Afternoon Arias – A Preview

New Town Church – Venue 111, 14.30-16.00, 16/08/2025

 Afternoon Arias – A Preview

After the great success of the last two years on the Edinburgh Fringe, I am proud to announce that this year’s concert of operatic highlights from the New Town Church in George Street, ‘Afternoon Arias’, is now available for booking through the Fringe Box Office.

 Emma Morwood (soprano)
Catherine Backhouse (mezzo-soprano)
Magnus Walker (tenor)
Brian Bannatyne-Scott (bass)
Michał Gajzler (piano)

We have a new line-up this year, and I am delighted to welcome Emma Morwood and Magnus Walker to our team. Ever since I returned to live in Edinburgh in 1997, I have put on a recital either in the Canongate Kirk, St Michael’s, Slateford Road or the New Town Church during the Edinburgh Festival. This initially came about because my career was exclusively located outside Scotland (not my choice), and I wanted to promote a concert in Edinburgh that showcased what I was doing all over the world, in venues such as La Scala, Milan, La Monnaie, Brussels, Aix-en-Provence, Vancouver, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. With various superb pianists, I explored the great song cycles of the Lieder repertoire and the wonders of the art songs of France and Russia, and, over time, began to introduce some of the young singers I had been mentoring throughout my career. I spent 10 years as Honorary Professor of Singing at St Andrews University, while continuing to sing opera and concerts around the world, and some of those young students from St Andrews are beginning to make their mark in the world of music. I was able to give them a platform to display their talents during the Edinburgh Festival, and I have been delighted to introduce several high flyers to a new audience in these concerts, perhaps none finer than our own Beth Taylor, who is now performing at the very highest level all over the world.

The singers I have engaged in this concert are all top class, and I am sure you will be thrilled to hear them on August 16th. Michał Gajzler, a terrific Polish pianist who works primarily in Glasgow, has been accompanying most of our recent Fringe concerts, and he brings a wealth of skill and imagination to his playing.

I have put together a largely pre-romantic era programme this year, which suits the venue particularly well. The New Town Church was built in 1784, as St Andrew’s Church, part of the original plan for Edinburgh’s New Town, to an elliptical design by Captain Andrew Fraser, the first of its kind in Great Britain. A spire was added in 1787 and a full peal of bells in 1788.

The acoustic is warm and generous, and a programme of arias and ensembles by Purcell, Handel and Mozart will sound especially good there.

It has been my privilege over the 40 years of my career to sing and record many of the finest works of Purcell and Handel, often with the exceptional playing of the English Concert, under its original founder, Trevor Pinnock. We offer you some Purcellian highlights on the 16th, with excerpts from ‘King Arthur’, which I recorded on Deutsche Grammophon some 30 years ago. I sang several times in Handel’s home town of Halle in Germany in the Handel Festival there, and you will hear excerpts from ‘Semele’ and ‘Julius Caesar’.

Mozart was achieving greatness in Vienna and throughout Europe at exactly the same time as the New Town Church was opened, and we will be singing extended highlights from ‘The Magic Flute’ and a taster from ‘Don Giovanni’.

Tickets are available from the Fringe Box Office at £12 (£10 concessions), and at the door.