Greenwich Music Director conducts lost Offenbach opera
University of Greenwich Music Director Nicholas Jenkins is conducting the first British performances of a lost Offenbach opera by the New Sussex Opera and Kent Sinfonia in Sussex and London at the end of the month. The Rhine Fairies or Die Rheinnixen was lost for 137 years before being rediscovered by musicologist Jean-Christophe Keck. He travelled the globe gathering up scattered pieces of the manuscript which it was once thought impossible to re-assemble.
Nicholas Jenkins who also says: “This is the realisation of a project that I’ve been planning for six years. The Rhine Fairies has never previously been performed in this country. The production features a superb cast, all of whom regularly appear with major UK opera companies such as Royal Opera, English National Opera and Opera North.”
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) was the composer of the famous Can-Can, which comes from his celebrated operetta Orpheus in the Underworld. He became world-famous during his own lifetime for the comic operettas he wrote and had performed in Paris - some of his earliest pieces were knock-about farces, close in spirit to modern TV comedy shows. Offenbach was an entrepreneur as well as a musician, in that respect not so different from Andrew Lloyd Webber today.
In the later part of his career Offenbach dearly wished to be taken seriously by the musical establishment, and The Rhine Fairies (1864) was his first significant attempt to write a serious opera. The Rhine Fairies contains the music that he would later re-use as the famous Barcarolle in his posthumous masterpiece The Tales of Hoffmann (1881). The music of Rhine Fairies contains hints of other important romantic composers such as Verdi, Bellini, Weber and Wagner, but is nevertheless vintage Offenbach, written by a composer reaching the peak of his powers.
Nicholas Jenkins is Music Director at the University of Greenwich Choir and Conductor of the University Choir comprising staff and students which gives a number of public performances per year including an annual Carol Service at the Old Royal Naval College.
Notes for Editors:
Offenbach: THE RHINE FAIRIES (Die Rheinnixen) - British Premiere by the New Sussex Opera and Kent Sinfonia. Conducted by Nicholas Jenkins
- Wednesday 21 October, 7pm - Lewes, Town Hall
- Sunday 25 October, 6pm - Eastbourne, Winter Garden
- Tuesday 27 October, 7pm - LONDON, Cadogan Hall
(near Sloane Square tube)
Cast: Kate Valentine, Anne-Marie Owens, David Curry, Quentin Hayes, Daniel Grice Sung in a new English translation by Neil Jenkins.
Book online:
For further information and photos please contact:
Nick Davison, Public Relations, University of Greenwich
020 8331 8092