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Sneak Preview: Les Délices’ Song of Orpheus (debut Oct. 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Les Délices has allowed us an advance look at the first full video program of its new season, Song of Orpheus, which will debut online Thursday, October 7 and remain available on demand through November 6.

The Orpheus myth inspired French Baroque composers Jean-Philippe Rameau and Philippe Courbois to write expressive solo cantatas about the famous Greek musician-poet and his futile attempts — because of his own impatience — to rescue his beloved Eurydice from the grasp of Pluto in the Underworld. These are beautifully performed by the clear-voiced soprano Hannah De Priest and the velvet-throated baritone Jonathan Woody (who makes a walk-on appearance in the Rameau). [Read more…]

Les Délices to premiere Jonathan Woody’s Much Love Betray’d on Orpheus program

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by Mike Telin

No mythological character has inspired musicians more than Orpheus. Legend has it that his music was so powerful that trees and mountains bowed in his presence — his song so beautiful that he convinced the ruler of the underworld to allow him to bring his love Eurydice back from the underworld.  

The legend will be brought to life on Thursday, October 7, when Les Délices debuts “Song of Orpheus” on Marquee TV. The program features rarely-heard cantatas by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Philippe Courbois performed by Hannah De Priest, soprano, Jonathan Woody, baritone, Shelby Yamin, violin, Debra Nagy, oboe, Rebecca Reed, gamba and cello, and Mark Edwards, harpsichord. The program will also include the premiere of Woody’s cantata Much Love Betray’d. The online-only event will remain available on demand through November 6. Click here for tickets.

Woody’s performance resumé includes two national tours with Apollo’s Fire, and appearances as soloist with period groups including the Boston Early Music Festival, Tafelmusik, Trinity Wall Street, New York Polyphony, Bach Collegium San Diego, and New York Baroque Incorporated. But he is also a leader in the historical performance performer/composer movement.

During a recent telephone conversation, Woody said that his dedication to keeping the early music canon alive can be traced back to when he was a student of musicologist and historical performance pioneer Bruce Haynes. “I was lucky enough to have him as a professor at McGill University, and he definitely engendered the mentality that the canon of early music could remain alive, and that we had the power to continue to add to it and make it something that wasn’t just stuck in the past.”

[Read more…]

Les Délices’ SalonEra is back and better than ever for second season

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by Stephanie Manning

Last year, Cleveland’s period ensemble Les Délices dared to be different with their contribution to the world of online concerts: SalonEra. Billed as a “variety show for early music,” the web series’ unique format made it a hit among audience members, director Debra Nagy said in a recent interview.

“One thing we heard over and over again was, ‘regardless of the state of the pandemic, please continue SalonEra.’” The series’ second season, which premieres on September 13, aims to be even more ambitious and exciting than what came before it.

[Read more…]

Les Délices: Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain

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by Daniel Hathaway

Les Délices has once again joined forces with Boston’s Blue Heron, this time to produce the impressive video “Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain,” which debuted on Vimeo on April 8, and remains available on-demand until April 19.

LD’s artistic director Debra Nagy introduces the hour-long program with a discourse on the importance of the garden and its centerpiece, the fountain, for artists and musicians of the 14th century. Later in the program, Blue Heron artistic director Scott Metcalfe expands on the subject by exploring the Trinitarian metaphor behind that bubbling source of water in the Medieval mind. [Read more…]

Les Délices mesmerizes with Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain

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by Mike Telin

Now that the cold and dreary winter is behind us, our thoughts turn to spring. And with trees beginning to blossom and flowers blooming we can begin to think about cultivating the garden. On April 8 at 7:30 pm, Les Délices will celebrate the Medieval garden and it’s centerpiece — the fountain — with the debut of Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain. The program is presented in collaboration with Boston’s Blue Heron and features video art design by Camilla Tassi. Click here for ticket information.

While devotees of Les Délices will recognize the name Guillaume de Machaut, why has the ensemble returned to his music so frequently? “The practical reason is that there is so much of it,” artistic director Debra Nagy said during a telephone conversation.

“He created six copies of his own complete works that are full of compelling story-telling, which is something I’m always interested in when it comes to programming. Once you’ve invested a certain amount of time in learning the language — not just the 14th century French but the style and rhythmic language — it’s hard not to want to spend more time there.” [Read more…]

Women of Genius: Another winner from Les Délices

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by Mike Telin

Once again Les Délices scores a winner with the latest installment of the French Baroque ensemble’s online subscription series. Debuting on Thursday, March 18 at 7:30 pm, “Women of Genius” takes a historically thoughtful and musically fascinating look into the music of female composers who influenced French musical culture. After its debut, the video will be available on-demand through March 29. Read our preview article here. To purchase tickets and view connection details, click here.

The 70-minute program features music and poetry by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, Mme. Duval, Julie Pinel, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and François and Louis Couperin. [Read more…]

Les Délices “Women of Genius” — a conversation with Clara Rottsolk

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by Daniel Hathaway

Les Délices, Cleveland’s French Baroque ensemble, continues its all-online subscription series on Thursday, March 18 at 7:30 pm with “Women of Genius,” featuring soprano Clara Rottsolk in music and poetry by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, Mme. Duval, Julie Pinel, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and François and Louis Couperin. After its debut, the video will be available on-demand through March 29. Purchase tickets and view connection details here.

The program, curated by Les Délices’ artistic director and oboist Debra Nagy, sets out to present its female composers not as isolated phenomena, but as composers who exerted a strong influence on French musical culture.

These were the daughters, the nieces, and the cousins of musical families like the Couperins. They were poets, translators, and librettists for airs, cantatas, and operas. They were brilliant improvisers and arrangers whose celebrated performances were attested to but whose works were never published. They were singers, keyboard, and theorbo players whose intimate work impressed and delighted. They were Women of Genius.

Rottsolk, a native of Seattle now based in Philadelphia, said in a Zoom conversation that Nagy’s idea of moving from presenting live concerts to forming a production company to produce high-quality video and audio shows was a wise and creative solution to the vagaries of the pandemic. [Read more…]

SalonEra: “Women in Music” — a conversation with Michele Kennedy

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Both the music and the history of women composers are very much underexplored. So it’s fitting that Les Délices will begin its celebration of Women’s History Month with a new entry in their SalonEra series of performances and conversations — there will be plenty to hear, and plenty to learn.

Premiering online on Monday, March 15 at 7:30 pm, and remaining available for another 48 hours, “Women in Music” will feature instrumental and vocal works from the 17th-19th centuries by Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Maddalena Sirmen, and Clara Schumann. See the full program and register here. It’s free to watch, but a donation is suggested.

Les Délices artistic director Debra Nagy, who is also the host of SalonEra, will be joined by harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, violinist Shelby Yamin, and soprano Michele Kennedy (above), who share a commitment to researching, performing, and recording music by women composers.

I reached Kennedy by telephone in Oakland, California to talk about the selections by three 17th-century Italian composers: Caccini, Strozzi, and Leonarda. We also discussed the societal restrictions on women of that era, and in some cases, the connections that helped these composers establish their careers. And we closed our phone call on the topics of equity and representation in classical music — particularly, Kennedy’s efforts to further that work while sheltering at home.

[Read more…]

Les Délices: Games & Grounds — online debut February 18

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by Daniel Hathaway

When Debra Nagy made the decision to reinvent her French Baroque ensemble Les Délices as a production company — whose interface with its subscribers would take the form of high-quality videos in the place of live concerts during the pandemic — many of us were curious to see how that would affect one of Cleveland’s cultural treasures.

Their fourth subscription concert, Games and Grounds, which premiered on February 18 and will be available through March 1, finds the members of Les Délices in top form and, if anything, more communicative with their audience than ever before, thanks to the digital magic of Erica Brenner and her audio/visual production team that includes Elaine Martone, Andrew Tripp, and Mathias Reed. [Read more…]

Les Délices: Aesop’s Fables & “making lemonade out of lemons”

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Thursday’s program on Les Délices’ Concert Series is an interesting combination of imagination and circumstance: a creative recipe composed of recordings the ensemble had at hand in the fridge, or rather the archives.

“Games and Grounds” — which premieres online on February 18 at 7:30 pm and remains available on-demand until a Closing Reception on March 1 at that same hour — combines musical versions of Aesop’s Fables with virtuosic ground-bass variations by such composers as Rebel, Marais, and Rameau.

Tenor Jason McStoots and soprano Elena Mullins (above) will take turns telling the stories of an ant and a grasshopper, a lion and a rat, a tortoise and a hare, and a tortoise and an eagle. Those texts will be heard here set to simple airs and popular tunes from 1730s France, but in new English translations commissioned from Larry Rosenwald.

And Mullins will top off the program with her own new choreography for Rebel’s Caractères de la danse — one of a couple pieces that continue the thread of narrative, but in a more subtle way than the fables. See the full program here, and purchase tickets here.

I reached Les Délices director Debra Nagy by telephone to discuss all of that, beginning where else but with Aesop’s Fables. Those got us talking about childhood, specifically Nagy’s upbringing as a first-generation American. [Read more…]

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