Tenor Colin Ainsworth has built an international reputation based on exceptional singing, impeccable diction and a diverse range of repertoire. He made his début with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and at the Edinburgh International Festival in the world première of MacRae’s The Assassin Tree, and with the Greek National Opera as Orphée in Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice. Other credits include Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, Castor in Rameau's Castor et Pollux, Fenton in Falstaff, Jaquino in Fidelio, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Renaud in Lully’s Armide, and Pylades in Iphigénie en Tauride with such companies as L’Opéra Français de New York, Opera Atelier, Vancouver Opera, Edmonton Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera.

Much in demand as an interpreter of modern and contemporary music, soprano Carla Huhtanen has sung with companies such as Garsington Opera, Mostly Mozart, at the Barbican, London, and Welsh National Opera, and with orchestras including the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. One of NOW magazine’s Top Ten Theatre Artists of 2008 and 2010 Dora Award nominee, she performs regularly with Opera Atelier, Tapestry New Opera, and in concerts throughout Italy, France, Malta, Britain, Germany, and in Canada.

Mezzo-soprano Lynne McMurtry has performed with the symphony orchestras of Boston, Charleston, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, among others, and with the Canadian Opera Company, Opera Ontario, Manitoba Opera, Opera in Concert, and at Tanglewood and Ravinia. Her rich, generous instrument and keen musical intelligence have brought her acclaim in a wealth of repertoire, including Bach’s Mass in B minor, Handel’s Messiah, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. On the operatic stage, her vocal and theatrical versatility has won her excellent reviews in such diverse rôles as Arsace in Rossini’s Semiramide, Olga in Eugene Onegin, Mme. De Croissy in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, and Lady Jane in Patience.

One of the most exciting new groups to emerge in the early music world, the Toronto-based Aradia Ensemble specialises in presenting an eclectic blend of orchestral, operatic and chamber music played on original instruments. The group records for Naxos and has made more than 30 recordings. They have made two music videos, one film soundtrack, have collaborated with Isadora Duncan and Baroque dancers, have co-produced opera and worked with Balinese Gamelan.

While focusing heavily on the repertoire of seventeenth-century France and England, Aradia also performs works by the Italian and German masters of the baroque, as well as contemporary pieces commissioned by the group. In July 2000 Aradia was the featured ensemble in residence at the New Zealand Chamber Music Festival and in July 2003 performed at Musica nel Chiostro in Tuscany.

According to Robert Graves, Aradia was the daughter of Apollo’s twin sisters. She was sent by the gods to teach mankind to order the music of the natural world into song.

Photo: Emily Lockhart

Irish/Canadian conductor Kevin Mallon studied composition with Peter Maxwell Davies and conducting with John Eliot Gardiner alongside singing and Baroque violin.

He served as concertmaster with Le Concert Spirituel and Les Arts Florissants in Paris before moving to Canada to take up posts with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and the University of Toronto.

In 1999 he founded the Aradia Ensemble, with whom he has toured widely and has made over 50 recordings for Naxos.

In Ireland, he was appointed Artistic Director of Opera 2005, formed to celebrate Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture.

In 2009 he began working with Odessa Opera, Ukraine, conducting productions in Odessa before touring across Holland, Belgium and Spain.

Mallon is Music Director of Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra in Ottawa and has recently been appointed Artistic Director of Symphony in the Barn in Ontario.

For more information, visit www.kevinmallonmusic.ca.

The Italian composer and violinist Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678 and after his ordination in 1703 embarked on an intermittent career in the service of the Ospedale della Pietà, an institution for the education of orphan, illegitimate or indigent girls. It was an establishment with a formidable musical reputation. His later career brought involvement in opera. As a composer Vivaldi was prolific, with some 500 concertos to his credit in addition to a quantity of works for the church and for the theatre. He left Venice in 1741 in the apparent hope of finding new patrons in Vienna, but he died shortly after his arrival in the city.

Church Music

The surviving church music of Vivaldi includes the well-known Gloria, in addition to a number of settings of psalms and motets.

Operas

None of the 50 or so operas of Vivaldi remain in standard repertoire, although some are now once again making their appearance.

Concertos

The most famous of all Vivaldi’s concertos are those of Le quattro stagioni (‘The Four Seasons’), characteristic compositions to which the composer attached explanatory programmatic sonnets. These four concertos, for solo violin, string orchestra and harpsichord, form part of the collection Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione (‘The Contest of Harmony and Invention’), one of seven collections of such compositions published in the composer’s lifetime. In addition to concertos for solo violin, Vivaldi also wrote concertos for many other solo instruments, including the flute, oboe, bassoon, cello and viola d’amore, and for groups of solo instruments.

Chamber Music

Vivaldi wrote a number of sonatas and trio sonatas, many of them designed for one or two violins and basso continuo. He also wrote a series of chamber concertos, compositions similar in approach to the solo and multiple concertos but scored for smaller groups of instruments.