On November 8, Diana Damrau and the Czech tenor Petr Nekoranec will delight a Prague audience with bel-canto favourites and arias from the operas of Iain Bell, accompanied by the Prague Philharmonia.
Bell/Bel-Canto with Diana Damrau and Petr Nekoranec - 8 November
Operas by Iain Bell have been staged at houses including Theater an der Wien, Royal Opera House, Houston Grand Opera, English National Opera and New York City Opera. He has a long-standing artistic relationship with Diana Damrau, who as well as performing and recording many of his chamber and concert works, created the title role in his first opera A Harlot's Progress (2011). Czech tenor Petr Nekoranec gave the world premiere of Bell's monodrama Comfort Starving (2021) having also performed all of the composer's tenor concert repertoire. For the first time, they unite to perform excerpts from three of Iain Bell's operas.
Damrau will perform the 'mad scene' from A Harlot's Progress and an aria from Jack the Ripper: the Women of Whitechapel (2019), 'Nekoranec' - an aria from In Parenthesis (2016).
Iain Bell: an Introduction to the Operas
Iain Bell is best known for his vocal music (opera and song) with characterisation at the heart of his music. Take a look through his five operas composed over the last nine years. Read the full feature here.