The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Introduction

Katharina Spreckelsen

There are many elements of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ which intrigued me. Its demonstration of the power of poetry and language reminded me of song settings by Henry Purcell and Coleridge’s choice of the ancient ballad form supported my going back in time to reach for music which is more than a hundred years older than the poem. It’s a poem about a man with a story to tell – and retell – a story about guilt and penance, which takes us on a journey from a wedding into a world full of challenging supernatural encounters. It is also an ecological reading which speaks strongly to us now as we hear how ‘both man and bird and beast’ are intertwined, urging us to rethink our relationship with the natural world. Purcell’s song ‘Tis nature’s voice’ becomes a central part of the programme, accompanied by some of his most glorious vocal and instrumental music. This creates an evening where sublime music and language go hand in hand to convey a profound message for our age.

There will be a pre-concert talk with Katharina Spreckelsen, Steven Devine and Rory Kinnear at 6.00pm in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer.

Programme

Wednesday 5 October 2022

7.00pm at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall

Ode ‘Welcome, welcome glorious morn’

Music by Henry Purcell

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Parts I – III

Music performed includes

The Fairy Queen Overture to Act 1 ‘Arise ye Subterranean winds’ Abdelazar Overture

The Fairy Queen Rondeau (Act 1) Dido and Aeneas Overture

Dido and Aeneas Echo Dance of Furies Dioclesian Prelude Chacony in G minor

Interval

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Parts IV – VII

The Fairy Queen Symphony (Act 4)

‘Hear my prayer, O Lord’

Hail, Bright Cecilia! ‘Tis nature’s voice’

King Arthur Air (Act 4)

The Gordian Knot Unty’d Prelude Come ye Sons of Art ‘Bid the virtues’

Evening Hymn

King Arthur Frost Dance & Hornpipe

Dido and Aeneas ‘Come away’ and Sailors Dance (Act 3)

King Arthur Symphony (Act 5)

King Arthur Overture in D

The Fairy Queen Entry Dance in C King Arthur Passacaglia (‘How happy the lover’)

Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

Music by Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695)

Curated by Katharina Spreckelsen

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Steven Devine director Huw Daniel leader

Rory Kinnear narrator Zoë Brookshaw soprano

Bethany Horak-Hallett mezzo soprano Jeremy Budd tenor Jonathan Brown bass

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Violins I

Huw Daniel (Leader)

Dominika Feher Julia Kuhn Alice Evans Nia Lewis

Violins II Matthew Truscott Claire Holden Daniel Edgar Stephen Rouse Violas Max Mandel Annette Isserlis

Basses de Violon Catherine Rimer Ruth Alford

Oboes Katharina Spreckelsen Alexandra Bellamy

Taille Sarah Humphrys Bassoon Zoe Shevlin

Trumpets David Blackadder Phillip Bainbridge Timpani Jude Carlton Harpsichord Steven Devine

Theorbo William Carter

Synopsis

Three young men travelling to a wedding are accosted by an old sailor – the Ancient Mariner. He begins to tell them a tale. The guests are transfixed by the ancient Mariner’s ‘glittering eye’ and can’t tear themselves away even when they think they hear the Bride arrive.

The Mariner tells them how he sailed from his home port on a ship. A storm drives the ship south where it comes to a land ‘of mist and snow,’ where ‘ice, mast-high, came floating by’. The sailors encounter an Albatross. They believe it to be a symbol of good fortune, except for the Mariner who shoots and kills the Albatross with his crossbow.

At first, the other sailors are angry with the Mariner, but as their fortunes change they commend him for his act. Soon they become stranded and experience strange phenomena and return to blaming the Mariner who is made to hang the corpse of the Albatross around his neck like a cross.

Time passes and the ship drifts until one day they spot another ship on the horizon.

Drawing close they discover that on board this ship are Death and Night-mare Lifein-Death (in the form of a pale woman with golden hair and red lips). They are playing dice for the souls of the sailors; Death wins the lives of all the sailors with one exception: Life-in-Death wins the Mariner’s – he watches his fellow sailors die as he is condemned to a fate worse than death.

The Wedding Guest fears that the Mariner is a ghost, but the Mariner assures him he is alive and continues with his tale.

The Mariner is alone on the ship for seven days and nights. Haunted by his dead crewmates, he is unable to sleep or pray and surrounded by strange creatures. Eventually, he starts to see the creatures as beautiful and as he does so he can pray again. The Albatross falls from his neck into the sea.

Free from the curse, the Mariner is able to sleep and rain falls. Spirits enter the dead men who magically crew the ship once more. The Wedding Guest is scared again but the Mariner insists they are blessed.

The Mariner tells of a trance-like episode where he hears two disembodied voices discuss whether he has served his penance. When he awakes he finds the supernatural crew watching him and that the ship has returned to his home.

A holy Hermit – in the company of the Pilot and his son – rows out to meet the Mariner’s ship. As they reach the ship it sinks in a whirlpool, but they manage to rescue the Mariner. Back on land he asks the Hermit to absolve him. The Hermit requests the Mariner to tell his story and when he does he is free from the agony of his guilt.

The Mariner, however, finds that his guilt returns in time. He tells the Wedding Guest how he is destined to keep retelling his tale… as he is doing now.

The poem ends with the wedding party leaving the church. The Mariner’s parting moral is to love ‘all things both great and small’ as God loves us. With that the Wedding Guest leaves the party and awakes the next morning ‘a sadder and a wiser man.’

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772 – 1834)

experimental, supernatural poem was originally published in Lyrical Ballads (1798), a collection of poems on which he collaborated with William Wordsworth. The mariner describes his ship becoming trapped in ice at the South Pole. After escaping, the sailors credit their salvation to an albatross; however, the mariner shoots the bird with a crossbow, and misfortunes follow. He is blamed by his shipmates, who hang the bird’s carcass round his neck. Gradually, the penitent mariner becomes more appreciative of the natural world, and this redeems him. Nevertheless, he continues to share his harrowing story. Critics have considered many allegorical meanings, but the poem defies reduction to a single interpretation.

The origins of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’

The episode that lies at the heart of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ – the killing of an albatross – was suggested by William Wordsworth, who had recently read George Shelvocke’s biographical Voyage Round the World by way of the Great South Sea (1726). On 1 October 1719, during a semi-authorised pirate expedition aboard the Speedwell in the South Seas, a black albatross that was following the ship was shot by Simon Hatley, the melancholy

second captain. There are many species of albatross with dark plumage, so this was not a rare variety. The appearance of the bird is associated with bad weather in the mind of Simon Hatley, but for Shelvocke and the rest of the crew the bird was ‘a companion, which would have somewhat diverted our thoughts from the reflection of being in such a remote part of the world’.

The area to the south of Tierra del Fuego, off the southernmost tip of South America, was clearly cold and hostile; indeed the weather was so bitter that one of the seamen lost sensation in his hands and fell to his death. Coleridge sets his albatross incident much closer to the equator.

Coleridge’s poem also contains elements of the biblical Cain, the legend of the Wandering Jew, a man cursed to walk the rest of his life as penance (a ballad version is in Thomas Percy’s Reliques) and the Flying Dutchman, a legendary ghost ship doomed to sail the seas for ever following some unspecified crime.

Lyrical Ballads

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ was first published in Lyrical Ballads (1798), a collaborative venture with Wordsworth. The first proposal for this publication was for a two-volume work. The first would comprise two plays: Wordsworth’s The Borderers and Coleridge’s Osorio. But this

ABOVE A Voyage round the World by the way of the great South Sea, performed in the years 1719 – 1722. Author / Creator: George Shelvocke. Held by: British Library. Shelfmark 983.d.3.

plan was changed so that the book was anonymous and would begin with the poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. In the preface Wordsworth describes the poem as ‘professedly written in imitation of the style, as well as the spirit of the elder poets’. The poem is introduced as ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’, in seven parts.

The poem was so different from all the other works in the collection that readers had difficulty understanding it. Coleridge used archaic spellings and obsolete words, and an often inverted word order, apparently driven by the need to achieve rhymes:

The Marineres all ‘gan pull the ropes, But look at me they n’old; Thought I, I am as thin as air –They cannot me behold.

LEFT Lyrical Ballads, 1798 edition. Author / Creator: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth. Held by: British Library. Shelfmark: Ashley 2250

ABOVE Manuscript draft of The Ancient Mariner, lines 201 – 12. Author / Creator: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Held by: British Library. Shelfmark: Add MS 47508

The first reviews found the style and content bewildering, ‘more of the extravagance of a mad German poet, than of the simplicity of our ancient ballad writers’, wrote a reviewer in the Analytical Review in December 1798. An interest in old English ballads or songs had recently been revived, and the poem seemed deliberately confusing. The English poet Robert Southey famously wrote, ‘we do not sufficiently understand the story to analyse it’ (Critical Review, October 1798).

The following year Wordsworth wrote to the publisher to say that he felt the inclusion of ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’ had been harmful to the Lyrical Ballads, and proposed omitting it from the second edition.

For the second edition it was moved from the opening position to the penultimate position of the first volume.

Revising the ‘Ancient Mariner’

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is the only poem on which Coleridge continued to work – and unarguably improve – until shortly before his death. Faced with the widespread criticism of the poem’s archaic language and general inaccessibility, Coleridge modernised around 40 spellings and terms, deleted 46 lines and added seven new ones. Parts v and vi were the most substantially altered, with careful revisions made to the section from ‘And soon I heard a roaring wind’ to ‘The dead men gave a groan’ (ll. 309 – 30, 1817 text).

Dreams and imagination

Coleridge was as much a prose and theoretical writer as he was a poet, as revealed in his major autobiographical work, Biographia Literaria, published in 1817.

In one of the most famous passages in Biographia Literaria, Coleridge offers a theory of creativity (pp. 95 – 96). He divides imagination into primary and secondary spheres. Primary imagination is common to all humans: it enables us to perceive and make sense of the world. It is a creative function and thereby repeats the divine act of creation. The secondary imagination enables individuals to transcend the primary imagination – not merely to perceive connections but to make them. It is the creative impulse that enables poetry and other art.

RIGHT The Ancient Mariner illustrations by Gustav Doré. Author / Creator: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Held by: British Library. Shelfmark: 1875.b.5

Biographia Literaria contains the first instance of the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’. Writing about his contributions to the Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge says that although his characters were ‘supernatural, or at least romantic’, he tried to give them a ‘human interest and a semblance of disbelief’ that would prompt readers to the ‘willing suspension of disbelief … which constitutes poetic faith’. Coleridge often linked poetry to dreams, and maintained that the imagination was equally active in both. His dreams were at times fuelled by his use of opium. After initially using the drug as a medical treatment, he spent much of his life trying to manage his addiction while continuing to use it to control his ill-health. He was much given to disturbing dreams, and connected them to his physical state, thus establishing a physical/dream/poetry relationship. Thoughts in dreams could

easily be ‘translated into sights and sensible impressions’. Given Coleridge’s interest in the imagined image it is no wonder ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ has such a strong visual aspect, and that it has inspired some of the greatest book illustrators. David Jones (1895–1974) produced a set of copperplate engravings for the 1929 edition. They usually contain notable elements of Christian symbolism – the priest with his censer, for example, in the illustration for the wedding scene – but a strong Celtic influence is also apparent in the beautiful, simple elegance of his figures.

Doré’s illustrated edition of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1877) used extreme tones of dark and light to emphasise the dramatic aspects of the work.

This article was originally published on the British Library’s Discovering Literature website bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians

BELOW The Ancient Mariner illustrations by Gustav Doré. Author / Creator: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Held by: British Library. Shelfmark: 1875.b.5

Purcell, Travel and Magic

Purcell never travelled; indeed, with the exception of possible regular coach journeys across the Thames to teach Lady Rhoda Cavendish, he is hardly recorded outside the environs of London and Westminster. But London in the 17th century was a vigorous and wealthy trading city, full of foreigners and exotic goods, one where the notion of travel was ever-present.

Many of the texts that Purcell worked with, both operas and plays, have exotic settings. Indeed, to the 17th century audience, a show was not an opera unless it was exotic, or at least magical: Dido and Aeneas in Tunisia; Dioclesian in Rome; King Arthur in Britain to be sure, but in ancient Britain with magic; The Fairy Queen in an Enchanted Wood; and The Indian Queen in Peru. The point of the operas was that watchers were transported to places they mostly knew only by reputation; their own imaginations were required to do the rest.

Like his audience, Purcell saw this exoticism through occasional prints and paintings, and by reading published descriptions; it was these ideas that found their way into the operas via the authors of those texts. An example of this interplay between texts and staging is one of the greatest exotic scenes on the London stage, a masque set in a Chinese garden in The Fairy Queen. Conjured up by Titania, it is introduced by a lighting cue: After the scene is suddenly illuminated, a transparent prospect of a Chinese garden is uncovered. The architecture, the trees, the plants, the fruits, the birds and the beasts, are quite different to what

we have in this world. It is terminated by an arch, through which other arches with close arbors can be seen, as well as a row of trees at the end of the view. Over it is a hanging garden, which rises by several ascents to the top of the house; it is bounded on either side with pleasant bowers, various trees, strange birds flying in the air; on the top of the platform, a fountain is throwing up water, which falls into a large basin.

The scene makes use of nature – both flora and fauna – on one hand, while on the other of man-made interventions – architecture, fountains, and gardening, a juxtaposition that was one of the key elements of the theatrical exotic. Who designed and painted the scene is not known, although a decorative painter named Robert Robinson who worked in the theatre was probably the artist in question. These ideas and images circulated in London, fuelled by luxurious but popular volumes such as An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces (1669). Written by the Dutchman, Johan Nieuhof – who also journeyed to Brazil, China, and India – it is widely acknowledged to have had a major influence on the rise of Chinoiserie in England. The type of eastern images it promoted appeared on furniture, cabinets, fabrics, and wallpapers, as well as smaller items such as silver, porcelain, enamels, or clothes.

Purcell may well have been unable to travel, but the exotic was always near at hand; it might even have been carried on the lid of a snuff box in the composer’s pocket.

Michael Burden

The same vessels which sailed from nations avowing a belief in ‘égalité, liberté et fraternité’ also exported inequity and injustice and on an industrial scale. It is impossible to separate the journey in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ from the injustices of the transatlantic slave trade and the devastating impact of Cook’s arrival on the first peoples of Australia.

The OAE acknowledge the severe continuing ramifications of the expeditions that set out from European shores. We commit ourselves to truth and contributing to creating a new social contract. This is why our music is so powerful as both message and metaphor. It inspires us to continue the journey, to be courageous with the renewed adventure of living and being better.

This article explores the experiences of the Indigenous peoples in Australia.

The Impact of European Expeditions

James Cook was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy. He achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Many of these lands were previously uncharted areas of the globe and Cook mapped these lands on a scale not previously charted by European explorers. As Commander of the HMS Endeavour, Cook is said to have ‘discovered’ the land now known as ‘Australia’. Cook’s secret orders from the British Admiralty were to seek ‘a Continent or Land of great extent’ and to take possession of that country ‘in the Name of the King of Great Britain’. Cook reached the southern coast of New South Wales in 1770 and sailed north, charting Australia’s eastern coastline and claimed the land for Great Britain on 22 August 1770.

There is controversy over Cook’s role as ‘an enabler of colonialism’ and the depraved violence associated with his contact with Indigenous peoples. Along with his arrival came invasion and brutal colonisation, which resulted in frontier conflict, mass massacres, genocide, martial warfare and the systematic rape, pillage, death, removal, and destruction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Cook’s claim that Australia was Terra Nullius was overthrown as fallacy by the High Court of Australia in June 1992.

After 204 years this lie was finally replaced with legal recognition that at the time the British invaded the continent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had long occupied the land now known as Australia. It always was, and always will be, the land of peoples whose sovereignty has never been ceded.

Cook’s scientific and geographical legacy influenced his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous European memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him. The daily impact and trauma of the brutal nature of Cook’s invasion on Indigenous land and peoples has an ongoing and profound lived impact in First Nations communities as reflected in ongoing inter-generational trauma, marginalisation, racism, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Colonisation and the resulting impact of Cook’s arrival have been a blight on Indigenous nations, families, communities, cultures, and livelihoods ever since.

Our thanks to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra for contributing this article. aiatsis.gov.au

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Biographies

John Passion with the Britten Sinfonia /  Eamonn Dougan and Dixit Dominus with Collegium Vocale Gent / Pieter-Jan Belder. She is a member of the baroque ensemble Solomon’s Knot with whom she performs and records widely.

Zoë has recorded Bach, Blow, Lennox and Michael Berkeley and Charpentier, on the Delphian, Hyperion, Resonus, Signum Classics, Soli dei Gloria and Sony labels. Soon to be released on OAE Player is the video of Zoë singing Strozzi Che si puo fare.

Zoë Brookshaw

British soprano Zoë Brookshaw read Theology at Cambridge University where she was a choral Scholar at Trinity College. She was a member of the Monteverdi Choir Apprentice Scheme and is currently a Rising Star of the Enlightenment.

Her opera engagements include Euridice and La Musica L’Orfeo with I Fagiolini; Aerial Spirit The Indian Queen with Le Concert d’Astrée / Emmanuelle Haïm, roles in The Fairy Queen with The Gabrieli Consort / Paul McCreesh and Rameau Pygmalion with The Dunedin Consort / John Butt.

On the concert platform Zoë has sung Bach and Handel with the Monteverdi Choir / John Eliot Gardiner, Handel Israel in Egypt at the BBC Proms with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / William Christie plus Bach and Vivaldi with the group and Steven Devine as well as Monteverdi Ball dell’Ingrate with Christian Curnyn; Handel with the Gabrieli Consort / Paul McCreesh, Monteverdi & Vivaldi with Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen, the St

She recently sang Aci in Handel Aci, Galatea e Polifemo with the OAE / Steven Devine, CPE Bach Die Israeliten in der Wüste at the Utrech Early Music Festival with Gli Angeli Genève and gave a recital with Elizabeth Kenny, lute at the Lörrach Festival. Her future plans include Purcell with the OAE and The Indian Queen in Antwerp, Luxembourg and Caen.

Jonathan Brown

Jonathan Brown was born in Toronto and studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Western

Ontario. After moving to England he continued his studies at the University of Cambridge as well as the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh with Sir Thomas Allen and Anthony Rolfe Johnson.

Operatic roles include Marcello (La Boheme, Royal Albert Hall), Belcore (L’Elisir d’Amore), Count Almaviva, Yamadori (Madam Butterfly), Giove (La Calisto), Orestes (Giasone), Garibaldo (Rodelinda), Ariodate (Xerxes), Silvio (I Pagliacci), Malatesta (Don Pasquale), Masetto (Don Giovanni), Shepherd (Venus and Adonis) and Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas). He performed the role of Trojan (Idomeneo) for Sir Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic in the Salzburg Easter Festival. He has performed Orfeo (Pastore) at Lille Opera, Le Chatêlet, Paris and Opera du Rhin with Emmanuelle Haim. Last year he created the role of Leon in a new production of Tom Smail’s opera Blue Electric in London.

He made his debut with Sir John Eliot Gardiner in Holland as the baritone soloist in a concert of Bach cantatas and thereafter was a regular soloist with performances in Zurich, Brussels and Paris. These performances formed part of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage and the subsequent CD release of all the cantatas on the Soli Deo Gloria label.

He features as a soloist in Purcell’s Ode to St Cecilia and Dido and Aeneas for Harmonia Mundi. He has recorded the baritone solos in the Fauré Requiem with the London Festival Orchestra for BMG and appears in the role of the Forester in Sullivan’s The Golden Legend for Hyperion. Recent recordings have included world premieres of Wesley’s cantata Confitebor tibi (Priory) and Eccles’ Semele (AAM).

Jeremy Budd

Born in Hertfordshire, Jeremy started out as a Chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral in London before going on to study at the Royal Academy of Music. Since finishing his studies he has been a much in demand soloist on the concert platform particularly for his Baroque repertoire. Jeremy has worked with many of the foremost conductors in this field including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Harry Christophers CBE, Masaaki Suzuki, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Charles Mackerras, Paul McCreesh, John Butt and Bernard Labadie.

His discography includes over ten years of recordings for the Sixteen many of which feature him as a soloist including Acis and Galatea (as Acis), Handel’s Saul (as the Witch of Endor) and James MacMillan’s Stabat Mater.

Other notable recordings are the award winning discs of Purcell King Arthur and The Fairy Queen with Paul McCreesh, and Acis and Galatea with the Early Opera Company and Christian Curnyn.

Huw Daniel

Huw Daniel was a pupil at Ysgol Gyfun Ystalyfera, South Wales, and was then an organ scholar at Robinson College, Cambridge, graduating with first-class honours in music in 2001. He then studied the baroque violin at the Royal Academy of Music for two years with Simon Standage. In 2004, Huw was a member of EUBO, the members of which formed Harmony of Nations and went on to play together and record two CDs. He was the leader of Orquestra Barroca Casa da Música, Porto 2004 – 2021, is one of the leaders of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and is a member of the Dunedin Consort and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. As guest leader he has played and recorded with EUBO, the English Concert, the King’s Consort, the Sixteen, and Barokkanerne Oslo. Huw plays a violin by Jacob Stainer, 1665.

Steven Devine

Steven Devine combines a career as a conductor and director of orchestral, choral and opera repertoire with that of a solo harpsichordist and fortepianist. He is Conductor and Artistic Advisor of The English Haydn Festival; Music Director of New Chamber Opera, Oxford and Director of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Bach the Universe & Everything series.

On the concert platform he has directed Purcell, Blow, Bach, Handel and Mozart with the OAE; Bach Easter Oratorio with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales; Haydn, Handel, CPE Bach, JC Bach, Ditterdorf and Viotti with the English Haydn Orchestra; Handel, Vivaldi and Porpora with Ann Hallenberg and Trondheim Barokk; Bach Christmas Oratorio with the Norwegian Wind Ensemble; Handel Solomon with Victoria Baroque Players, British Columbia and Handel Music for the Royal Fireworks with Arion Baroque Ensemble, Montreal; He has also directed programmes with the Academy of Ancient Music, Academie d’Ambronay, the Mozart Festival Orchestra and St Paul’s Chamber Orchestra.

Devine’s opera repertoire includes works by Purcell, Cavalli, Handel, Haydn and Mozart as well as rarities by Galuppi, Salieri and Cimarosa. His recordings

include Dido and Aeneas with the OAE and Sarah Connolly in the title role.

Amongst Devine’s recent projects have been Purcell, Blow and Drahgi with the OAE in London and Oslo plus Handel Aci, Galatea e Polifemo with the group which he will reprise in Malta next season. He directs further programmes of Bach Cantatas with the OAE; Bach, Handel and Vivaldi with the Academy of Ancient Music on tour in Spain and Handel Belshazzar in Malta.

Steven Devine was educated at Chetham’s School of Music before reading Music at St Peter’s College, Oxford and completing his studies at the Royal College of Music. He was Director of Opera Restor’d from 2002 – 2010 and Kurator and Conductor of the Norwegian Wind Ensemble from 2016 – 2018. He is a member of electronic music group The Art of Moog performing Bach on synthesizers.

Bethany Horak-Hallett

British mezzo-soprano Bethany HorakHallett read Music at Leeds University gaining a Masters in Music Performance. She completed her training at Trinity Laban Conservatoire with John Evans. Bethany is a Rising Star of the Enlightenment and a Samling Artist. She was a finalist in the 2020 Cesti Competition at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music and won Second

Prize in the 2021 International Handel Singing Competition. She continues her vocal development with Sherman Lowe and Rosa Mannion.

Bethany’s opera engagements have included Dorabella Così fan Tutte for Garsington Opera, Kitchen Boy Rusalka for Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester / Robin Ticciati and Žena Katya Kabanova at Glyndebourne.

On the concert platform Bethany has appeared with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment singing Bach Cantatas and Galatea in Handel Aci, Galatea e Polifemo directed by Steven Devine and the St John Passion with Mark Padmore. She made her BBC Proms début with the Monteverdi Choir / Sir John Eliot Gardiner singing Handel Dixit Dominus (broadcast on BBC TV and Radio), toured with Holland Baroque, sang Bach and Handel with the Academy of Ancient Music and appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra / James Sherlock. She has given recitals at the London Handel Festival and for Garsington Opera. Amongst Bethany’s films and recordings are Cupid in John Eccles Semele with the Academy of Ancient Music / Julian Perkins, Bach and Telemann for OAE Player and Messiah for the Voces8 Foundation Live from London festival.

Her future engagements include Galatea Aci, Galatea e Polifemo with the Instruments of Time and Truth / Christopher Buckland and Bethany joins the Royal Northern Sinfonia / Dinis Sousa as soloist for Bach Cantata 199.

Rory Kinnear

Rory Kinnear is an award-winning British actor, perhaps best known for his role as Bill Tanner in the James Bond films Quantum Of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre. Other film credits include: Peterloo, Trespass Against Us; iBoy; Man Up; Cuban Fury; Broken (won ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the BIFA’s); Wild Target and Academy Award and BAFTA nominated The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. TV credits include: Inside No. 9; Guerrilla; Quacks; The Casual Vacancy; Penny Dreadful; the sitcom Count Arthur Strong; the Tony Grisoni-written Southcliffe (for which he was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor); Loving Miss Hatto; Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror; Rupert Goold’s Richard II as ‘Bolingbroke’ and ITV drama Lucan in which he could be seen starring as the title role.

Kinnear is also hugely respected for his theatre work, winning the Evening Standard Award’s ‘Best Actor’ in 2010, for his performances in Measure For Measure (Almeida Theatre) and Hamlet (National Theatre), and again in 2013 for his performance as Iago in Othello (National Theatre). For the latter role he has also picked up an Olivier Award – an award he also won (‘Best Supporting Actor’) for his performance as Sir Fopling Flutter in The Man Of Mode in 2008. He has also been nominated twice before for his performances in both Hamlet and Burnt By The Sun. Recent stage credits include: Rufus Norris’ The Threepenny Opera and Macbeth and the inaugural production at the new Bridge Theatre, Young Marx.

Recent releases include: Penny Dreadful: City of Angels; Unprecedented; Catherine the Great, Years and Years, Watership Down; Brexit; Ridley Road and Alex Garland’s hotly anticipated new feature Men, in which he stars opposite Jessie Buckley, and Taika Waititi’s series Our Flag Means Death starring Rhys Darby.

Kinnear is an award-winning playwright, penning his debut play The Herd in 2013. He also made his directorial debut with the English National Opera’s production of A Winter’s Tale in 2017.

He is currently filming The Diplomat for Netflix.

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In 1986, a group of inquisitive London musicians took a long hard look at that curious institution we call the Orchestra, and decided to start again from scratch. They began by throwing out the rulebook. Put a single conductor in charge? No way. Specialise in repertoire of a particular era?

Too restricting. Perfect a work and then move on? Too lazy. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was born.

And as this distinctive ensemble playing on period-specific instruments began to get a foothold, it made a promise to itself. It vowed to keep questioning, adapting and inventing as long as it lived. Residencies at the Southbank Centre and the Glyndebourne Festival didn’t numb its experimentalist bent. A major record deal didn’t iron out its quirks. Instead, the OAE examined musical notes with ever more freedom and resolve.

That creative thirst remains unquenched. The Night Shift series of informal performances are redefining concert formats. Its former home at London’s Kings Place has fostered further diversity of planning and music-making. The ensemble has formed the bedrock for some of Glyndebourne’s most groundbreaking recent productions.

In keeping with its values of always questioning, challenging and trailblazing, in September 2020, the OAE became the resident orchestra of Acland Burghley School, Camden. The residency – a first for a British orchestra – allows the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to live, work and play amongst the students of the school.

Now more than thirty years old, the OAE is part of our musical furniture. It has even graced the outstanding conducting talents of Elder, Rattle, Jurowski, Iván Fischer and John Butt with a joint title of Principal Artist. But don’t ever think the ensemble has lost sight of its founding vow. Not all orchestras are the same. And there’s nothing quite like this one.

Andrew Mellor

The OAE Team

Chief Executive

Crispin Woodhead General Manager

Edward Shaw

Finance and Governance Director

Pascale Nicholls Development Director

Emily Stubbs Projects Director

Jo Perry

Education Director

Cherry Forbes Marketing Director

Doug Buist

Head of Development

Natalie Docherty Education Officer

Andrew Thomson Projects Manager

Sophie Adams Finance Manager

Fabio Lodato

Head of Digital Content Zen Grisdale Marketing Officer

Dora Tsang Box Office and Data Manager

Paola Rossi Development Manager Kiki Betts-Dean Development Officer Luka Lah

Projects Officer

Ed Ault Orchestra Consultant

Philippa Brownsword Choir Manager

David Clegg

Librarian

Roy Mowatt

Leaders

Huw Daniel Kati Debretzeni

Margaret Faultless Matthew Truscott

Players’ Artistic Committee

Adrian Bending

Steven Devine

Max Mandel Andrew Roberts Katharina Spreckelsen

Principal Artists

John Butt

Sir Mark Elder Iván Fischer Vladimir Jurowski Sir Simon Rattle Sir András Schiff

Emeritus Conductors

William Christie Sir Roger Norrington

Life President

Sir Martin Smith

Board of Directors

Imogen Overli [Chair]

Adrian Bending Daniel Alexander Steven Devine Denys Firth

Adrian Frost

Alison McFadyen

David Marks

Rebecca Miller

Andrew Roberts

Katharina Spreckelsen

Matthew Shorter Christine Sticher

Dr. Susan Tranter Crispin Woodhead

OAE Trust

Adrian Frost [Chair]

Mark Allen

Paul Forman

Steven Larcombe

Alison McFadyen

Imogen Overli

Rupert Sebag-Montefiore Maarten Slendebroek

Sir Martin Smith Caroline Steane Jessica Kemp

Honorary Council

Sir Victor Blank Edward Bonham Carter Cecelia Bruggemeyer

Nigel Jones

Stephen Levinson Marshall Marcus Julian Mash Greg Melgaard Susan Palmer OBE

Jan Schlapp

Diane Segalen

Susannah Simons Lady Smith OBE

Rosalyn Wikinson Mark Williams

Roger Montgomery

Sir Martin Smith

Principal Patrons

John Armitage Charitable Trust Denys & Vicki Firth

Adrian Frost

Imogen Overli

Sir Martin & Lady Smith OBE

Season Patrons

Julian & Annette Armstrong Nigel Jones & Françoise Valat-Jones Philip & Rosalyn Wilkinson Mark & Rosamund Williams

Project Patrons

Ian S Ferguson CBE & Dr Susan Tranter

Bruce Harris Selina & David Marks JMS Advisory Limited

Aria Patrons

Madeleine Hodgkin Steven Larcombe Peter & Veronica Lofthouse Stanley Lowy

Gary & Nina Moss

Rupert Sebag-Montefiore Maarten & Taina Slendebroek Caroline Steane

Eric Tomsett

Chair Patrons

Mrs Nicola Armitage

– Education Director Victoria & Edward Bonham Carter

– Principal Trumpet Katharine Campbell

– Violin

Anthony & Celia Edwards

– Principal Oboe James Flynn QC

– Co-Principal Lute / Theorbo Paul Forman

– Co-Principal Cello / Violin /

Thank you

Co-Principal Horn Jonathan Gaisman

– Viola

Michael & Harriet Maunsell

– Principal Keyboard Christina

– Flute

Jenny & Tim Morrison

– Second Violin Caroline Noblet

– Oboe

Andrew Nurnberg

– Co-Principal Oboe

Professor Richard Portes CBE FBA

– Co-Principal Bassoon John & Rosemary Shannon

– Principal Horn Sue Sheridan OBE

– Education Crispin Woodhead & Christine Rice

– Principal Timpani

Education Patrons

Stephen & Patricia Crew

Sir Timothy & Lady Lloyd Susan Palmer OBE Andrew & Cindy Peck

Professor Richard Portes CBE FBA

Associate Patrons

Charles & Julia Abel Smith Damaris Albarrán Noël & Caroline Annesley

Mrs A Boettcher

Sir Richard Arnold & Mary Elford Hugh & Michelle Arthur Catherine & Barney Burgess David & Marilyn Clark

David Emmerson Claire Espiner

Jonathan Parker Charitable Trust Roger Heath MBE &

Alison Heath MBE Peter & Sally Hilliar Moira & Robert Latham

Sir Timothy & Lady Lloyd Roger Mears & Joanie Speers

David Mildon

In Memory Of Lesley Mildon

John Nickson & Simon Rew Andrew & Cindy Peck

Stephen & Penny Pickles

Peter Rosenthal Michael Spagat Emily Stubbs & Stephen McCrum Roger & Pam Stubbs

Paul Tarrant & Jenny Haxell Shelley Von Strunckel Mr J Westwood

Young Ambassador Patrons

Jessica Kemp & Alex Kemp Breandán Knowlton Rebecca Miller

Young Associate

Natalie Docherty

Young Patrons

Ed Abel Smith

Marina Abel Smith Marianne & William Cartwright-Hignett

Elizabeth George

David Gillbe

Sam Hucklebridge

Henry Mason

Peter Yardley-Jones

Gold Friends

Michael Brecknell

Gerard Cleary

Sir Anthony & Lady Cleaver

Mr & Mrs C Cochin De Billy Chris Gould

Silver Friends

Dennis & Sheila Baldry

Haylee & Michael Bowsher

Tony Burt

Christopher Campbell David Cox

Stephen & Cristina Goldring

Rachel & Charles Henderson Malcolm Herring Patricia Herrmann

Rupert & Alice King

Alison & Ian Lowdon

Anthony & Carol Rentoul Stephen & Roberta Rosefield Bridget Rosewell

David & Ruth Samuels

Her Honour Suzanne Stewart Susannah Simons

Simon & Karen Taube

Bronze Friends

Tony Baines

Penny & Robin Broadhurst Graham & Claire Buckland Dan Burt

Michael A Conlon

Mrs SM Edge

Mrs Mary Fysh

Mr Simon Gates

Martin & Helen Haddon Ray & Liz Harsant

The Lady Heseltine

Mrs Auriel Hill Rose & Dudley Leigh Julian Markson Stuart Martin

Richard I Morris Jr Hugh Raven Alan Sainer

Matthew & Sarah Shorter Mr & Mrs Tony Timms Mrs Joy Whitby David Wilson

Corporate Supporters

Mark Allen Group Champagne Deutz Swan Turton

OAE Experience

Supporters

Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation

Henocq Law Trust

The 29th May 1961 Charity Stanley Picker Trust

Rising Stars

Supporters

Julian & Annette Armstrong

Old Possum’s Practical Trust

The 29th May 1961 Charity Fenton Arts Trust

The Garrick Charitable Trust

Idlewild Trust

The Michael Marks Charitable Trust

Thirplow Charitable Trust

Trusts & Foundations

Albert and Eugenie Frost Trust

Apax Foundation

Arts Council England Dreamchasing Foundation Dyers Company

Esmee Fairbairn Foundation

The John Lyon’s Charity National Foundation For Youth Music Orchestras Live

Paul Hamlyn Foundation

Peter Cundill Foundation

The Brian Mitchell Charitable Settlement

The Britford Bridge Trust

The Charles Peel Charitable Trust

The Geoffrey Watling Charity

The Linbury Trust

The Patrick Rowland Foundation

Steel Charitable Trust

OAE Education 2022 / 23

Over the past twenty years OAE Education has grown in stature and reach to involve thousands of people nationwide in creative music projects.

Our participants come from a wide range of backgrounds and we pride ourselves in working flexibly, adapting to the needs of local people and the places where they live. The extensive partnerships we have built up over many years ensure maximum and lasting impact.

We take Inspiration from the OAE’s repertoire, instruments and players. This makes for a vibrant, challenging and engaging programme where everyone is involved; players, animateurs, composers, participants, teachers, partners and stakeholders all have a valued voice.

We have a host of projects planned for this season from TOTS to TEENAGERS to THOROUGHBREDS and to whet your appetite for the OAE’s next concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall we’d like to tell you about our community opera The Moon Hares:

A programme to involve, empower and inspire

The Moon Hares is our magical community opera written by Hazel Gould with music by James Redwood beautifully entwined with music from Henry Purcell’s Dioclesian.

The village is run with a strict set of rules and regulations. At night, the villagers are under strict curfew and the streets are patrolled. Nobody goes out at night or looks up at the stars. The Mayor fiercely upholds the curfew, but the older villagers know that the village is full of magic and wonder.

When a new teacher arrives in town, she is surprised to find out that the children have never seen the moon as they are forbidden from going out at night. With the help of the wise old man, she discovers

that the village is filled with ancient magic. Any person who goes out at night and looks at the moon is turned into a Hare until morning. They can live the life of a wild animal, exploring nature and the night. Will the children dare to disobey the rules for an adventure and look at the moon?

The Moon Hares will be performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 2 November 2022 as part of the OAE’s Southbank Centre Season. We are going to be celebrating the OAE’s relationship with Camden with the performance featuring musicians and dancers from Acland Burghley School plus three Camden primary schools and a community choir made up of singers from our nationwide residencies.

Our work at Acland Burghley School

In September 2020, we took up permanent residence at Acland Burghley School in Camden, North London. The residency –a first for a British orchestra – allows us to live, work and play amongst the students of the school.

Three offices have been adapted for our administration team. We use the Grade II-listed school assembly hall as a rehearsal space, with plans to refurbish it under the school’s ‘A Theatre for All’ project. The school isn’t just our landlord or physical home. Instead, it allows us to build on twenty years of work in the borough through OAE’s long-standing partnership with Camden Music. Having already worked in eighteen of the local primary schools that feed into ABS, the plans moving forward are to support music and arts across the school into the wider community. Our move underpins our core ‘enlightenment’ mission of reaching as wide an audience as possible.

What do backflips, smoke machines and baroque drums all have in common? Answer: our first video collaboration with Acland Burghley students. We teamed up with year 10 students who performed a dance that they choreographed for their GCSE exam, accompanied by us performing Rameau’s ‘Danse des

Sauvages’ from Les Indes Galantes. After taking inspiration from baroque dances on YouTube and being drawn to the distinctive rhythmic pulse in the Rameau, the pupils sparked enthusiastic discussion with our players to allow the choreography and music to evolve hand in hand. They also had their say in the direction and recording of the music video, which you can watch on our YouTube channel.

We brought The Moon Hares, an opera for young families which we commissioned in 2019, into the school hall and performed it alongside pupils from ABS as well as Gospel Oak and Kentish Town primary schools. The electrifying performance included music both old and new, with sections from Purcell’s 17th century opera Dioclesian mixed with original, modern music by James Redwood.

There’s also been a bustle of activity away from the camera in our ongoing private classroom education. We’ve delivered numerous interactive workshops for all students in Years 7, 8 and 9, including an exploration of the orchestra’s instruments, illustrated sessions on blues and jazz compositional techniques as part of curriculum studies and a study a day for all GCSE music students on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.4.

OAE Young Producers

The value of our residency in Acland Burghley School can be realised in many ways beyond the immediate practice of orchestral musicianship.

One of the key objectives in our mission is to lift aspirations and broaden horizons for life beyond school. We want to help students leave school with richer CVs and stronger professional prospects.

One great way to do that is to mentor the next generation in all those things we have learned as an organisation. At the start of the 2021 – 2022 school year, we launched our Young Producers’ programme in which we offer mentoring, training and work-placement apprenticeship so that the young people in our new community acquire essential skills in management and production, from budgets, compliance and risk assessment to camera operation and stage design.

We are proud of our first cohort, who have already learned so much and become a key part of our working routine. They will

one day graduate as accredited Producers and become the mentors, at our side, for future recruits.

More than just an extra-curricular enterprise, this is a programme that we expect to connect with sixth-form education in the new government T Level examination programme.

Young Producers

Armin Eorsi

Harvey O’Brien

Iremide Onibonoje

Jessica Sexton-Smith

Matas Juskevicius

Michael Hau

Nathan Kilby

Raphael Thornton

Riley Silver

Sidney Crossing

Sophia Vainshtok

Tom Cohen

Daniel Miliband Jaeden Ferritto

Sacha Cross

Welcome to the Southbank Centre

We hope you enjoy your visit. We have a Duty Manager available at all times. If you need any information or help, please ask a member of staff.

Eating, drinking and shopping? Take in the views over food and drinks at the Riverside Terrace Cafe, Level 2, Royal Festival Hall. Visit our shops for products inspired by our great cultural experiences, iconic buildings and central London location.

Explore across the site with Beany Green, Côte Brasserie, Foyles, Giraffe, Honest Burger, Las Iguanas, Le Pain Quotidien, Ping Pong, Strada, Skylon, Spiritland, Topolski, wagamama and Wahaca.

If you’d like to get in touch with us following your visit, please write to the Visitor Contact Team at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX, or email hello@southbankcentre.co.uk

We look forward to seeing you again.

SONGS OF TRAVEL at the Southbank Centre

2 November

The Moon Hares

A magical family opera

26 January

Saint-Saens: Sounds for the End of a Century with Steven Isserlis (cello) & Maxim Emelyanychev (conductor)

1 February

Handel Around the World with Ian Bostridge (tenor)

THE NIGHT SHIFT

Chamber music down a local pub.

25 October, Walthamstow

Recorder concertos by Telemann and Vivaldi with Rachel Beckett (recorder).

29 November, Shadwell

Violin and viola duos by Mozart and his contemporaries with Kinga Ujszaszi (violin) and Max Mendel (viola).

BACH, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING at Kings Place

Mission: to explore our place in the cosmos guided by the intergalactic genius of JS Bach. Each monthly event features one of Bach’s cantatas, and other choral and instrumental works, alongside a talk by an eminent astronomer.

Guest speakers include Stuart Clark (the Guardian, 16 October), Chris Lintott (The Sky at Night, 13 November), Dallas Campbell (Bang Goes the Theory, 18 December) and Jocelyn Bell Burnell (the discoverer of pulsar stars, 29 January).

Become a Friend!

Without the generosity of our Friends, the OAE would not exist.

When you become an OAE Friend, you join us in bringing great music to life. We then give you a front-row and behind-the-scenes view of our work, so that you can see the impact that your donation really makes. This includes supporting our ambitious season of concert performances, digital productions on OAE Player, improving access to music through our Education programme, and our community work at Acland Burghley School.

Whether you wish to watch the rehearsals or get to know the players, a Friends membership offers a heightened OAE concert-going experience and allows you to support the orchestra you love. With your help, we can keep the music playing. Become a Friend for as little as £50 a year and receive the following benefits:

• Priority booking

• Access to open rehearsals

• Get to know the players

• Regular updates from the orchestra.

To become a Friend, scan the QR code, visit oae.co.uk/support-us or contact us at development@oae.co.uk or 020 8159 9317

MOON RESHA COMING UP...

The Moon Hares is a magical opera for young families commissioned and created by OAE.

Follow the residents of a mysterious village with a strict set of rules and regulations on their journey of self-realisation as they discover and inhabit their fluffy alter-egos.

When a new teacher arrives in town, she is surprised to discover the children have never seen the moon as they are forbidden from going out at night. With the help of her landlord, she discovers that the village is filled with ancient magic; any person who dares venture into the moonlight is turned into a hare until morning! Able to live the life of a wild animal, exploring nature and the night, the children of the village buzz off the thrill of disobeying the rules to go on their nocturnal adventure.