Sarah "Swag" Connolly is better than you

@fuckyeahsarahconnolly

A fanblog dedicated to the wonderful, talented, and brilliant Sarah Connolly

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fuckyeahsarahconnolly

When I Am Laid in Earth, sung by the freshly minted Dame Sarah Connolly

From the English Concert on YouTube: “Handel - The Philanthropist,” a concert featuring Dame Sarah Connolly, Sophie Bevan, Soraya Mafi, and James Way singing selections from Solomon and Handel’s “Foundling Anthem.”

This is the first—a free teaser concert—in a livestreamed series being billed as “Britain’s Orpheus.” If you enjoy it, consider buying tickets to the other concerts, and/or making a donation to the orchestra’s Musicians’ Fund.

Looking ahead . . . in spite of it all

The last time I published an unofficial list of Dame Sarah Connolly’s upcoming performances, it was with hesitation, knowing that she had months of treatment for breast cancer ahead of her and that she might need to withdraw from some of her performance engagements. That was in late October, 2019. I had, at the time, no inkling that a then-unknown respiratory virus would begin infecting humans over the winter and rapidly break out into a deadly pandemic, resulting in the widespread closure of public spaces and devastating the performing arts.

The change log appended to my previous unofficial schedule post shows that on March 23, 2020, I made the first round of edits to reflect corona-cancellations. Since then, I have been quietly monitoring the status of Dame Sarah’s scheduled gigs and crossing them off as their cancellations have become known to me.

I have also picked up on a few new dates that we can very tentatively look forward to. It is hard to say how long the coronavirus crisis will go on; even when large, indoor public gatherings become possible again, some arts organizations may have had to slash their offerings—or may have succumbed completely—due to the financial fallout of the pandemic. In the meantime, we are starting to see some companies like the Bayerische Staatsoper, Wigmore Hall, and the Royal Opera House offer small-scale, live musical performances with no live audiences, just online streaming.

Now that Dame Sarah is about to perform in one such livestream-only concert—tomorrow’s Das Lied von der Erde in Covent Garden, also notable for being her first live performance since withdrawing from the stage for cancer treatment over the winter—it seems like the right moment to refresh my list of her upcoming performances and start anew.

See my current list after the jump.

Keep reading

Sarah Connolly LIVE from the Royal Opera House this Saturday!

In case you haven’t heard: Dame Sarah Connolly is scheduled to return to live stage performance (for the first time since November) with Das Lied von der Erde, in a chamber arrangement, this Saturday, June 20, at the Royal Opera House. She’ll share the audienceless stage for Das Lied with David Butt Philip; the program also includes dancer Vadim Muntagirov interpreting the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice as choreographed by Frederick Ashton.

The concert will be streamed live on the web as part of the “Live from Covent Garden” series. There is a ticket charge of £4.99, and I recommend paying in advance so you don’t have to fumble with the interface at concert time. My confirmation email says, “Live from Covent Garden will also be available in your Vimeo Library for 14 days after the event.”

Alphonse Mucha, Stained-glass windows for the Fouquet shop, c. 1915

Oho, someone has put the whole Glyndebourne Hippolyte et Aricie on YouTube

Just hangin’ out my blog’s banner. Image sources here.

Happy June, everyone!

Dame Sarah Connolly presenting the Young Singer of the Year award (to Marina Viotti, not shown) at The Opera Awards in London on April 29, 2019, and the text of the short speech she gave on the occasion. Both gleaned from Dame Sarah’s Twitter [1, 2].

Signor, deh, non partire - C. Monteverdi, L’Incoronazione di Poppea - Louise Alder, Sarah Connolly, accompanied by Richard Egarr…

Cesare alert: these are up on YouTube at the moment and you can go find them if you want. Caveats: they don’t have subtitles and you shouldn’t expect them to stick around for long.

Vote for Dame Sarah!

Dame Sarah Connolly is one of the nominees for the 2019 Opera Magazine Readers’ Award. Voting is open to anyone on the web; cast your ballot here until 5:00 p.m. GMT, Friday, February 8.

Correction/update: voting is open until 5:00 p.m. GMT, Friday, MARCH 8. Nevertheless … no reason to delay! Vote Connolly today!

Sarah Connolly fans: if you haven’t yet heard the Verdi Requiem that she jumped in for at the Proms at the end of August, you’ve got two days left to listen to the archived broadcast on the BBC Radio 3 website. (Photo: Chris Christoudolou for the BBC.)

World premiere performance of the song “Sleeplessness … Sails” (audio only) by the Australian composer Lisa Illean. Performed by Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton on August 6, 2018 at London’s Cadogan Hall as part of the BBC Proms. From new music advocate 5:4 on YouTube.

World premiere performance of the song “Farewell” (audio only) by the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. Performed by Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton on August 6, 2018 at London’s Cadogan Hall as part of the BBC Proms. From new music advocate 5:4 on YouTube.

Gentle reminder that you have five days left to listen to Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton’s recital of English songs from the BBC Proms. Dame Sarah is one of my very favorite recital singers and I especially love to listen to her in English song. Frank Bridge’s “Come to Me in My Dreams” and Britten’s “Charm of Lullabies” (the five-song cycle that he chose for publication) are, for me, the jewels of this compact, hourlong concert.

Dame Sarah Connolly, filmed in the Benjamin Britten archive at Aldeburgh, talks about Britten’s song cycle A Charm of Lullabies and two additional songs that he wrote setting poems from the same source, but chose not to include in the set. Dame Sarah recorded these two additional lullabies (“A Sweet Lullaby” and “Somnus, the humble god”) for her new album Come to Me in My Dreams and she will be giving the world premiere performance of them at next Monday’s BBC Proms recital at Cadogan Hall. In this video she talks about the artistic qualities of the songs and why she places the two extra lullabies separately from A Charm of Lullabies in her programming.

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