About

8pm Old Library, Colchester CO1 1NH

Handel    Where’er you walk
Purcell    Ah, Belinda!

Handel    ‘E il soffrirete’, ‘Empio, per farti guerra’  ‘Figlia mia, non pianger, no’
Vivaldi    Ho il cor già lacerò

Handel    Lay your doubts aside & Come to my arms

Handel    As steals the morn
Handel    Where shall I fly?

Handel    Total eclipse
Purcell    Dido’s Lament

 

Katie Bray mezzo soprano
Richard Dowling tenor
Aya Robertson harpsichord
Orlando Jopling cello

Heartbreak, spiritual strength and renewal in this recital of Handel arias, which have such emotional power that they speak to us as if they were written yesterday.

Two sensational young singers make their festival debuts. Katie Bray is one of the UK’s leading young singers, having already sung major roles at all the major opera houses as well as giving recitals at the Wigmore Hall, starring on many recordings, and made regular broadcasts on Radio 3. She won the Audience Prize in the Cardiff Singer of the World 2019. Click on ‘More Information’ below for more details of Katie and Richard’s careers to date.We’re excited about our first ever concert in the Old Library, a new venue in Colchester. It has a wonderful hammerbeam roof, and is right in the centre of Colchester, behind the Town Hall, on West Stockwell Street (no. 65).

It was originally built in the 1893 by public subscription. At that time, St George’s Hall (behind the Camulodunum pub, where we staged several popup concerts in 2016) had been standing for 40 years as a public meeting hall for the Liberals. It was a few years before the beautiful proscenium-arch Grand Theatre was built in 1904, 50 yards away on the high street, where we did a popup concert a few years ago (but has been a nightclub for almost 30 years now).