Glasgow University Opera Society

ALT Robin - Musical Director The same sound-world of J.S. Bach, more often associated with something like the crucifixion of Jesus in the Passion, but applied to the profane rather than to the sacred. This is also known colloquially as the flute aria, and indeed much of the interest comes more from where the singer responds to the flute, and where the flute suddenly subordinates to the singer. At first, the singer plays on ideas introduced by the flute, the flute moves the piece from F# minor to C# minor - but then the voice comes back in, and on a dime the flute reverts to D major. The singer’s love for coffee is sufficient to exert control over the composition. A musical joke.

ALT Melania - Artistic Director Professing one's love for coffee could be considered most fittingly performed in a space devoted to the beverage. Just as the cantata had been supposedly acted out in Zimmerman's coffee house at some point during the 18th century, this interpretation of its aria situates it in a contemporary café; a public space that is merged with the private when representing it upon a stage that is set up within a personal room. It allows for several manners of enjoying coffee to be portrayed through a single gesture. Those that love drinking it may know how its joys can be found in the simplest of days as much as during the most eventful. This is a celebration of such joys.

ALT Robin - Musical Director Handel does everything in his musical powers to avoid it sounding as if Somnus is enjoying himself, in the end landing somewhere between wrought and annoyed. The dance rhythm underlying is in three but is too slow to be sprightly rather than tantalising. Handel sets up a recurring phrase length, but then pushes through it to stop it being enjoyable any more. Somnus doesn’t even get a properly resolved cadence. All in all, it’s rather a sad piece.

ALT Melania - Artistic Director What better way to capture the feeling of being unable to fall asleep than through embodying the personification of sleep itself being interrupted from his slumber. The interruption is none other than the result of the unavoidable cycle of day and night: pure unobstructed light. Any attempts to veil this pestering presence fail as one's desires are all too easily subdued. The sole cause of this conflict is the incongruence of one's desires with nature's unrelenting course.

ALT Melania - Artistic Director The entire aria assumes an underlying tone of sadness when ‘the woman’ (Cio-Cio-san in the original) is seen as accepting her fate instead of merely possessing defiant, eager hopefulness. This means that, rather than painting a picture of what she hopes to happen, she is singing about what should have happened, already seeing herself in a future where it does not. As if already knowing that he will not return to her, she is indulging in the thought of her greatest desire being accomplished, hanging onto the still-present possibility that he shall return before it steadily wanes as days go by.