Three nights of Opera at Tonbridge School
The Music Department delighted our community with a series of three concerts over consecutive weeks, celebrating operatic music. Titled “Nights at the Opera”, it commenced with the Chamber Music Concert in Big School, featuring a range of ensembles, including Senior Strings, various wind ensembles, a piano trio, Bell Quartet, an acoustic guitar ensemble, Hahn Quartet, Senior Saxophone Quartet and Oistrakh Quartet. Crowd pleasers like The Barber of Seville, the Overture from Don Giovanni and Meditation from Thaiss, as well as acoustic arrangements of more modern, non-operatic pieces, such as Hotel California.
The second in the series featured music by Rossini, Verdi and Puccini, performed by the School’s Symphony Orchestra, joined by professional vocalists, Nina Bennet and Robin Bailey, who added drama by performing from the pulpits on either side of the Chapel. The full house rewarded performers with a justly deserved standing ovation. Nina’s repertoire includes performing internationally, as well as in the UK, at Cadogan Hall, Canterbury Cathedral, the Grimeborn Festival, the Minack Theatre and with the London Opera Company. Robin trained at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His extensive biography includes singing with the English National Opera and at the Royal Opera House, in addition to Canterbury, Winchester and Southwark Cathedrals.
The Orchestra comprised more than fifty of our most talented orchestral players, including violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba and percussion/timpani.
Finally, the Vocal Concert combined the talents of the boys and their teachers (Nathan Vale, Tenor and Toby Stafford-Allen, Baritone) in the more intimate space of our Recital Room. Featuring soloists from the Novi to the Upper Sixth, the programme spanned a period of over two hundred years, with the likes of Handel, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Puccini. The teachers opened and closed the concert, both as soloists and a duet (O Mimi, tu piu non torni) as a finale which received rapturous applause from an appreciative audience of boys, families, staff and our local supporters.
