SONG STORIES
Song Stories, an exciting new collaboration with Malcolm Martineau, is an innovative series of narrated song recitals devised by Henrietta Bredin, that illuminate the lives of composers through captivating storytelling and music.
The focus is on composers whose lives were packed with incident, which inspired and enriched their music. There’s Richard Strauss and his complicated, prickly wife – Pauline. And there’s Charles Gounod, who fled the Prussians in Paris to live in London and fell into a bizarre relationship with the deeply eccentric Georgina Weldon.
These come to life in a combination of songs and narration, delivered by singers and actors with piano accompaniment.
Performances have taken place at prestigious venues and festivals across the UK, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Middle Temple Hall and at the Buxton and Ludlow Festivals.
Gounod and Georgina from Wigmore Hall, featuring Malcolm Martineau (piano), Petroc Trelawny (narrator), John Mark Ainsley (tenor), and Harriet Burns (soprano).
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‘My wife is perfect for me – she’s really quite gentle, shy and tender, but she’s rough on the outside, like a hedgehog, all spiny and prickly.’ Richard Strauss
Beginning and ending with Morgen, one of Strauss’s most well-known and best-loved songs, this entertainment tells the story of the relationship between man and wife. Theirs was a marriage that even their friends found baffling, but they loved one another deeply. Strauss was seen by many as cold, remote, arrogant, while Pauline was highly critical, had a wildly volatile temper and was prone to fits of irrational jealousy.
Each song performed illustrates an aspect of their relationship, from the ecstatic Cäcilie, composed as a gift on the eve of their wedding, to Meinem Kinde, heralding the birth of their only child, and Gefunden, an allegory of contented domesticity.
Despite outward appearances, Pauline loved and supported her husband unstintingly, while his reserve concealed a passionate nature, a deep-rooted sensuality that found expression in his music – music that was inspired by his exasperating, prickly hedgehog of a wife.
MY DEAREST HEDGEHOG
RICHARD STRAUSS SONGS (soprano)Morgen (1894)
John Henry Mackay
Waldseligkeit (1901)
Richard Dehmel
Cäcilie (1894)
Heinrich Hart
Meinem Kinde (1897)
Gustav Falke
Glückes genug (1898)
Detlev von Liliencron
Nichts (1885)
Hermann von Gilm
Befreit (1898)
Richard Dehmel
Gefunden (1903)
Johann von Goethe
Morgen (repeat)
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‘Was there ever a stranger tale than that of Gounod and the Englishwoman? Passion has taken possession of his brain. At her feet he forgets all – decency, family and country!’ Le Journal de France
When Charles Gounod fled to London at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 he soon became a popular attraction at society gatherings. Accompanying himself at the piano as he sang songs and arias from his operas, he flirted outrageously and one day found a responsive young woman amid the throng of admirers who crowded around. This was Georgina Wheldon, a singer and champion of her own very particular methods of vocal teaching.
He wrote songs for her, she sang them, they planned vastly ambitious musical projects together. It was a passionate and misguided friendship, doomed to disaster. Gounod abandoned his wife and family and moved in to live with Georgina and her husband Harry in a house in London’s Tavistock Square which had previously belonged to Charles Dickens.
The events that followed were dramatic and on occasion painfully comic. Narration and songs illustrate the ups and downs of this unlikely relationship.
GOUNOD AND GEORGINAGOUNOD SONGS (soprano and tenor)
Ave Maria (1853)
soprano
Venise (1842)
Alfred de Musset
tenor
Chanson de Printemps (1860)
Eugène Tourneux
soprano
Maid of Athens (1872)
George, Lord Byron
tenor
If thou art sleeping (1872)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
tenor
Au Rossignol (1867)
Alphonse de Lamartine
soprano
Ilala (1873)
Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton
tenor
Le Soir (1840)
Alphonse de Lamartine
soprano
Sérénade (1857)
Victor Hugo
tenor and soprano
Bring Song Stories to your audience
Looking to engage your audience with something unique and thought-provoking? Song Stories is perfect for concert halls, festivals and special events. Each performance is a blend of humour, drama and beautiful music, tailored to captivate and inspire.
To find out more: contact Sophie Dand