Opera Lafayette will present a concert program at Sixth & I on April 30th at 7:30pm, “New Woman”, with soprano Lauren Snouffer, conducted by Artistic Director Patrick Quigley.
The vocal music featured was composed by women writing for women’s voices, and by men writing for men’s castrato voices. Lauren Snouffer, noted not only for her vocal virtuosity but for the depth of her scholarly insights into seventeenth- and eighteenth-century vocal stylings, will therefore be taking on both en travesti “pants roles” and theatrical portrayals of powerful women. Haute couture designer Ralph Rucci is creating apparel for Ms. Snouffer for this performance.
At the heart of the program are compositions by Maria Antonia Walpurgis (1724–1780) and Marianna Martines (1744–1812). Walpurgis, the Princess of Bavaria and Electress of Saxony, was not only a composer, but a skilled librettist and a bravura soprano; her court welcomed some of the most respected opera composers of the era. Martines was a lifelong friend of the librettist Pietro Trapassi, arguably the single most significant figure in eighteenth-century Italian opera, writing under the nom de plume Metastasio. She studied voice with Nicola Porpora and had keyboard and composition lessons from a young Joseph Haydn; she was renowned in her time as a composer, keyboard virtuoso, and vocalist.
Arias by Christoph Willibald Gluck and Johann Christian Bach (“the London Bach,” Johann Sebastian’s youngest son) will also be featured, as well as Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 63, “Roxelana”.
Patrick Quigley spoke with me recently about “New Woman”.
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