Soprano Nathalie Paulin has established herself in the United States, Canada, Europe and the Far East as an artist of the very first rank. Winner of a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Opera Performance, she has collaborated with conductors including Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Harry Christophers, Jane Glover, Sir Roger Norrington, Robert Spano, Pinchas Zukerman and Michael Christie on both the opera and concert stage.

She has appeared with the Wexford, Lanaudière, and Bard festivals, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, New York City Opera, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Dallas Opera and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Toronto, Montreal, Seattle and Denver. Winner of the Montreal Symphony Competition, she holds a master’s degree from the University of Montreal.

The Canadian tenor Jean-Michel Richer started his career outside Canada at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he sang Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, the Chevalier de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites, and the title role of Werther. He has taken part in several concerts with Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal, I Musici de Montréal, and Ensemble Caprice. Richer’s recital, Songs of Travel with pianist Martin Dubé, was awarded the Josef Traxel Scholarship in 2013.

He is supported by the Jacqueline Desmarais Foundation, which enables him to pursue his vocal training with Marlena Kleinman Malas in New York. After studying trombone and singing in Montreal, he pursued his studies with the Music Academy of the West, the Canadian Vocal Arts Institute, and the Orford Arts Centre with Marilyn Horne, Warren Jones, Michel Sénéchal, Joan Dornemann, Edith Bers and Tom Krause.

Opera Lafayette is an American period instrument ensemble that specialises in French repertoire, rediscovers masterpieces, and creates a recorded legacy of its work. Founded in 1995 in Washington, DC, by conductor and artistic director Ryan Brown, Opera Lafayette has earned critical acclaim and a loyal following for its performances and recordings with international singers renowned for their interpretations of baroque and classical operas.

Opera Lafayette’s performances included Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica, Chabrier’s Une Éducation Manquée (An Incomplete Education), and Opera and the French Revolution: Three dramatic scenes from Œdipe à Colone by Antonio Sacchini, Sapho by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (a modern première), and Médée by Luigi Cherubini.

At the invitation of Château de Versailles Spectacles, Opera Lafayette made its international début at the Opéra Royal in February 2012 with the modern world première of Monsigny’s Le Roi et le fermier. Opera Lafayette returned to Versailles for five sold-out performances of Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Philidor’s Les Femmes Vengées in January and February of 2014.

Opera Lafayette’s discography on the Naxos label has expanded to twelve releases, including Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice (2005), Sacchini’s Œdipe à Colone (2006), Rameau Operatic Arias (2007), Lully’s Armide (2008), Rebel and Francœur’s Zélindor, roi des Sylphes (2009), Monsigny’s Le Déserteur (2010), Philidor’s Sancho Pança (2011), Grétry’s Le Magnifique (2012), Monsigny’s Le Roi et le fermier (2012), Félicien David’s Lalla Roukh (2014), Philidor’s Les Femmes Vengées (2015), and Grétry’s L’épreuve villageoise (2016).

A Pilgrim’s Progress – Jeremy Siepmann talks to the conductor Ryan Brown

Photo: Louis Forget

Ryan Brown is the founder, conductor and artistic director of Opera Lafayette. Through his work with the company, Brown has gained an international reputation for his interpretations of French opera, and for his role in the revival of significant works from the 18th and 19th centuries. Brown’s discography of recordings for Naxos includes operas by Rameau, Francoeur, Gluck, Lully, Sacchini, Monsigny and Grétry.

He was widely lauded for the modern premiere and recording of Félicien David’s 1862 opera Lalla-Roukh, and his frequent performances of Italian works have also been met with great acclaim. In 2014 Brown returned to the Royal Opera of Versailles, leading Opera Lafayette in Philidor’s Les Femmes vengées and Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and in 2015 conducted Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica at the Glimmerglass Festival.

Brown was raised in a musical family in California, and performed extensively as a violinist and chamber musician before turning to conducting. He is a recipient of La Médaille d’Or du Rayonnement Culturel from La Renaissance Française.

A Pilgrim’s Progress – Jeremy Siepmann talks to the conductor Ryan Brown

Born in Bonn in 1770, the eldest son of a singer in the Kapelle of the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne and grandson of the Archbishop’s Kapellmeister, Beethoven moved in 1792 to Vienna. There he had some lessons from Haydn and others, quickly establishing himself as a remarkable keyboard player and original composer. By 1815 increasing deafness had made public performance impossible and accentuated existing eccentricities of character, patiently tolerated by a series of rich patrons and his royal pupil the Archduke Rudolph. Beethoven did much to enlarge the possibilities of music and widen the horizons of later generations of composers. To his contemporaries he was sometimes a controversial figure, making heavy demands on listeners by both the length and the complexity of his writing, as he explored new fields of music.

Stage Works

Although he contemplated others, Beethoven wrote only one opera. This was eventually called Fidelio after the name assumed by the heroine Leonora, who disguises herself as a boy and takes employment at the prison in which her husband has been unjustly incarcerated. This escape opera, for which there was precedent in contemporary France, ends with the defeat of the evil prison governor and the rescue of Florestan, testimony to the love and constancy of his wife Leonora. The work was first staged in 1805 and mounted again in a revised performance in 1814, under more favourable circumstances. The ballet The Creatures of Prometheus was staged in Vienna in 1801, and Beethoven wrote incidental music for various other dramatic productions, including Goethe’s Egmont, von Kotzebue’s curious The Ruins of Athens, and the same writer’s King Stephen.

Choral and Vocal Music

Beethoven’s most impressive choral work is the Missa solemnis, written for the enthronement of his pupil Archduke Rudolph as Archbishop of Olmütz (Olomouc) although finished too late for that occasion. An earlier work, the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, is less well known. In common with other composers, Beethoven wrote a number of songs. Of these the best known are probably the settings of Goethe, which did little to impress the venerable poet and writer (he ignored their existence), and the cycle of six songs known as An die ferne Geliebte (‘To the Distant Beloved’). The song ‘Adelaide’is challenging but not infrequently heard.

Orchestral Music

Symphonies

Beethoven completed nine symphonies, works that influenced the whole future of music by the expansion of the traditional Classical form. The best known are Symphony No. 3, ‘Eroica’, originally intended to celebrate the initially republican achievements of Napoleon; No. 5; No. 6, ‘Pastoral’; and No. 9, ‘Choral’. The less satisfactory ‘Battle Symphony’ celebrates the earlier military victories of the Duke of Wellington.

Overtures

For the theatre and various other occasions Beethoven wrote a number of overtures, including four for his only opera, Fidelio (one under that name and the others under the name of the heroine, Leonora). Other overtures include Egmont, Coriolan, Prometheus, The Consecration of the House and The Ruins of Athens.

Concertos

Beethoven completed one violin concerto and five piano concertos, as well as a triple concerto for violin, cello and piano, and the curious Choral Fantasy for solo piano, chorus and orchestra. The piano concertos were for the composer’s own use in concert performance. No. 5, the so-called ‘Emperor’ Concerto, is possibly the most impressive. The single Violin Concerto, also arranged for piano, is part of the standard violin repertoire along with two romances (possible slow movements for an unwritten violin concerto).

Chamber Music

Beethoven wrote 10 sonatas for violin and piano, of which the ‘Spring’ and the ‘Kreutzer’ are particular favourites with audiences. He extended very considerably the possibilities of the string quartet. This is shown even in his first set of quartets, Op. 18, but it is possibly the group of three dedicated to Prince Razumovsky (the ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets, Op. 59) that are best known. The later string quartets offer great challenges to both players and audience, and include the remarkable Grosse Fuge—a gigantic work, discarded as the final movement of the String Quartet, Op. 130, and published separately. Other chamber music includes a number of trios for violin, cello and piano, with the ‘Archduke’ Trio pre-eminent and the ‘Ghost’ Trio a close runner-up, for very different reasons. The cello sonatas and sets of variations for cello and piano (including one set based on Handel’s ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes’ from Judas Maccabaeus and others on operatic themes from Mozart) are a valuable part of any cellist’s repertoire. Chamber music with wind instruments and piano include the Quintet, Op. 16, for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon. Among other music for wind instruments is the very popular Septet, scored for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and double bass, as well as a trio for two oboes and cor anglais, and a set of variations on a theme from Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the same instruments.

Piano Music

Beethoven’s 32 numbered piano sonatas make full use of the developing form of the piano, with its wider range and possibilities of dynamic contrast. Other sonatas not included in the 32 published by Beethoven are earlier works, dating from his years in Bonn. There are also interesting sets of variations, including a set based on ‘God Save the King’and another on ‘Rule, Britannia’, variations on a theme from the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, and a major work based on a relatively trivial theme by the publisher Diabelli. The best known of the sonatas are those that have earned themselves affectionate nicknames: the ‘Pathétique’, ‘Moonlight’, ‘Waldstein’, ‘Appassionata’, ‘Les Adieux’ and ‘Hammerklavier’. Less substantial piano pieces include three sets of bagatelles, the all too well-known Für Elise, and the Rondo a capriccio, known in English as ‘Rage Over a Lost Penny’.

Dance Music

Famous composers like Haydn and Mozart were also employed in the practical business of providing dance music for court and social occasions. Beethoven wrote a number of sets of minuets, German dances and contredanses, ending with the so-called Mödlinger Dances, written for performers at a neighbouring inn during a summer holiday outside Vienna.