The Wild Irish Girl and her Harp

The Wild Irish Girl The Wild Irish Girl and her Harp

RTÉ Culture Podcast
Lyric FM feature: The Wild Irish girl and her Harp Sunday 15 November 2020, 6 – 7pm.

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/1110/1177178-lyric-feature-una-hunt-on-the-wild-irish-girl-and-her-harp/

This portrait celebrates the extraordinary Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, a nineteenth-century celebrity cult figure and self-made woman. She penned the influential novel – The Wild Irish Girl and styled herself on the heroine, Glorvina, a harp-playing Gaelic princess; she also initiated a fashion for her own brand of pseudo-Irish dress. Her recovery of the Irish harp for the drawing room generated keen awareness in other novels of the period and helped to shape the modern instrument. Music includes specially recorded world-premiere recordings of Owenson’s songs, the Hibernian Melodies, which exerted a largely unacknowledged influence on Thomas Moore. Contributors include Owenson scholars, Claire Connolly and Julie Donovan, mezzo-soprano Laura Murphy, and the harpist Nancy Hurrell.

Presented and produced by Una Hunt with sound supervision by Ben Rawlins.

A Celtic Media Award nominee, the programme is available to listen to after broadcast on the RTE Lyric Feature Archive –

https://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/the-lyric-feature/

I hope you enjoy - and, please do leave your comments!

Dido & Aeneas and Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

Looking forward to the Conservatory of Music and Drama’s presentation of the Baroque operas on 18th and 19th January 2019. Good luck to the cast.

Purcell’s much-loved masterpiece, Dido and Aeneas, recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her. The opera is full of magnificent music including Dido’s Lament, one of the most beautiful and tragic arias ever written. This is coupled with a rare opportunity to see Claudio Monteverdi’s Combat between Tancredi and Clorinda, a romance set against the backdrop of the First Crusade.

Femmes de la Belle Époque

I've discovered some wonderful music by French women composers active during the Belle Époque – Cécile Chaminade, Mélanie Bonis, Lili Boulanger and the little-known Franco-Irish composers Augusta Holmès and Hope Temple. Such brilliant music – it easily rivals their male counterparts even though they received so little recognition. Looking forward to performing with violinist Gillian Williams and mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty. Hope to see you all there on the 24th of January at the National Concert Hall. Thanks also to Sounding the Feminists for their support.

Princess Grace Irish Library Lecture

Thomas Moore, Drawing Room Entertainer or Rebel Songster?

An Illustrated lecture given by Dr Una Hunt on Moore’s Irish Melodies at the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco, under the aegis of Fondation Princesse Grace; 5th May 2017.

Una Hunt at the Princess Grace Irish Library

Sources and Style in Moore's Irish Melodies

Once regarded as Ireland’s national bard, Thomas Moore's lasting reputation rests on the ten immensely popular collections of drawing-room songs known as the Irish Melodies, published between 1808 and 1834. Moore drew on anthologies of ancient music, breathing new life into the airs and bringing them before a global audience for the very first time. Recognising the unique beauty of the airs as well as their symbolic significance, these qualities were often interwoven into the verses providing potent political commentary along with a new cultural perspective.

At home and abroad, Moore’s Melodies created a realm of influence that continued to define Irish culture for many decades to come.

Notwithstanding the far-reaching appeal and success of the collections, Moore has only recently begun to receive serious attention from scholars. Una Hunt provides the first detailed study of Moore’s Irish Melodies from a combined musical and literary standpoint by drawing on a practical understanding and an unrivalled performance experience of the songs. The initial two chapters contextualize Moore and his songs through a detailed examination of their sources and style while the following chapters concentrate on the collaborative work provided by the composers Sir John Stevenson and Henry Rowley Bishop. Chapters 5 and 6 reappraise musical sources and Moore’s adaptation of these, supported and illustrated by the Table of Sources in the Appendix.

Read more
https://www.routledge.com/9781409405610

Award-Winning Programme: John Beckett, the Man and his Music

TX: 24 June 2016. To listen, click on Programme Archive at
http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/the-lyric-feature/ and enter date of broadcast.

John Beckett, the Man and his Music, presented and produced by Una Hunt, has become the Bronze winner at the New York Festivals International Radio Awards 2017.

The programme is a tribute to the multi-faceted John Beckett who introduced the Dublin public to Bach’s cantatas and exerted a unique influence on the development of period-performance style.

Read more
https://riamlibrary.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/john-beckett-documentary-on-rte-lyric-fm/