Saturday 5 July 2025, 7:30pm
St Nicholas Church, Harpenden
Opera Choruses
Enjoy an Evening of Opera Choruses & Piano Virtuosity in the beautiful surroundings of St Nicholas Church, Harpenden.
Matthew Woodward - Piano
Michael Veazey - Conductor
Tickets: Unreserved £18; Students £9; Under 16 Free
Book online; click [here]
Programme Highlights will include popular choruses sung by Hardynge Choir:
"Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves", also known as, "Va, pensiero", is a chorus from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco (1842). It recollects the period of Babylonian captivity after the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC. Some critics believe that Verdi deliberately makes parallels in this opera between the Hebrews and the Italians, who in Verdi's time were living, some say suffering, under Austrian rule.
Guillaume Tell, Rossini's last opera, drew on the William Tell legend. The opera opens with the "Villagers’ Chorus"; they sing happily as they prepare the village for three weddings.
Idomeneo was written and premiered in 1781 when Mozart was 25 years old. On his way home from the Trojan wars, in a boat lashed by terrible storms, Idomeneo vows to sacrifice the first person he meets upon returning home. To his horror this turns out to be his son, Idamante. Idomeneo decides to send Idamante away on a ship, hoping to avoid the issue: at this point in the "Voyagers’ Chorus" the voyagers sing of the placid, calm waters.
Matthew Woodward will give a solo piano performance of Liszt' s "Rigoletto – Concert Paraphrase". Franz Liszt wrote a series of opera paraphrases during his virtuoso years, and also composed some in his Weimar years from 1848 onwards. Liszt drew on three themes from Verdi’s “Rigoletto” in this glittering virtuoso work; its climax is the finale with the theme in the quartet from Act III “Bella figlia dell’amore”. This work, published in 1860, occupies a special place on account of its incredible virtuosity and at the same time its filigree texture.
