FULL LES ILLUMINATIONS (Britten) Vilnius 2022 Jessica Cale

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Les Illuminations   
• Composer: Britten Benjamin  
• Libretto: Arthur Rimbaud  
• Venue & Opera Company: St. Catherine’s Church, Vilnius, Lithuania  
• Recorded: November 17, 2022
• Type: Concert Live
• Singers: Jessica Cale
• Conductor: St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra   
• Orchestra: Modestas Barkauskas  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Šv. Kristoforo kamerinis orkestras - official  
• Date Published: 2023  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  Program:

  Ralph Vaughan Williams – Concerto Grosso for string orchestra

  Benjamin Britten – Les Illuminations for soprano and string orchestra, op. 18

  Frank Bridge – Suite for string orchestra

  Les Illuminations (The Illuminations), Op. 18, is a song cycle by Benjamin Britten, first performed in 1940. It is composed for soprano or tenor soloist and string orchestra, and sets verse and prose poems written in 1872–1873 by Arthur Rimbaud, part of his collection Les Illuminations.

  Britten began writing the cycle in Suffolk in March 1939 and completed it a few months later in the United States. It was the first of his song cycles to gain widespread popularity. The cycle was originally written for a soprano; Britten’s biographer David Matthews comments that the work is “so much more sensuous when sung by the soprano voice for which the songs were conceived”. Nevertheless the work can be, and more often is, sung by a tenor: Britten conducted the piece with Peter Pears as soloist within two years of the premiere.

  The first performance of the cycle was given on 30 January 1940 at the Aeolian Hall, London, by Sophie Wyss, to whom the cycle is dedicated. (There are also dedications for individual sections.) Boyd Neel conducted his string orchestra.

   

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