Nights Not Spent Alone - Jonathan Dove - Waterperry Festival

This performance of Jonathan Dove's settings of love poetry, mostly by women poets, including Edna St Vincent Millay and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was startlingly original, both in the music and in the presentation.

Semi-dramatized, it was performed by mezzo-soprano Hannah Bennett, in a set that resembled a bedroom. The songs take us on a long, deeply personal and intimate exploration of the many moods and facets of love, from introspection, to yearning, joyous passion, comical irony, wonderment, jealousy, insecurity, regret, and nostalgia.

    The performance, which was the first ever dramatic staging of the work, gave us a feeling that we were seeing into a woman's private world and most tender feelings. 

Hannah Bennet's performance was a tour-de-force, combining acting and powerful singing in a kaleidoscope of moods. So also was that of the pianist Ashley Beauchamp.

The music is modern, uncompromising, but also melodic and often exciting. I found myself humming the tune of "My Love Is Mine" for the rest of the evening.

The ballroom at Waterperry, where we saw Dove's opera Mansfield Park two years ago, was an ideal venue for the production. With the shutters almost closed on its tall windows, it held us in a mysterious twilight in the middle of a hot afternoon.

                        Jonathan Dove.

Full programme: Nights Not Spent Alone (poems by Edna St Vincent Millay), the song My Love is Mine, Five Am'rous Sighs (settings of poems by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Matthew Prior) and All You Who Sleep Tonight (words by Amity Willows).

Director: Thomas Henderson.

Part of the Waterperry Opera Festival 2024.