An amazing evening of wonderful opera with our 5 favourite singers Guy Beynon; Phoebe Rayner; Jack Dolan; Michael Temporal Darrell and Dominic Felts under the baton of conductor Chris Stark. Our cast brought the characters life with expert direction by Jasmine Ricketts and it was clear that our appreciative audience had a great time! (Photographs by Gabriella Meade)
Ravel’s comedic opera L’Heure Espagnol tells the tale of a clockmaker whose unfaithful wife attempts to see other men while he is away, leading to them hiding in, and eventually getting stuck in, her husband’s clocks. It’s hugely funny! Join us for a very affordable evening with tickets only at £12 in advance and £5 for students/children. https://www.wegottickets.com/event/607742#
We are thrilled to be working with Jasmine Ricketts as our Director in our production of Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnol. Jasmine will be helping us to bring this comedic story to life for our audience.
Jasmine is a Movement and Stage Director, Choreographer and Facilitator, working across opera, theatre, film and community spaces. After graduating from the University of Exeter with a BA in Drama, Jasmine went on to study an MA in Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She has also received training from New Adventures Dance Company, Gecko Theatre, and Central School of Speech and Drama. Highlighted credits include: Captain Blood’s Revenge (Into Opera); Rain and Zoe Save the World (Jermyn Street Theatre); Venus and Adonis (Blackheath Halls Opera); Eugene Onegin (Buxton International Festival); Paul Bunyan (ENO); The Day After (ENO).
We’re thrilled to announce that talented violinist Laura Kim is the winner of the 2024 ERSO Soloist of the Year competition. Laura is a 4th year undergraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music and will be performing Saint Saens Introduction Rondo and Capriccioso in our concert on 23 June 2024.
We’re also excited that runner-up Jenny Sturt will be performing a solo with ERSO next season.
Talented young singer Dominic Felts is playing our Don Iñigo, a buffoonish banker who uses his power to get Torquemada the job of attending to the town clocks so he can try his luck with Concepción, Torquemada’s wife!
Check out this video of Dominic’s wonderful singing.
Ravel’s father was a successful engineer who invented a machine for making paper bags, patented a design for a steam-driven automobile and worked as a technical advisor on Gustave Eiffel’s railway projects. As a child, Ravel was fascinated by his father’s mechanical inventions and we see this immediately in L’heure espagnole as it opens with a series of chords set against three metronomes, timed at 40, 100 and 232 beats per minute so that they coincide every 15 seconds. You’ll see a lot of clocks in our presentation of the opera!
We caught up with Finalist Laura Kim who really impressed us at the auditions with her performance of Prokofiev’s 2nd Violin Concerto.
What is your main occupation at the moment?
I’m currently a 4th year undergraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music! I plan to start my masters of music degree this autumn
What made you choose to play your instrument and how old were you when you started?
I started violin when I was 8 years old – when my mom brought me to a string shop to try out different instruments, I remember liking the sound of the violin when one of the luthiers played a song for me, and immediately picked it
What made you choose the concerto that you will be playing?
I was deciding between learning Prokofiev Concerto 1 and Prokofiev Concerto 2 with my violin professor at the Academy, and he suggested that the 2nd concerto would suit my sound more – I learned a bit of the first movement after speaking with him, and agreed with his sentiment!
What do you feel you would gain from the experience of winning this competition and playing your concerto with ERSO and Chris Stark?
This will be the first time I’ve played a concerto with an orchestra since I was young, and it will also be the first time I’ve played Prokofiev with orchestra – I especially like the percussion parts and the woodwind solos that are scattered throughout the piece
While it’s thrilling to hear these parts come out during a concert, I think it would be even more exciting to listen to while performing on stage! I think I would be happy to collaborate with the orchestra members and the conductor on stage and make music together
One of our Finalists in the ERSO Soloist of the Year competition is a familiar face as she is ERSO’s Principal Cellist . Currently a fellow with Southbank Sinfonia, Jennifer Sturt finds the most enjoyable projects to be in small or chamber ensembles and with current composers, where collaboration and teamwork is essential to realising new and exciting artistic directions.
At Trinity Laban Conservatoire she obtained a first-class Bachelor of Music with honours, whilst focusing on diverse repertoire with her teacher Naomi Butterworth. Highlights include joining the Smith Quartet for a performance of Steve Reich’s triple quartet, performing in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia with the conductor Jonathan Tilbrook, and leading the Trinity Laban Symphony Orchestra as the principal cellist at Cadogan Hall in a performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. These efforts, along with many more, gained her the silver medal award for outstanding contribution to the strings department.
During her Master of Music Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, Jennifer continued her search for ‘off-canon’ repertoire and composer collaboration. Specifically, she delved into a research project exploring the musical canon, asking the thought-provoking question: “What has the Canon ever done for us?” This endeavour involved examining overlooked and forgotten repertoire, dissecting conscious and unconscious biases in our critical judgments and listening habits, and evaluating current practices in music education and concert programming.
Born in East Sussex to a very musical family, Jennifer has been playing the cello since 2001. In her spare time she enjoys yoga, role-playing games and opera.
We’re proud of our ERSO Talent Programme (founded in 2017) which provides valuable professional experience for young musicians at the start of their careers. We have a bit of a track record here – famous names who benefitted experience with ERSO during their early professional lives include: horn player Dennis Brain, clarinettist Jack Brymer, oboist Evelyn Rothwell, flautist James Galway and cellists Jacqueline du Pre and Guy Johnston.
To date we’ve worked with soloists, orchestral musicians, conductors, composers and opera singers and we hope that the experience will help them on the way to amazing careers!
This week we’re excited for the final of our annual soloist competition. The winner will be our soloist in our June concert.
In ERSO’s performance of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole we are so excited that the role of Gonzalve, the amorous poet, will be played by the wonderfully talented young singer Jack Dolan. Check out this video to hear his amazing singing!
6.30pm on 17 March 2024, St John’ s Waterloo
Tickets are £12 in advance from https://www.wegottickets.com/event/607742# and £15 on the door. Children and student tickets are £5
ERSO 