Ten sessions in the most exhilarating company of Hector Berlioz weren't enough last term, but another ten this autumn would be stretching it a bit. So I decided to frame proceedings with two religious works on very different scales: Berlioz's Grande Messe des morts and Fauré's Requiem. After the first class we can then take the brighter Berlioz, pick up where we left off from the earlier Faust, his amazing Op. 1, to look at the new music in the Damnation, and then see what mark he left on Saint-Saëns. The one area where the master of the orchestra didn't spend much time (because there wasn't yet the French audience for it) was chamber music, so we can look at that side of things at last with Saint-Saëns, Franck and Fauré .
I've made a few further observations in the flyer, reproduced below, but this is to note that the course starts on Thursday week, and if you can't attend in person, I send out recordings. Next week will be rather packed, as I finish the summer Wagner course on Tuesday with the last of the Dutchman, which is absorbing us far more than I'd imagined. It is the true revolutionary opera for music drama as Tristan later was for harmonic language and an unbelievable leap forward from Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi, which just about sustained the single classes we spent on them. Click below to enlarge on the French details, and don't forget that Opera in Depth, which I've already flagged up, starts on Monday. Just heard that Oliver Mears and Wallis Giunta will join us for one of the Trouble in Tahiti/A Quiet Place afternoons, in the thick of rehearsing the Royal Opera's new Linbury Theatre production, so it's all shaping up nicely.
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