An intimate concert with Dame Felicity Lott

Dame Felicity Lott

Rannoch

March 9

Concerts with leading international sopranos are rare in New Zealand but English soprano Dame Felicity Lott has been touring the country giving a variety of presentations.

One of her more recent was at Rannoch, the home of arts philanthropist Sir James Wallace. The central lobby of the house is an ideal location for intimate concerts even though the overflow crowd meant people had to sit on the grand staircase.

The untitled concerts were a joyous celebration of love, sex and relationships, with a series of songs, along with poems and quotes read by her husband Gabriel Woolf.

Not only was her singing engaging, she also displayed an obvious talent as a stand-up comedian, which could well be a fallback career path.

Dame Felicity has been associated with the works of Richard Strauss, notably the role of the Marshaling in Der Rosenkavalier for some time and the highlight of the evening was her singing the final trio from the opera with local singers Sarah Court and Elizabeth Mandeno where the three singers created a beautifully layered musical sound. She demonstrated her ability to imbue the work with a wry sensibility, which contrasted with the more sombe and sensual voice she displayed in singing the Robert Schumann “Helft mir, ihr Schwestern,”

Equally at home with French song, her presentation of Poulenc’s “Les Chemins de l’Amour” was an edgy and thrilling expression of lost love. Her ability to bring a sensitivity to French song has been recognided by the French, who awarded her the title of Officier de Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Legion d’Honneur.

The remarkable feature about the recital was her ability to turn her hand and voice to songs of the musical hall and popular composers such as Jerome Kern and Noel Coward.She injected the songs with a laconic wit and provided subtle nuances, able to adjust texture, volume and color to suit each individual song providing the right emotional tone even to the simplest of songs

Gabriel Woolf provided great entertainment with his readings, which ranged from children’s comments about love through to poems by Shakespeare, Byron and Join Betjeman. Reading the Betjeman poem “A Subaltern’s Love Song,” he took on the poet’s voice and persona.

The two of them were consummate raconteurs, both able to communicate stories, ideas and emotions, engaging with the audience.

The concert was one of several which will be held this year at Rannoch celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the house, which has been restored and redeveloped to house Sir James' vast art collection.