First Major American Production of Saint-Saëns’s Grand Opera Henri VIII Opens at Bard SummerScape Next Friday (July 21)

SummerScape’s original production is by French director Jean-Romain Vesperini, whose previous credits include Paris National Opera, Opera Hong Kong, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre and the Quebec Opera Festival, where his treatment of Gounod’s Faust was “a success and one of the finest presented in recent seasons” (Journal de Québec, Canada). Designed by Alain Blanchot, Henri VIII’s costumes conjure the grandeur of traditional French opera with faithfully reproduced styles from the Tudor period, while Bruno de Lavenère’s minimalist sets help position the opera as psychological drama. Complete with evocative video projections by Studio AE and lighting by Christophe Chaupin, the concept is designed, Vesperini explains, “to develop the audience’s fantasy and imagination.”
 
Last seen at Bard in 2019’s “world-class production” (Opera Wire) of The Miracle of Heliane, Alfred Walker stars in the title role. Known for his “beautiful bass-baritone and physical magnetism” (Opera News), he sings opposite the Catherine d’Aragon of soprano Amanda Woodbury, a Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (now known as the Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition), with mezzo-soprano Lindsay Ammann – “a force to be dealt with” (Opera News) – as the beautiful and ambitious Anne Boleyn. Canadian tenor Josh Lovell lends his “warm, liquid voice and easy high notes” (The Guardian) to the role of Don Gómez de Feria, with The Miracle of Heliane’s Kevin Thompson as Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Singing the Duke of Norfolk, Anne’s uncle, is Harold Wilson, who “command[ed] a sonorous bass” (New York Times) in a leading role of 2022’s The Silent Woman.

Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love (1928) 

The subject of this year’s Bard Music Festival, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was a great lover of Shakespeare’s work, and it was reportedly “entirely for his own enjoyment” that he based a comic opera on The Merry Wives of Windsor. This was also the inspiration for Verdi’s Falstaff, but unlike the Italian composer, Vaughan Williams had the advantage of writing in English, and his plot and libretto adhere closely to Shakespeare’s original. Despite this, the resulting opera has only rarely been staged, with no UK performances between 1958 and 2006, when the English National Opera gave its first and only presentation of the work; there have been only two student productions in Britain since then, and only four U.S. productions to date. Such neglect reflects no artistic deficiencies, however. Boasting a score rich with folksongs and Elizabethan melodies, including “Lovely Joan” and “Greensleeves,” Sir John in Love features some of Vaughan Williams’s finest writing. As BBC Music observes:

This year’s Bard Music Festival presents the opera in a semi-staged production by American director Alison Moritz, whose projects have been called “raw, funny, surreal, and disarmingly human” (Opera News). Bass-baritone Craig Colclough reprises his “moving and sympathetic” portrayal of the title role from Arizona Opera, where he demonstrated “exquisite comic timing and … a wide range of dynamics and luminous bronzed vocal tones” (Opera Today). Soprano Brandie Sutton brings her “radiant, agile voice and tender expressive touches” (New York Times) to the role of Anne Page, opposite the Fenton of British-American tenor Joshua Blue, who also appears this season at the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Houston Grand Opera, and Glimmerglass Festival. Mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer, a finalist for the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year Award, sings Mistress Quickly, with soprano Ann Toomey, whose credits include Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Berlin Philharmonic, as Mistress Page; 2023 Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Grand Finals-winning mezzo-soprano Sarah Saturnino portrays Mistress Ford. Anchored by Botstein, the Bard Festival Chorale, and the American Symphony Orchestra, this rare, livestreamed American presentation of Vaughan Williams’s opera brings this year’s SummerScape and Bard Music Festival to a satisfying close.

Round-trip bus transportation from New York City

Chartered coach transportation from New York City is available for the Sunday matineeperformances of Henri VIII (July 23 and 30) and Sir John in Love (Aug 13). This may be ordered online or by calling the box office, and the meeting point for coach pick-up and drop-off is at Lincoln Center, Amsterdam Avenue, between 64th and 65th Streets. More information is available here.

SummerScape tickets

Tickets for mainstage events start at $25. For complete information regarding tickets, series discounts, and more, visit fishercenter.bard.edu or call Bard’s box office at (845) 758-7900.

To download high-resolution photos, click here.