Elgar
The Dream of Gerontius

‘Elgar was the last serious composer to be in touch with the great public’. So wrote Constant Lambert shortly after Elgar’s death in 1934. In touch he certainly was with a variety of works from Froissart and the Pomp and Circumstance marches to Enigma and the Symphonies. His music is firmly rooted in 19th Century Romanticism: no modernist he, but blest with an imaginative genius neither parochial nor merely nationalistic. Elgar was an opera composer manqué, much admired by Richard Strauss as a progressivist, but he had had no formal musical training beyond violin lessons, his education deriving from his family environment and involvement in local music making in Worcester. He had however, embarked on composition at least by the age of ten and early on decided to devote himself to freelance composition, coupled with teaching and playing the violin as and when the need arose to augment his income.

From such relatively humble beginnings, Elgar achieved by the 1890’s considerable success with a series of works culminating in the first performance, under Hans Richter, of Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) in 1899. His reputation was assured, and on the strength of Caractacus, performed at the Leeds Festival, he was commissioned to compose a major choral work for the 1900 Birmingham Triennial Festival. The text he chose to set was the well known poem by Cardinal J.H. Newman – The Dream of Gerontius.

Elgar had been brought up a Catholic and from his early years had known Newman’s poem. He was particularly inspired by the knowledge that General Gordon had found solace in it. Elgar too had an enigmatic personality and, certainly in later life , was a depressive. Often withdrawn, he sought to express his deepest beliefs in this work. At the end of the manuscript he wrote ‘This is the best of me’ and had yet to contend with gibes from such as Sir Charles Stanford, ‘My boy, it stinks of incense’. There is no doubt that while Elgar’s music has enhanced Newman’s words giving them a wider appeal and a more obviously emotional focus in musical terms, the work remains essentially Catholic.

The first performance of the Dream in October 1900 was not an unqualified success. Lack of rehearsal and appreciation of the music’s difficulties contributed to what was in Elgar’s eyes a disaster. Profoundly depressed by critical reaction, he swore never again to openly express his innermost feelings. Those feelings are most clearly discerned in the person of Gerontius, in whom Elgar saw, perhaps, the progress of his own faith, of his own soul. The terror, the anguish and the exultation are all highly personal and yet, objectively , the work as a whole is as music drama more akin to Wagner’s Parsifal (which Elgar had heard at Bayreuth in 1892) than to the tradition of English oratorio. Never before in English music has such sensitivity been required of both chorus and orchestra, the latter being more than merely complementary to the ‘action’.

The scheme of the work reflects in two parts the stages of Gerontius’ journey, to death in Part I and to a version of his God and assignment to Purgatory in Part II. Throughout the voice of Gerontius runs as a constant thread, lyrical and intense, the other actors in the drama, the chorus and semi-chorus of friends, angelicals and demons adding substance to the story. The overall effect is theatrical in terms of opera but Elgar’s length of melodic line and use of orchestral colour lofts simple oratorio onto a higher plane – here is the progressivist hailed by Richard Strauss. Whether one listens from a religious standpoint or not, the effect is also profoundly moving. As indicated in Elgar’s letters, written during the course of the composition, The Dream is the product of burning inspiration of an intensely personal kind. Despite his lack of formal training Elgar was technically accomplished – for him inspiration came before technique: as he remarked to W.H. Read after a performance of The dream attended by them both ‘I believe there is a lot of stuff called double counterpoint, or whatever they call it, in that’. The ‘stuff’ is in essence the genius of a composer who was able to capture an all too transient vision and to transform it into music of great power but at the same time, music displaying a breathtaking ease of technical mastery. For Elgar it was simply enough to head his score Ad maiorem Dei Gloriam – To the greater glory of God.

Here is the publicity leaflet.

Kim-Marie Woodhouse
Mezzo-soprano

Born in Melton Mowbray, Kim-Marie Woodhouse studied singing and performance at the Welsh College of Music & Drama with Maureen Guy where she graduated with distinction. In 1993 she won the Mary Garden International Singing Competition.

Her operatic engagements have included Mercédès / Carmen, Second Wood Nymph Rusalka, Carmela La vida breve, Cupid Orpheus in the Underworld, Suzy La rondine, Ernestina Love’s Luggage Lost, Fortune Teller Arabella, Annina La traviata and Lady-in-Waiting Der Zwerg for Opera North, Hosta Sarka for Wexford Festival Opera, Herodias Salome for Piggots Barn Opera and Fenena Nabucco for The Opera Company.

An accomplished concert performer, she has sung Sea Pictures, at Llandaff Cathedral, Messiah at The Music Hall, Aberdeen, and Verdi Requiem at Rochester Cathedral, as well as a wide range of performances with choral societies throughout the UK.

Kim-Marie Woodhouse appears as Third Lady in Kenneth Branagh’s new film of The Magic Flute and her other recent engagements have included Teodata Flavio for The Early Opera Company, Zerlina Don Giovanni for Opera North, Schwertleite Die Walküre for the Oxford Philomusica and Odysseus Unwound for Tête-à-Tête. Current engagements include Dorabella Così fan tutte for Garden Opera, Flora La traviata for Diva Opera and The Kingdom in Rochester Cathedral.

Jonathan Gunthorpe
Baritone

Jonathan Gunthorpe read English and Russian at Leeds University, gained an MA in music at the Birmingham Conservatoire, furthered his studies at the Royal College of Music, and completed his studies at the National Opera Studio.

Jonathan Gunthorpe made his Royal Opera début as Angelotti and has since returned as Nachtigall Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Other engagements have included Dancaїre Carmen with Welsh National Opera, Papageno The Magic Flute with English Touring Opera, leading roles in the world premieres of The Cricket Recovers by Richard Ayres and Thwaite by Jurgen Simpson with Aldeburgh / Almeida Opera, Arsenio La Spinalba with the Casa da Musica, Porto, Pilgrim Curlew River with Opera de Rouen, Mr Noye Noye’s Fludde at the Nuremberg Festival, Basilio L’amore industrioso for Opera Holland Park, Papageno for Belle Ile sur Mer, Sharpless Madam Butterfly for London City Opera, Albany Vision of Lear (UK premiere) at the Linbury Studio Theatre and Faber The Knot Garden at the Montepulciano Festival.

Concert engagements have included, performances with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Classical Opera Company, the Gabrieli Consort, the Hofkapelle Darmstadt, the London Mozart Players and the Northern Sinfonia and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. He has appeared at the BBC Proms and at the Bath, Cheltenham, Lufthansa, Oslo, Perth and Turku Festivals. In recital he works with Julius Drake and Malcolm Martineau. He has broadcast for BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night is Music Night and his recordings further include Music for the Sun King (Motets by Lalande) for Hyperion and Paul Spicer’s Easter Oratorio with the Britten Sinfonia, a recording that was a GRAMOPHONE CD of the Month. Recently, Jonathan Gunthorpe created the role of the Giant The Gentle Giant, composed by Stephen McNeff, for ROH2. His current engagements include The English Clerk Death in Venice for English National Opera, Nanni L’infedelta delusa for English Touring Opera, Messiah with the Apollo Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the Oxford Philomusica, Shostakovich Symphony No. 14 with the City of London Sinfonia, Mozart Mass in C Minor at the Parco di Musica, Rome, and a recording of Brahms Liebeslieder with Malcolm Martineau.

Justin Lavender
Tenor

Justin made his international debut in The Pearl Fishers at Sydney Opera House,leading to engagements with major opera companies and orchestras around the world. 1990 brought debuts at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, singing the leading role of Arnold in Rossini’s William Tell, and at the Vienna State Opera as Tamino in Mozart’s Magic Flute. His debut at La Scala in the title role of Rossini’s Count Ory came the following year.

He recently returned to Covent Garden for the title role in Gounod’s Faust and has just sung Loge in Wagner’s Rheingold in Latvia and Norway. This year he sings Don José in Carmen with Welsh National Opera.

Justin has worked on the concert platform with Solti, Giulini, Haitink, Slatkin,Rhozhdestvensky, Dutoit, Frühbeck de Burgos, Elder and Abbado, and is particularly associated with Verdi’s Requiem and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, singing Gerontius at the 2006 Berlin Festival.

His many recordings include CDs with the Bournemouth Symphony of Mozart,Rossini and Donizetti arias as well as leading roles such as Arturo in Bellini’s Puritani, Fernand in Donizetti’s La Favorite, Mark in Smyth’s The Wreckers, Pierre in Prokofiev’s War and Peace and Schnittke’s Faust Cantata. His new recording of Gerontius with the CBSO will be released in 2007.