#alice coote

[operasrsly]

Alcina is one of my absolute favourite operas, and this little aria is very dear to my heart. The role of Oronte was created for John Beard, barely 18 at the time, who started out as a boy soprano and had a long, extremely successful career ahead of him. Händel was the opposite of a hire-and-fire person - he loved his singers apparently and was very loyal to them. Personally, I think you can hear who the aria was written for if you pay attention. The tenor here vocally leaves many wishes open, but it doesn't matter - I have rewatched the aria so many times, and I always do it for Alice Coote who plays Ruggiero. Who can look at anything else if she is in the room? *edit: Tumblr "refuses to connect" to the unlisted vid, so here is the link.

[lesser-known-composers]

Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) - Mélodies

"Serre Chaude" (5 poèmes de Maurice Maeterlinck) :

I. Serre chaude (hothouse) II. Serre d'ennui (hothouse boredom) III. Lassitude IV. Fauves las (lazy beasts) V. Oraison (prayer)

sung by mezzo-soprano Alice Coote & Ian Burnside, piano.

[sevensdeadly-if]

You mentioned other IF ideas you have so....can you share it with us? 👀

Defintely!

So I have mentioned it a few times but the main one is based off of Alice in Wonderland. You are the grandchild of Alice and are called back to wonderland to stop its immanent destruction. It has a sort of American Mcgee vibes with the steampunk elements.

The second is sort of inspired by the show the show the booth at the end and greek mythology. You are a deity that got sick of the mightier than thou attitudes of the rest of the gods and found yourself more vested in humanity. You become something of a wish granter. Taking humans stories as payment for their wishes granted. You are not good nor evil you simply want to hear their stories and see what price they pay. Unfortunately there is turmoil among the gods and humanity and they are calling you back.

The final one I thought about is where you are one of the most powerful magic users in the world. Only no one really knows that because your master was considered a coot by many. He trained you in the ways of old and lost magics that the councils of today could only dream of. So you live your life in retaliative relaxation until one day your peace is broken by the council of magics calling on you.

Yeah those are them! Let me know yalls thoughts! If I do go with any of these there will be way fewer romance options. Im capping out at 4 cause 7 is just too much🫠Thanks for the ask!

[claennis]

Mahler’s 2nd with MTT, LSO and LSC, Alice Coote and Siobhan Stagg (20.10.24)

As MTT stepped out onto the stage and the audience erupted into applause, I could already feel emotional. Earlier this year, I made an off the cuff decision to purchase tickets to see Sunday’s performance without thinking about logistics. 2024 would usher in MTT turning 80 (in 2021, he was diagnosed with glioblastoma). I spent the late 90s-early 2010s seeing him conduct with the SFS and collecting his recordings with my late mother. There was a lot of nostalgia and memory attached to the event and it was building up to the moment he walked up to his stand, turning to us, the audience with a smile and saluting with his baton.

Mahler and MTT have become synonymous over the last three decades and I’ve only become semi-familiar with Mahler through the Keeping Score documentaries. MTT has been devoted to delivering Mahler’s ingenious craft through his entire career and so I knew we would be part of something special. Jonathan and I have listened to the “Resurrection” symphony on our own, read the pamphlet’s take—though nothing could prepare us for how immense, how powerful, how intense this piece of work is.

Mahler’s 2nd features an over-100 symphony (we’re talking every section was doubled: two timpani’s and eight double basses! not to mention, off-stage percussion and trumpets) and an over-100 LSO chorus so if you can picture it, the stage was completely filled out. It consists of 5 movements with the final divided into 3 subsections—it has 26 parts, took Mahler 6 years to compose and has a duration of 90 minutes. A wonderful quote from Mahler himself that there is no necessitation in explaining the “meaning of his Second symphony”; that he “was in no way concerned with the detailed setting…but rather of a feeling.”

A feeling?! More like a vast, dizzying array of all the feelings that human beings are capable of experiencing yet can’t quite make out. Mahler’s music is abstract, hard to describe, occasionally baffling so personally by movement:

I. With serious and solemn expression throughout: my favourite. I love the introduction of the nervous string tremolo with the double basses and cellos bringing forth the grim motif. Mahler has a thing for funeral marches but this is no funeral march you or I are familiar with. It’s dark, relentless and what a way to throw an audience into what feels like water rapids in the deep unknown.

II. Very moderate, never rushing: it’s a waltz! Kind of. If you watched TSoM, it would remind you of the Ländler (that pinnacle of romance!) and it’s a bit of light and hope contrasted against that fore-bearing introduction.

III. Calmly flowing: this bit is sarcastically jolly; brightness with an edge. It ends abruptly and jarringly.

IV: Very solemn but simple, like a chorale: mezzo-soprano Alice Coote is a powerhouse! she’s got such timbre and projection. She blew soprano Siobhan Stagg out the water later on.

V. Scherzo tempo: in a wild outburst: the finale has three sections bookmarked by moments of absolute stillness. You could hear a pin drop in the hall, that was how quiet those pauses were. Here were the off-stage horn and percussion calls and each time, the orchestra would swell a bit more than the previous until the chorus joins in, then the soprano and mezzo-soprano. As the entirety builds up to its final climax like Hansel’s Messiah complete with the sound of chimes as church bells, you could see the audience perching on the edge of their seats. The end is coming and you’re just waiting for that ultimate culmination of triumph—gates of heaven opening, there’s the resurrection.

The moment that last note was breathed, played, let loose into the atmosphere of the hall, the audience erupted into a 10 minute standing ovation. I felt like crying again because it was just pure respect and adoration pouring out into that hall. It felt like the world showed up for MTT; in that diverse audience of young and old, locals and internationals, no one wanted it to end (an encore after Mahler wouldn’t be right). MTT had a chair but he never really sat in it. The fervour of his conducting has toned down a bit but it didn’t lack the vibrancy to carry this enormous, massive work through to its end. He would do this again on Wednesday night, as I overheard another audience member preen about the fact he was coming to the Barbican again.

I don’t know if I’ll see MTT conduct again, which made Sunday night feel once in a lifetime to me and that I had the opportunity to share my love for classical music, a piece of my old home, San Francisco via MTT with my other half—it does bring a lot of emotions to the forefront. Life has been gruelling—Jonathan and I work in difficult settings. But as artist and writer Charlie Mackesy once said, “These notes can thread together to heal a broken heart.”

[markseow]

BBC Proms

3 September 2023

Berlioz Les Troyens. Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Monteverdi Choir, conducted by Dinis Sousa. Soloists: Alice Coote, Michael Spyres, Paula Murrihy, Beth Taylor, Laurence Kilsby, Lionel Lhote, Ashley Riches, Adèle Charvet, Rebecca Evans, Alex Rosen, Tristan Hambleton, Graham Neal, Sam Evans

Royal Albert Hall, London

[bushrat2319]

The Richard Jones version of Hansel and Gretel is so dark I adore it. Finally got around to renting the Met’s 2008 run of it so getting to watch it in its entirety is *chef kiss*. My favorite pants performer Alice Coote and such dark tones to show. Its disgusting but god its such a good take to it.

I do so adore the adaptations of this fairytale. I love the og fantasy, don’t get me wrong, but there is something about taking this tale and putting it to more modern settings. Instead of a gingerbread house, we have industrial kitchens and stores. We have trash littered forests and cardboard homes. Idk, just the industrial adaptions are so much more interesting to me, I guess cause of the darker settings they portray. I recently saw a performance that portrayed the forest and gingerbread house as toysets. My favorite though is the Richard Jones adaptation.

Ahh, sorry, I just adore sets and different adaptations of fairytales.

[muchadoabout]

JOYCE DiDONATO and ALICE COOTE Massenet: Cendrillon | Act 2: L'heure qui sonne! Metropolitan Opera, 2018

[monotonous-minutia]

words can’t describe how much this production means to me

[tatyana-dreaming]

Just some of my favorite moments from Cendrillon (Met 2018) ft Joyce DiDonato, Laurent Naouri, Kathleen Kim, Alice Coote, and Stephanie Blythe

[verdiprati]

And now the same user who recently uploaded Hippolyte has also put the Glynders L’incoronazione di Poppea on YouTube. Alice Coote sings Nerone to Danielle de Niese’s Poppea; Tamara Mumford is Ottavia; the wonderful Dominique Visse sings one of the nurse roles; and an early-career Sonya Yoncheva makes an appearance, as well. 

[mezzowatch]

Alice Coote as Octavian and Erin Morley as Sophie in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, Met 2013

[markseow]

Berliner Festspiele

1 September 2023

Berlioz Les Troyens. Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, Monteverdi Choir, conducted by Dinis Sousa. Soloists: Alice Coote, Michael Spyres, Paula Murrihy, Beth Taylor, Laurence Kilsby, Lionel Lhote, Ashley Riches, Adèle Charvet, Rebecca Evans, Alex Rosen, Tristan Hambleton, Graham Neal, Sam Evans

Berlin Philharmonie

[laurajustynaabby]

You know the singers enjoy their job when...

[muchadoabout]

MASSENET: Cendrillon | Act 2: Qui la connaît?  Metropolitan Opera, 2018

Joyce DiDONATO as Cendrillon Alice COOTE as Le Prince Charmant Stephanie BLYTHE as Madame de la Haltière Laurent NAOURI as Pandolfe

[monotonous-minutia]

"This is a production quite like some of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's productions where what has been crafted is almost inseparable from the music. You're not aware of the staging, you're not aware of the music. It feels as if this is the way it's always been." ~Joyce DiDonato on playing Cendrillon in Laurent Pelly's production