Mahler’s Song of the Earth with Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Xavier Hetherington & the Wild Arts Ensemble, Sat 1 Oct 6pm
£5.00 – £25.00
Saturday 1 October, 6pm Coggeshall Church
*Please scroll to bottom of page to book tickets*
The centrepiece of the festival, Mahler’s great and much-loved symphony The Song of the Earth, with Soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons, tenor Xavier Hetherington, and the Wild Arts Ensemble – the new name for the exceptional players of the festival orchestra – conducted by our Artistic Director Orlando Jopling and led by Clio Gould
£25 main | £15 side | £5 under 20
Doors open at 5pm. Bar will be open before the performance, and during the interval. All proceeds will be donated to Coggeshall Church.
Free parking for ticket holders at Honywood School, Westfield Dr, Coggeshall,CO6 1PZ
There is no need to print your ticket. This will support our commitment to protecting our planet. You can either show us your ticket on your phone, or simply tell us the booking name on the door and we can admit you from our guest list.
Description
Marta Fontanals-Simmons
British-Spanish mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons makes her Royal Opera debut in the 2018/19 Season as Hel (The Monstrous Child) in the Linbury Theatre and also sings Siébel (Faust) for the Company.
Fontanals-Simmons read Music at the University of Birmingham and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where her awards included the 2014 Principal’s Prize and 2015 Gold Medal. She was a Jerwood Young Artist and member of Glyndebourne Festival Chorus in the 2015/16 season. Her opera appearances include Jennie Hildebrand (Street Scene) for Teatro Real, Madrid, Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro) for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Garsington Opera, Lapák (The Cunning Little Vixen) for Glyndebourne Festival, Kate Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly) for Glyndebourne on Tour, Woodpecker (The Cunning Little Vixen) and Second Lady (Die Zauberflöte) for Garsington and Angelina (La Cenerentola) for Diva Opera. In 2016 she sang Ursula in the Royal Opera House/Glyndebourne co-production Nothing, by David Bruce.
Fontanals-Simmons has sung in concert with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, London Handel Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, English Festival Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia and Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra among others, and appeared in Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music at the Last Night of the BBC Proms. Her concert repertory includes works by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Vaughan Williams and Stravinsky, and she appears widely in recital. She has given the world premieres of two song cycles: Damsel, Witch, Wife by Lewis Murphy and Letters from Home by Benjamin Ellin, and given the European premiere of Alasdair Nicolson’s Shadows on the Wall – Five Hauntings. Awards include the Prix de Lied at the Councours International du chant-piano Nadia et Lili Boulanger.
Xavier Hetherington
After reading Classics at St John’s College, Cambridge, British tenor Xavier Hetherington took his
masters degree at the Royal College of Music as a Their Serene Highnesses Dr Prince Donatus and
Princess Heidi Von Hohenzollern scholar. He graduated in 2020 with distinction and moved on to the
Mascarade Opera Studio (MOS) in Florence, Italy. After nine months in Florence Xavier was accepted
into the Centre de Perfeccionament at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, and he has just
come to the end of a 6 month period there. Xavier has benefited from the generous support of the
King-Farlow Trust, Mr Simon Groves, Mr and Mrs Anthony Bolton and Mr John Rae. He studies with
James Platt and Christine Cairns.
Recent engagements include Shepherd and cover Orpheus (Monteverdi) for Opera North, Tenor solo
Singalong Messiah (Reisopera), Spell Book & Shepherd – La Liberazione Di Ruggiero Dall’isola
D’Alcina and covering Ferrando Cosí fan tutte for Longborough Festival Opera, an opera gala at the
20th anniversary of the Encuentro de la Música in the Palacio de Festivales, Santander; Lensky Eugene
Onegin, Tebaldo I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Don Ramiro La Cenerentola in a scenes showcase at La
Fenice in Venice with MOS; and the tenor in the trio from Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti at the Palau de
les Arts in Valencia.
Xavier has enjoyed several years of concert and opera singing in the United
Kingdom and abroad singing at halls such as St John Smith Square and Wigmore Hall and with
conductors such as Dame Jane Glover, Robin Ticciati, John Lubbock and Rafael Payare.
Further operatic engagements include Orfeo in Monteverdi’s l’Orfeo at the Minack Theatre Cornwall,
Torquemada in the RCM’s production of Ravel’s L’heure Espagnole and singing in the Glyndebourne
chorus in the festival of 2019.
Event Details
Date: October 01, 2022
Start time: 18:00
End time: 20:00
Venue: Coggeshall Church, 4 Church Green, Coggeshall, Colchester CO6 1UD
Phone: 07926 623529 (Box Office Mon- Wed 10am - 12pm)
Email: boxoffice@romanrivermusic.org.uk