Vaughan Williams: The Poisoned Kiss - BBC National Orchestra of Wales; Richard Hickox

Vaughan Williams: The Poisoned Kiss
BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Richard Hickox

  'The music is enchanting, a mixture of parodies together with waltzes and tangos. An inspiration seems to have been The Beggar's Opera and of course folk-song. It is VW at his most lyrical and endearing… The cast give every indication of having enjoyed their acquaintance with the score… The recording is superb and Chandos are to be thanked for filling the major gap in the VW discography.'

Thanks to our friend stubbins for this new addition to CLASSICS

'The music is enchanting, a mixture of parodies together with waltzes and tangos. An inspiration seems to have been The Beggar's Opera and of course folk-song. It is VW at his most lyrical and endearing… The cast give every indication of having enjoyed their acquaintance with the score… The recording is superb and Chandos are to be thanked for filling the major gap in the VW discography.'

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Richard Hickox

Neal Davies-baritone - Dipsacus
Roderick Williams-baritone - Gallanthus
Richard Suart-baritone - Gob
Mark Richardson-bass - Lob
Anne Collins-contralto - Empress Persicaria
Pamela Helen Stephen-mezzo-soprano - Angelica
Emer McGilloway-mezzo-soprano - Third Medium
Janice Watson-soprano - Tormentilla
Gail Pearson-soprano - First Medium
Helen Williams-soprano - Second Medium
James Gilchrist-tenor - Amaryllus
John Graham-Hall-tenor - Hob
Adrian Partington Singers

Recorded In:
Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, 2003
This is the premiere recording of Vaughan Williams’s opera The Poisoned Kiss

 

This romantic extravaganza contains some of the composer’s finest music, and a sense of fun runs throughout the delightful score.

Both James Gilchrist and Janice Watson have sung on previous award-winning Chandos opera recordings to great acclaim: James Gilchrist in the title role in Albert Herring and Janice Watson as Ellen in Peter Grimes.

Richard Hickox is famous for his championship of British twentieth century music, and is a conductor with a special affinity for the music of Vaughan Williams. His award-winning recordings of the composer’s work for Chandos are now generally cited by critics as top choice for the repertoire.

"The libretto for The Poisoned Kiss originated in a short story, The Poison Maid, by Dr Richard Garnett, which was, in turn, derived from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Richard Garnett’s piece takes up Hawthorne’s notion of a beautiful maiden who lives on poisons, but invests it with a gentle irony that is both engaging and humorous. The story ends happily for ‘the kiss of love is the remedy for every poison’.

Vaughan Williams began writing The Poisoned Kiss, his fourth opera, in 1927. He was also working on Sir John in Love and had begun sketching the first scenes of Job. He was at the height of his musical powers, yet The Poisoned Kiss has remained unperformed, unrecorded and unknown.

The reason for this neglect lies mainly in the rather dated text and the lengthy sections of spoken dialogue (some of which is omitted in this recording). It did not help that the composer and the librettist were uncertain about the balance between comedy and drama in the opera, a dilemma that led to major revisions of the work by Vaughan Williams in 1936 and again in 1956–57. In the final version the composer’s lyricism dominates the humour and we are treated to an extraordinto ary wealth of expressive and heart-felt music which does not deserve to be ignored.

Thanks stubbins!!