If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Episode 9

In this episode Michelle Assay interviews composer, violist and conductor Brett Dean on his 2017 opera Hamlet, discussing his approach to Shakespeare's original play, the composition process, collaborating with librettist Matthew Jocelyn as well as various performers, and the opera in performance at Glyndeborne and beyond.
 

• 0:52 - Initial approach to Hamlet; researching other productions;  working with librettist Matthew Jocelyn; inspiration from cinematic adaptations of Hamlet  (including  Michael Almereyda's 2000 film starring Ethan Hawke);  awareness and avoidance of other musical adaptations of Shakespeare
• 9:41 - deconstructing the text of Hamlet and exploring Ophelia in more depth
• 15:06 -  adaptation choices concerning characters, themes and structure
• 17:42 - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and moving between comedy and tragedy in opera
• 25:06 - influences of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck
• 26:56 - who is Hamlet? distilling the play's psychological explorations
• 32:19 - orchestrating specific moments, including the Ghost's arrival
• 35:27 - writing vocal lines with performers in mind
• 37:13 - using energetic, agitato musical passages
• 40:17 - individual composing identity; composing in an "angular" but relatable style for singers and audiences
• 42:12 - staging choices for the Glyndebourne premiere and later productions of Hamlet
• 44:49 - the compatibility of Shakespeare's words with the operatic medium
• 46:59 - planning the structure of acts and scenes; visualising Elsinore and keeping notes and sketches
• 50:40 - differences between the operatic scenes in Australia and Europe
• 52:55 - Dean's composing plans for the future

Brett Dean studied in Australia before moving to Germany where he was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic for fourteen years, during which time he began composing. His music is championed by many leading conductors and orchestras, including Sir Simon Rattle, Vladimir Jurowski, Simone Young, Daniel Harding, Andris Nelsons, Marin Alsop and Sakari Oramo. Much of Dean’s work draws from literary, political, environmental or visual stimuli, including a number of compositions inspired by artwork by his wife Heather Betts.

Dean began composing in 1988, and gained international recognition through works such as his clarinet concerto Ariel’s Music (1995), which won a UNESCO Composers award, and Carlo (1997), inspired by the music of Carlo Gesualdo. In 2009 Dean won the Grawemeyer Award for violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing. In June 2017 his second opera Hamlet was premiered at Glyndebourne Festival Opera to great acclaim, winning the 2018 South Bank Sky Arts Awards and an International Opera Award. The DVD of Hamlet was released by Glyndebourne in June 2018 and won a Gramophone Award in 2019.  Hamlet has also been performed at The Met and in Munich, most recently at the Bayerische Staatsoper in May 2023.

Dean also appears with many of the world’s leading orchestras as a conductor and as violist, performing his own Viola Concerto and in chamber music with other soloists and ensembles. Dean has recently finished a three-year post as Composer in Residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; compositions include his recent work In spe contra spem for two sopranos and orchestra which premiered in May 2023.

If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Episode 8

In this episode, Michael Graham interviews musical theatre expert Hannah Marie Robbins on the writing, performance history and gender politics of Kiss Me, Kate (1948), a musical adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew written by Cole Porter and Bella & Sam Spewack.

*Content warning: this episode includes discussion of domestic violence*

02:15 Introducing Kiss Me, Kate
04:52 What's so fascinating about this musical?
  08:02 Kiss Me, Kate in an opera context; the balance between "high" and "low" art
11:04 The creative process of Cole Porter and Sam & Bella Spewack; treatment of Shakespeare and the gender politics of collaboration
19:46 Adaptation of the gender politics of The Taming of the Shrew  in Kiss Me, Kate
28:58 Kiss Me Kate in a 1940s performance context
32:30 Stage and screen adaptations of the musical 1948-1999
39:10 The Taming of the Shrew and Kiss Me, Kate in a present-day context; gender and power dynamics
 44:51 Final thoughts; potential pitfalls of staging the musical; reading/listening recommendations 

Hannah Marie Robbins is an Assistant Professor in Popular Music at the University of Nottingham, and Director of the University of Nottingham Centre for Black Studies. They specialise in musical theatre history and the representation of race and gender on the musical stage.

Hannah's research interests include the life and work of Cole Porter and the role and representation of Black creatives in musical theatre history. They are currently writing their first book on the hit musical Kiss Me, Kate (1948), as well as working on publications about film star Lena Horne, and on intersectionality in musical theatre.

Hannah is also co-curator of the international network Black in Arts and Humanities, and the Publishing Partnerships Officer for the Free Black University. In their spare time, they run The Black Book Challenge, championing geographically diverse publications by Black women and trans spectrum authors, as well as supporting Black and queer people in accessing higher education.

Episode 7

Michelle Assay interviews composer, director, playwright, and all-round Renaissance person, Claire Van Kampen, on her richly varied career working for stage and screen.

00:02:00 Claire's introduction to early music, composing for historic instruments
00:08:00 The RSC and touring with Phoebus Cart
00:13:42 Working at the Globe and composing music for Shakespeare's plays
00:23:05 Incorporating early music research into composing
00:29:02 Changing approaches to theatre music at the Globe
00:39:16 Dances and jigs
00:42:29 Twelfth Night and the Globe to Globe project
00:46:24 Theatre music mishaps, playfulness and conviviality
00:50:15 The legacy of Claire's work
00:54:15 Composing, writing and directing in television and film
00:59:38 Shakespeare and race
01:03:32 Living through the pandemic, and finding a sense of purpose


Claire van Kampen trained at London’s Royal College of Music. Studying music theory with Ruth Gipps and piano with Peter Element, she specialized in 20th-century music performance, premiering many works by today’s leading composers. She subsequently developed a career as a composer and performer, writing and playing for theater, radio, television, film soundtracks, and the concert hall.

She began her theatre career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986, then the Royal National Theatre in 1987, becoming the first female musical director with either company. In 1990, she co-founded the theatre company Phoebus Cart with her husband Mark Rylance. At Shakespeare’s Globe, she served as Director of Theatre Music and Artistic Associate from 1996 to 2006, directing the music for more than a hundred of the Globe's productions. She is currently the Globe Associate and Senior Research Fellow for early modern music. 

In spring 2007, she received the Vero Nihil Verius award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts, conferred upon her by Concordia University in Oregon, United States. Together with Mark Rylance and Jenny Tiramani, she received the 2007 Sam Wanamaker Award for the founding work during the opening ten years at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Ms. van Kampen has created original scores for Broadway’s True West (2000), Boeing-Boeing (2008), La Bête (2010), Twelfth Night and Richard III (2013–14): all were nominated for Tony Awards. She also wrote the play Farinelli and the King (2017–18),  first performed at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and then the West End in 2015: it received six Olivier Award nominations, and five tony nominations when it was staged on Broadway in 2018. 

Claire  has also written the music for numerous film and television productions, including Wolf Hall for the BBC. As well as adapting Farinelli and the King for the screen (under the new title Farinelli and the Queen), she has written It Never Entered My Mind, a film about the abstract expressionist painter Elaine de Kooning, and is currently working as its director in production.

Claire also gives regular lectures on Shakespeare and music, and in 2019 she received an honorary doctorate of music from Brunel University. She is also writing a book on Shakespeare and music.

If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Episode 6

Michelle Assay talks to British-Ukranian mezzo-soprano Rozanna Madylus about her multi-role performance in John Casken's King Lear adaptation, The Shackled King. The opera receives its world premiere at the Buxton International Festival in July 2021, following its livestream performance for the Shakespeare and Music Study Group's conference in December 2020. Rozanna discusses her approach to researching, rehearsing, and performing her characters, how concepts of family differ between Ukraine and the UK, and the profound impact of personal experience on operatic performance.

Rozanna Madylus was born in Leicestershire, England, of Ukrainian descent. After completing her undergraduate degree in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Rozanna decided to dedicate herself to classical singing.  During her time at the Academy, she was a member of Academy Song Circle and a finalist in the Patrons Award.  Rozanna was also awarded The Karaviotis Prize at Les Azuriales Young Artist Competition, Nice, France, in August 2012 and, in the summer of 2013, attended the Solti Accademia in Castiglione della Pescaia. Rozanna was on the Young Artist Platform at The Oxford Lieder Festival and, since then, she has been invited to perform in various concert halls around the UK and abroad, including the Holywell Music Room, Kings Place, The Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin, the Prokofiev Hall at the Mariinsky Theatre and the St Petersburg Philharmonic. 

Previous roles include Rosina in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Barefoot Opera), Third Lady in Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Waterperry Opera Festival), Prinz Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (Berlin Opera Academy), Alma Mahler in The Art of Love / Kokoschka’s Doll (Counterpoise Ensemble), Mother Goose in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (cover for Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), Second Woman/Second Witch in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Birmingham Opera Company), Jezebel in Goehr’s Naboth’s Vineyard (Melos Sinfonia), Beggar Woman in Britten’s Death in Venice (Garsington Opera), Smeraldina in Dove’s The Little Green Swallow (British Youth Opera), the title role in Handel’s Ariodante (Royal Academy Opera), Madame de la Haltière Cendrillon (RAO), Fidalma in Cimarosa’s The Secret Marriage (cover for BYO), the title role in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (RAO and the BBC Symphony Orchestra), Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Sinfonia d’Amici) and Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto (Stanley Opera). 

Her first CD, performing alongside Sir John Tomlinson in Kokoschka’s Doll is available on Champs Hill records.  She will sing the role of Forester’s Wife in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at Longborough Festival Opera next year as well as create the role of Cordelia/The Fool in John Casken’s world premiere of The Shackled King. 

If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Audio extracts of Arthur Sullivan's music for The Tempest (1860-62) and Macbeth (1888) provided by kind permission of John Andrews and Dutton Epoch.

1: Macbeth, Overture
2: The Tempest, 'Come unto these yellow sands'
3: Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 6
4: The Tempest, Introduction
5: The Tempest, Epilogue
6: Macbeth, Prelude to Act 2
7: Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1

Episode 5

Michael Graham talks to conductor John Andrews about his recordings of Arthur Sullivan's incidental music for The Tempest and Macbeth. Michael and John discuss the importance of Shakespeare throughout Sullivan's career, Sullivan's presentation of different characters in the two plays, and parallels between Sullivan's incidental music and modern-day film scores. They explore the 'operatic' style of Victorian Shakespeare performance, and consider why this most famous of opera composers never adapted Shakespeare for the operatic stage. John also explains the process of recording Sullivan's music live alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers, Simon Callow, Mary Bevan, and Fflur Wyn.

00:00:00: Introduction; a year in lockdown
00:04:35: Why Sullivan?
00:09:40: Shakespeare through Sullivan's career
00:24:58: The music of The Tempest: Prospero's island
00:33:31: The music of Macbeth: collaboration with Henry Irving
00:52:44: The recording process
01:00:15: Closing thoughts

John Andrews is Principal Guest Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra and  Conductor-in-Association with the English Symphony Orchestra. Born in Nairobi and brought up in Manchester, he graduated from Cambridge University with a doctorate in music and history.

With a special affinity for Italian bel canto and the English baroque, he has conducted over 40 operas with companies including The Grange Festival, Opera Holland Park, English Touring Opera, Garsington Opera, Opera de Baugé and the Volkstheater Rostock. An exponent of neglected English music, he has appeared regularly at the English Music Festival presenting works from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

His recordings include Incidental Music to The Tempest and Macbeth, the oratorio The Light of the World and comic opera Haddon Hall (Sir Arthur Sullivan) and The Mountebanks (Gilbert and Cellier) for Dutton Epoch with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Percy Sherwood’s Double Concerto and Sir Frederic Cowen’s 5thSymphony for EM Records, Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris for Dutton Vocalion, and most recently Malcolm Arnold’s The Dancing Master for Resonus Classics, which won a BBC Music Award.

In 2021-2 he returns to the Grange Festival and further recordings with the BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as making his debut with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Audio clips of Northern Opera Group's performance of Charles Villiers Stanford's 'Much Ado About Nothing' (2019) provided by kind permission of David Ward and Northern Opera Group.

Episode 4

Michelle Assay talks to David Ward about programming Shakespeare-inspired operas in his role as Artistic Director of Northern Opera Group. Michelle and David discuss the Group's 2019 Festival of Shakespearian operatic works, including Charles Villiers Stanford's Much Ado About Nothing. They also explore Gustav Holst's Henry IV opera, At The Boars Head, which will be performed alongside two other Holst operas at the 2021 festival. The conversation touches on issues such as Shakespeare's place in English national identity, the particular challenges faced by English composers when adapting Shakespeare into opera, and the operatic appeal of Falstaff.

00:01:06: The Northern Opera Group and the 2019 Shakespeare festival
00:07:37: Stanford's Much Ado About Nothing
00:22:06: (English) opera and fidelity to Shakespeare
00:31:32: 2021 (and beyond): Holst's At The Boar's Head

David Ward is the Artistic Director of Northern Opera Group. For Northern Opera Group: (as Director) 'Amahl and the Night Visitors', 'Cinderella', 'Alfred', 'The Pirates', 'The Original Chinese Conjuror', 'The Yellow Princess'; (as Conductor) 'The Wandering Scholar'. A graduate of the University of Cambridge, David has worked previously for Opera North, the Royal Northern College of Music, Northern Ballet, and the Leeds International Piano Competition. David is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, and a Clore Emerging Cultural Leader. He is a Trustee of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum, and Leeds Youth Opera. David hosts Northern Opera Group's monthly podcast, 'Operacast'.

If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Episode 3

Michael Graham talks to Jennifer Waghorn about music in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the dynamics of composer-playwright collaboration in early modern theatre, and parallels between early modern theatre and the birth of opera. They particularly discuss the lives and work of two composers for Shakespeare's theatre company, The King's Men: John Wilson and Robert Johnson. Jennifer also describes her experiences composing and performing Shakespearian music in her own work as a musician, composer, and music director.

00:02:07: Getting into Shakespeare and music; working on the Wiggologue
00:09:13: Studying the music of early modern theatre; parallels with the birth of opera
00:17:37: 'Enter Robert Johnson': composing for The King's Men
00:27:09: John Wilson and apprentices in The King's Men
00:32:00: Music in Shakespeare (and others): love, sorrow, magic, revelry
00:42:01: Collaboration in the early modern theatre
00:48:19: Composing and performing Shakespeare today; favourite experiences
00:56:59: Where to start?

Jennifer Waghorn is a theatre history researcher and musician based in Stratford-upon-Avon. She is currently finishing her doctoral thesis at the Shakespeare Institute on the original music of Shakespeare’s theatre company and the seventeenth-century composers who worked between the theatre and the court. She has advised on music history for productions at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and The Other Place since 2018, and has worked with the Historical Dance Society on reconstructing Jacobean court masque entertainments.

Jennifer is also a theatre composer, musician and musical director; she has written music for around thirty productions (mostly Shakespeare) with various theatre companies, including the Arcola Theatre, FRED, and the Year Out Drama Company. She also performs regularly as a solo singer-songwriter, and as a violinist and singer with folk bands Greenman Rising and the Company of Players. She was named Stratford-upon-Avon Musician of the Year in 2018 (Stratford-upon-Avon Awards). She plays a variety of instruments, including violin, guitar, mandolin, accordion, piano, hurdy-gurdy and rebec, combined with loop pedal work and beatboxing.

If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Episode 2

In this episode of 'Sounds and Sweet Airs', Michelle Assay talks with composer John Casken and singer Sir John Tomlinson about their new drama The Shackled King, a condensed version of Shakespeare’s King Lear. 

The Shackled King  starts at the end of the play where the King and Cordelia are in prison, he hardly recognising his daughter. Through a series of flashbacks the story is told, but returns to the present, in prison, a number of times. The work is for two singers with a small ensemble. The role of Lear is sung by a bass, and Cordelia by a mezzo-soprano who also sings the part of the King’s philosophical friend, the Fool. 

00:02:27: Beer garden beginnings

00:09:27: Wotan and Lear

00:18:08: Memory

00:25:28: Libretto and title

00:27:43: The Fool

00:29:29: Instrumentation

00:33:48: Inspirations: 'Shakespeare never preaches'

00:41:10: Genre, word setting, psychology

00:49:37: Staging, rehearsal, performance

01:02:55: Musical language

01:09:17: Final thoughts: mournfully human and full of gaps

Sir John Tomlinson was awarded a CBE in 1997 and knighted in 2005. He has sung for the world’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Geneva and Paris, the Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Munich and Glyndebourne festivals and all the leading British companies. He made his Bayreuth Festival debut in 1988 as Wotan (Der Ring des Nibelungen) under Daniel Barenboim and went on to sing there every summer from 1989 to 2006.

John Casken is a composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, choral music and music for the stage in the form of two operas, a melodrama, a monodrama, and a dramatic work based on King Lear.  His two operas have been performed internationally with seven productions of the first one, Golem (1989) in England, USA, Germany and France, and two productions of the second, God’s Liar (2001), in London, Brussels, and Vienna.

If you’d like to find out more about the Shakespeare and Music Group, please visit shakespeareandmusic.wordpress.com and @shakesmus on Twitter.

Episode 1

In the first episode of 'Sounds and Sweet Airs', Michael Graham talks to the Chair of the Shakespeare and Music Study Group, Michelle Assay, about the formation of the group, its current activities, and her long-term vision. They also discuss Michelle’s fascinating personal history with Shakespeare, and her research into Soviet and Post-Soviet Shakespeare music, including: what Shakespeare means to Russians and Russian composers; encounters with Shakespeare in Georgia; and whether Stalin really did try to ban Hamlet...

00:06:14: Introducing the group
00:17:28: The personal and the universal
00:21:59: Hamlet or Don Quixote?
00:34:46: Satellites
00:38:07: "Stalin banned Hamlet is a nice story"
00:50:38: Where to start?
00:56:42: First encounters with Hamlet in Tehran

Michelle Assay was born in Tehran and trained in piano performance at the Tchaikovsky Academy in Kiev and at the Satie Conservatoire in Paris. She is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, working on the project ‘Shakespeare and Censorship in Soviet/Post-Soviet Music, Film and Theatre’. She obtained her PhD from the Universities of Sorbonne and Sheffield and is preparing her PhD dissertation, ‘Hamlet in the Stalin era’, for publication by Routledge. She is the founder and chair of international research groups on ‘Shakespeare and Music’ and ‘Shakespeare in Central and Eastern Europe’. Alongside publications in this area, she is the co-author of a major life-and-work study of Mieczysław Weinberg for Toccata Press, has published on Carl Nielsen and is on the editorial board of Carl Nielsen Studies. She continues to appear in concert as a solo and chamber pianist and is a reviewer and writer for the Gramophone.