Love serenade for Swan Songs’ Spring Festival at Christ Church, Claremont

Soprano Pia Harris promises a “love serenade” to the audience when she launches Swan Songs’ Spring Festival next month with Songs for Lovers.

The co-star of this year’s Opera in the Park, playing Gretel in Hansel and Gretel before the lockdown, will be accompanied by pianist David Wickham at Christ Church, Claremont, on September 13.

Harris chose songs Claude Debussy wrote for his love, Blanche Vasnier, for a close, personal connection.

“The songs are so gorgeous, so well written for the voice, and Paul Bourget and Paul Verlaine’s incredible text provides a perfect pairing,” she said. “I think having read many accounts of their story, it has made it personal and a real, emotional insight into how Debussy felt about Madame Vasnier, the family’s influence on him and his development as a musician and artist.”

Harris was introduced to the recently rediscovered works by director of the London Song Festival, Nigel Foster, while she was studying for a master’s degree at the Royal College of Music.

“Nigel has edited three pieces and produced a publication ‘Three Songs for Madame Vasnier by Claude Debussy’ in 2013. His knowledge and expertise were invaluable when I first performed these songs at Royal College, and then again at the beautiful Norfolk House Music Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”

It is thought Debussy wrote 27 songs for Madame Vasnier. Harris will sing Pantomime and Clair de lune, with lyric by Verlaine; Pierrot, with lyric by Theodore Faullin de Banville; Apparition, with lyric by Stéphane Mallarmé; and La Romance d’Ariel and Regret, with lyric by Bourget.

She will add Richard Strauss’ Opus 27, written as a wedding present for his wife Pauline, and his Brentano Lieder.

“The songs vary in style, some are more lyric like An die Nacht, and some more florid like Amor,” Harris said.

“Together with Sweeter than Roses by Purcell, Let the Florid Music Praise by Britten, Sleep by Gurney and Debussy’s C’est L’extase, Swan Songs on September 13 will be a love serenade from us to our audience.”

Harris’s credits include New York Lyric Opera, Opera Holland Park (London), and WA Opera. She has also been a soloist for Lost and Found, Freeze Frame Opera and the Vocal Performance Initiative.

Wickham, the Swan Songs founder and producer, said he “aimed to showcase the best singers with the most beautiful and eclectic repertoire, allowing artists to present a complete musical self-portrait through poetry and music”.

Harris is followed on September 20 by fellow soprano Lucy Mervik, who delves into history for Duchess Anna Amalia and her circle of genius.

Anna, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach from 1758, gathered the leading intellectuals of Enlightenment Germany to her court, the Musenhof (Court of the Muses), among them Goethe, Herder, and Schiller, whose poetry is incorporated into the program with music by the Duchess.

On September 27, soprano Katja Webb hosts Ghosts, Fools and Seers, with a focus on the supernatural.

Contemporary composers Geoffrey Allen, Paul Paviour and Richard Peter Maddox are matched with James Penberthy, Dorian Le Gallienne and Margaret Sutherland, and poetry by Gwen Harwood, WB Yeats, Mary Gilmore, John Shaw Neilson and Shakespeare.

Finally on October 11, baritone Matthew Dixon will tackle Schubert’s first great song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (The beautiful miller’s wife).

It’s a stern challenge, accentuated by Dixon’s ongoing recovery from a broken collarbone which delayed his appearance.

The 20 songs track the progress of a young apprentice in a drama of first love and rejection set to the musical evocation of the mill stream.

All concerts start at 3pm. For more information about each program and tickets (also available on the door), visit www.trybooking.com/BJURH or http://davidwickham.me/David_Wickham/SwanSongs_2020.html.