 25th/26th March, CubaDupa.
The Judgment of Paris, 30th July, Hannah Playhouse.
Three ‘mini-operas’ realised from operas by Francesca Caccini, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Antonio Vivaldi (with a touch of Niccolo Porpora), 2nd/3rd September, Classical on Cuba.
Harmonie Universelle, 15th October, Foxglove Ballroom.
Wassail, 10th December, Old St Paul’s.
In February we started the year with a programme of music by Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten as part of the concert-series Mahi Toi titled, Echoes: Musicking Across the Centuries, featuring music by Purcell alongside works by Britten, written or realised in response to Purcell’s music.
Next we presented Musicking with Several Friends, as a part of NZ Fringe 2023. These were four different one-hour programmes in The Queen’s Closet’s base in central Wellington, each with its own unique flavour. This is chamber music as it might have been experienced in the seventeenth century: in an informal setting, with a small audience of friends, that allowed the music to be more fully appreciated.
Last year we collaborated with Chrissie Parrott on her work Decodance (review here) and as part of CubaDupa our trumpeters heralded in the dancers as they reprised Decodance outdoors in the Hannah Courtyard. You may also have seen—and heard—the ensemble’s natural trumpets performing our new work, TrumpetWars, along Cuba Mall, showing how the instruments were originally designed and used to transmit messages across a long distances, while playing a game of Battleship as you’ve never seen it before. Cutting edge communications technology of the seventeenth century!
We reprised our successful show from 2022, The Judgment of Paris in the newly reopened Hannah Playhouse, again, bringing this 300 year-old music to life for Wellingtonians today with our sense of style and fun.
In September, as part of the anticipated Classical on Cuba festival, we presented Three mini-operas realised from operas based on Ariosto’s epic poem, Orlando Furioso, by Francesca Caccini, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Antonio Vivaldi. In these shows we realised three baroque operas into three short ‘mini-operas,’ each lasting half an hour. Together these three colourful, concise and self-contained shows will also told one story. It was a unique opportunity to dip into one or two mini-operas, or to see all three!
For Harmonie Universelle we delved into the glorious world of the French Baroque, featuring the spactacular Te Deum by the massively underrated Michel-Richard De Lalande, alongside music by Philidor, Lully, Charpentier and others. We also got our audience up and dancing for the first time!
For our last performance of 2023 we presented Wassail, our take on seasonal festivities with colourful, festive and fun music from to round out a busy year—including more opportunity for our audience to join us in dancing to sixteenth century tunes!
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