Saturday 8 July 7.30pm – 9.15pm
Central Reserved Seating: £40.00 (£38.00 concessions)
Side Reserved Seating: £35.00 (£33.00 consessions)
Venue: Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall

Thomas Dunford lute, artistic direction
Iestyn Davies countertenor
Louise Ayrton, Magdalena Sypniewski violin
Jasper Snow viola
Félix Knecht cello
Ismaël Campanero double bass
Benoît Hartoin harpsichord, organ

Eternal Source of Light

Joining us for the first time with his ensemble of players, we are delighted to welcome lutenist Thomas Dunford back to the festival stage as he and countertenor Iestyn Davies present highlights from their award-winning CD ‘Eternal Heaven’. A seamless sequence of remarkably beautiful arias by Handel, composed in the 1740s and ‘50s, balancing the secular and the sacred, the tranquil and the tempestuous, the sumptuous and the sophisticated. This is the work of a mature artist repurposing the supreme skills in emotional and psychological perception he had honed in half a life time in the opera house.

“I’ve run out of adjectives and superlatives to describe Iestyn Davies’s performances, so I’ll just say that this was once again singing which communicated at the highest level, every phrase meaningful and masterly. The way the line bloomed and receded with such naturalness in ‘Yet can I hear that dulcet lay’ (The Choice of Hercules) was wonderful, and here the warmth of the string sound seemed to ‘lift’ the voice in sympathetic partnership. ‘Despair no more shall wound me’, Athamas’ show-stopping aria in Semele, was excitingly vigorous (more super string playing here, too), Davies singing entirely off-score and never letting the tension slacken.” Claire Seymour, Opera Today Today Dec 2022

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Supported by The Queens Hotel

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