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Opera on 3

Music: Classical: Opera

Programme presenting rare and fascinating operatic performances

Programme presenting rare and fascinating performances and vividly communicating the immediacy of the live experience

Opera on 3: Britten Gloriana

Performances & Events

Music: Classical

Britten Gloriana

23/06/2018

BBC Radio 3 - Opera on 3, Britten Gloriana

Gloriana by Benjamin Britten. A new production from Madrid. With Andrew McGregor.

Gloriana, Britten's opera about the doomed relationship between the mature Queen Elizabeth I and the dashing Earl of Essex. Presented by Andrew McGregor.

Gloriana by Benjamin Britten was written for the year long celebrations of Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953. As the nation celebrated the glamorous young queen, promising a new age of peace, Britten produced an opera strangely at odds with the time, but always in tune with his own sensibilities. 

Britten takes the stormy personal relationship between a mature Elizabeth I and a young attractive Earl of Essex as related in Lytton Strachey's "Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History" , and gives us a complex portrait of an older woman, who as Queen and last surviving child of Henry VIII, knows only too well what it takes to run a country, and ultimately what personal sacrifices to make, despite her own emotions, to protect her authority.

Andrew McGregor and Sarah Lenton make a case for Gloriana as the least regarded of Britten's Operas in this recent performance from the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Anna Caterina Antonacci is Queen Elizabeth and Leonardo Capalbo the Earl of Essex, and Ivor Bolton conducts this performance from an acclaimed new production.





Britten: Gloriana

Anna Caterina Antonacci ..... Elizabeth I (soprano)
Leonardo Capalbo ..... Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (tenor)
Paula Murrihy ..... Frances, Countess of Essex (mezzo-soprano)
Duncan Rock ..... Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy (baritone)
Sophie Bevan ..... Penelope (Lady Rich) sister to Essex (soprano)
Leigh Melrose ..... Sir Robert Cecil, Secretary of the Council (baritone)
David Soar ..... Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain of the Guard (bass)
Benedict Nelson ..... Henry Cuffe (baritone)
Elena Copons ..... Lady-in-Waiting (soprano)
James Creswell ..... Blind ballad-singer (bass)
Scott Wilde ..... Recorder of Norwich (bass)
Itxaro Mentxaca ..... a Housewife (mezzo-soprano)
Sam Furness ..... The Spirit of the Masque (tenor)
Gerardo López ..... Master of Ceremonies (tenor)
Àlex Sanmartí ..... City Crier (baritone)

Teatro Real Chorus & Orchestra 
Ivor Bolton (conductor).

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