Sir John in Love (Vaughan-Williams) Annandale-on-Hudson 2023 Craig Colclough, Sarah Saturnino, William Socolof, Brandie Sutton
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Sir John in Love
- Composer: Vaughan-Williams Ralph
- Libretto: Ralph Vaughan-Williams based on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Venue & Opera Company: Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater, Annandale-on-Hudson
- Recorded: August 13, 2023
- Type: Concert Semi-staged
- Singers: Craig Colclough, Sarah Saturnino, William Socolof, Brandie Sutton, Ann Toomey, William Ferguson, Theo Hoffman, Martin Luther Clark, Maximillian Jansen, Troy Cook, Julius Ahn, Tyler Duncan, Kevin Thompson, Joshua Blue, John Brancy, Justin Hopkins, Lucy Schaufer, Lucia Lucas
- Conductor: Leon Botstein
- Orchestra: American Symphony Orchestra
- Chorus: Bard Festival Chorale
- Chorus Master: James Bagwell
- Stage Director: Alison Moritz
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Fisher Center at Bard
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs
- This Recording is NOT AVAILABLE from a proper commercial or public source
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Marking the 400th anniversary of the First Folio, the first published collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Vaughan Williams was a great lover of the poet’s work, and it was reportedly “entirely for his own enjoyment” that he based a comic opera on The Merry Wives of Windsor. Shakespeare’s comedy was also the inspiration for Verdi’s Falstaff, but unlike the Italian composer, Vaughan Williams had the advantage of writing in English, and his plot and libretto adhere closely to Shakespeare’s original. Despite this, the resulting opera has only rarely been staged, with no UK performances between 1958 and 2005, and no U.S. premiere until 2015. Such neglect reflects no artistic deficiencies, however. Boasting a score rich with folksongs and Elizabethan melodies, including “Lovely Joan” and “Greensleeves,” Sir John in Love features some of Vaughan Williams’s finest writing. As BBC Music observes:
“The score reveals the composer as a master of comic opera, deftly intercutting Shakespeare’s intricate word-play with the chromatically searching manner of works from the 1920s like the Pastoral Symphony or Flos Campi. Everything is drawn together in scintillating style, and the best moments … are from an exceptional vintage in Vaughan Williams’s creativity.”