Saturday, September 4, 2021
8:00 PM 9:30 PM
Orpheum Performing Arts Center, 6050 Main St, Tannersville, NY
Presented by the Catskill Mountain Foundation
Performers: Tracy Cowart (mezzo-soprano & stage director); Fiona Gillespie (soprano); Bradley King (tenor); Theresa Salomon and Boel Gidholm (violins); Sian Ricketts (baroque oboe & recorder); Patricia Ann Neely (violone); Christa Patton (triple harp); Richard Kolb (theorbo, archlute, & music director)
Advance Tickets only, must be purchased online: $25
Please note: All audience members will be asked to show proof of vaccination, and masks will be required in the theater.
Purchase Tickets: Catskill Mountain Foundation
Music from the London stage c. 1700: Songs and instrumental music by Henry Purcell and John Eccles.
While Italian opera was all the rage in most of Europe during the 17th-century, the English resisted the foreign invasion and instead developed peculiarly British forms of music theater. English audiences objected to the "unnatural" practice of having characters converse in continuous song, challenging playwrights and composers to find ingenious ways of inserting musical interludes within spoken plays, often to the point of overshadowing the dialog and plot. English theater music reached a highpoint around the turn of the 18th century, with leading composers producing some of the finest vocal music ever written in England.
Based on popular plays of the London stage, the Labyrinth Ensemble's The Double Distress unfolds a story of complicated relationships told through songs and instrumental numbers by Henry Purcell and John Eccles, two of the leading composers of theater music of the baroque era.