#Iestyn Davies

[agarthanguide]

A bit of Orym sketching based on my (and @akathecentimetre’s) current Opera Crush, Iestyn Davies.

Guys. He looks like Orym. And he plays a lot of Tenor vs Floor roles lol

[akathecentimetre]

heyyyyy CR fandom, need some Orym inspo?

[clamarcap]

Turn thy face from my sins

Turn thy face from my sins

Thomas Attwood (23 novembre 1765 - 1838): Turn thy face from my sins (Salmo LI, versetti 11-13). St. John’s College Choir (solista: Iestyn Davies). Turn thy face from my sins, and put out all my misdeeds. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lavilladeste]

Lea Desandre & Iestyn Davies sing Handel: Theodora, HWV 68: "To thee, th...

[antigonegone]

Retour hier au Wigmore Hall, pour un récital du contre-ténor Iestyn Davies accompagné du pianiste John Middleton. Au programme, airs anciens et contemporains de Dowland, Purcell en passant par Finzi, Britten, Adès et Muhli. Divin, typically British. Échanges avec mes voisins assidus, l’écoute est très intense. Amateurs silencieux, recueillis. Son CD “Divine Music” disponible en streaming reprend une partie du programme. Davies a enregistré des airs d’Haendel avec l’Ensemble Jupiter, sous la direction de Thomas Dunford, avec Léa Desandre. Une autre merveille à écouter en streaming “Eternal Heaven” chez Erato. Un petit plat au bar de la Tate Modern, une coquille snackée sur une purée de pois, et une lager pour regarder les barges voguer… N’est pas barge qui veut ! Moment divin et suspendu aussi. Qui a dit que les Anglais ne savaient pas cuisiner ? Une des photos accrochées dans le hall d’entrée du Wigmore, Thomas Dunford jouant du théorbe divinement

[madame-yus-wife]

Re: a Iestyn fanclub - I’m doing my best to start one! 😄 @its-iestyn

woop wooop!

[its-iestyn]

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A post shared by I e s t y n D a v i e s (@iiestyndavies)

[thedaysofdisorder]

Händel: "Eternal Source of Light Divine" Thomas Dunford, Jupiter, Lea Desandre, Iestyn Davies

[soldatrose]

got some unexpected free time and not enough braincells to be productive which means it's the perfect occasion to write something vaguely resembling a personal review. saw giulio cesare. holy shit! some messy and too long notes about it.

the bad:

honestly laurent pelly's staging and costumes don't really do it for me. which is too bad because while it's absolutely not revolutionary, the idea of setting the story in a museum storage area could still be used in really interesting ways, especially for a story like caesar and cleopatra's! but idk i felt that there wasn't enough coherence or subtlety to hold everything together. the museum workers alternatively interact with the characters or ignore them and those interactions never seem particularly meaningful. at some points the direction choices made me straight up uncomfortable, including the whole group of workers following cleopatra around. the story already has its fair share of sexual harassment, adding some wasn't really necessary. cornelia was treated in a similar way, she's constantly cornered against walls and shelves to the point where you just wish the direction could let her take some space on the stage.

also yeah those costumes are really ugly. :/ cornelia's asymmetrical dress pissed me off a little.

(i liked caesar's cloak though. mmmmh folds. i wonder what material they used)

the ??:

cleopatra's boob out was funny the first few minutes and then i started feeling cold for her tbh. problem of seeing this opera in january. also shout out to the two ladies behind me who were whisper-wondering whether it was a real boob (it was not)

sorta-related is ptolemy getting an apparently disappointing bj from a male slave in the harem. diversity wins your orientalist caricature is bisexu-oooh. oooh no. it was funnier when it was whatever ptolemy and achillas had going on in the glyndebourne prod.

still on ptolemy. i'm putting it in the ?? category because it's not a requirement but some of the prods i've seen choose to make the domero la tua fierezza aria a semi tragic moment of irreconciliable fracture between two siblings and i quite like that. you don't have to like ptolemy to admit that he's also caught in a vicious circle of violence. that prod didn't go that way and ptolemy stayed a sort of comic relief from beginning to end. it's a choice, i respect it, but it does make the character and his arc less interesting.

the painting collection moment (i think it was during the se in fiorito?) was cool because woohoo artworks but also. it felt a little bit like watching a bad youtube history edit about cleopatra ngl. still amusing to hear caesar contemplate marrying lydia like we didn't just see a painting with calpurnia on it.

looked it up afterwards because i didn't know this painting and the british museum describes it as caesar discarding pompeia for calpurnia. and now i'm wondering whether the production knows that because all the other portraits were of caesar and cleopatra or cleopatra alone??? confusing for no reason

the handel portrait and nireno going "???" made me laugh though. hi genius

emily d'angelo didn't sing caesar. i hope she will one day i know she would be amazing in that role.

the good:

my first baroque opera live!!!

honestly just. this opera. you can't really fail (or at least you can't fail me) with this opera as long as you put an okay orchestra and okay singers. the whole cast was great and the orchestra amazing. i wish we could have clapped specifically for the horn player because they did fantastic.

EMILY D'ANGELO SEXTUS. HI. HI.

i already knew gaelle arquez's caesar from the champs-élysées prod and i still like her a lot! greatly enjoyed iestyn davies's ptolemy too, his voice is truly wonderful and that video of him in agrippina is also why i'm a bit disappointed they didn't give him a short despair moment. i loved oropesa's cleopatra, i don't think she does many ornaments (?) but her se pieta left me genuinely breathless (one of the moments where the staging actually supported the music instead of hindering it!) and so did her piangero.

did i mention emily d'angelo's sextus? yeah holy fuck. do i have the words. obviously i was biased from the start on account of. everything. but her voice is fantastic and so warm (and constantly carried over the music, which wasn't a given) and she almost brought me to tears in the cara speme. also those quick moments where she's almost screaming. mmh.

still the cara speme but i desperately need an hd pic of her sextus in that "fragile" wodden packaging box.

looks like this btw. get in the box boy we're shipping you to libya:

ok last cara speme comment but it seems to be the only moment in the prod when the characters seem to purposefully leave the stage to leave space for another character's aria.

pompey's decapitated marble head is still a goddamn hit, so is the picture of his wife and kid mourning under it. was weirded out (half in a good way) by the fact that the alma del gran pompeo was performed with a funeral urn when pompey's head was very much. still there. behind bars.

the funeral urn looked like an amphora without handles though.

you have heard of caesar flirting with cleopatra during pompey's funeral, get ready for caesar and cleopatra almost getting it on in front of pompey's urn. somehow i had forgotten that "caesar will find me more attractive than pompey's decapitated head :)" is an actual cleopatra moment

all the statues! *parisi caesar's statue being brought onto the stage wobbling on its forklift* my brain immediately: kick it down :)

hyperfixating on sextus and cornelia real quick but once again the priva son d'ogni conforti introduces a distance between them and ough, the way he looks at her and she ignores him completely. which well. fits the aria. technically you could see the son nata a lagrimar as a reparation of that, esp with the parallel priva son d'ogni conforti/il dolce mio conforto. also we still had the non ha piu che temere with an absolutely elated cornelia and a sextus still reeling from ten different traumas. i love that, especially because i just re-discovered that sextus is supposed to have already left.

btw it was an unclear struggle but i think cornelia was the one to actually stab ptolemy??

*sextus asks caesar how he survived* *something huge falls in the wings, which i'm assuming was the deus ex machina leaving the stage*

cleopatra contemplates suicide, pulls out a snake. for all the caesar and pompey hauntings in the antony&cleopatra story it didn't occur to me that a&c could haunt giulio cesare. i need to think on that a little. (esp because it's not the only thing that happens in reverse, ex: cleopatra comes out of the carpet at the very end of the opera)

well anyway, i'll maybe watch the scholl&bartoli prod some time next week or the week after. to complete that deck.

[agarthanguide]

Spent the weekend with @akathecentimetre and we did what comes naturally- got wine drunk and watched Glyndebourne do Saul with Iestyn Davies

[akathecentimetre]

A 110% Shameless Iestyn Davies Appreciation Post

Feat. Glyndebourne's Saul (2015) and Bayerische Staatsoper's Agrippina (2019)

BONUS to prove he's actually very chill and can smile:

[san-george]

Alison Balsom and Iestyn Davies - Sound the Trumpet - Purcell

[lesser-known-composers]

Heinrich Schütz's (1585–1672) Auf dem Gebirge; performed here by Fretwork, Iestyn Davies, & Hugh Cutting.

Fretwork: Emily Ashton, Richard Boothby, Joanna Levine, Asako Morikawa, & Sam Stadlen Silas Wollston, organ

[theweeowlart]

One of my favourite songs has just been played on Radio 3, 'King David' by Herbert Howells. A new recording with Iestyn Davies (counter tenor) . Beautiful song, well worth a listen. Poetry used for the song was by Walter De la Mare.

King David

King David was a sorrowful man: No cause for his sorrow had he; And he called for the music of a hundred harps To ease his melancholy

They played till they all fell silent: Played and play sweet did they; But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David They could not charm away

He rose; and in his garden Walked by the moon alone A nightingale hidden in a cypress tree Jargoned on and on

King David lifted his sad eyes Into the dark-boughed tree -- "Tell me, thou little bird that singest Who taught my grief to thee?"

But the bird in no-wise heeded; And the king in the cool of the moon Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness Till all his own was gone

[markseow]

Opera 3 June 2023

Mozart Mitridate, re di Ponto, dir. Tim Albery. The English Concert, conducted by Clemens Schuldt. Robert Murray, Elizabeth Watts, Louise Kemény, Iestyn Davies, Soraya Mafi, John Graham-Hall, Joshua Owen Mills Garsington Opera.