Music Club – Jimmy and Rosalia: Creating a folk opera from Handel and Helen Creighton
This event will be broadcast online and is free and open to all – there is no login or registration required.
Jimmy and Rosalia is a folk opera that combines Handel’s Acis and Galatea and Nova Scotian folk music from the Helen Creighton Collection. The latest project from Nick Veltmeyer’s ensemble Aureas Voces, it tells the tragic love story of a shepherd boy and a young woman whose love transcends social boundaries and even death, seamlessly weaving together an 18th-Century English pastoral and an arresting dramatic narrative abstracted from the folk ballads of Nova Scotia.
Nick Veltmeyer (composer), Anna Lewton-Brain (co-librettist) and Thomas Ayouti (stage director) explore the creative process behind the project, and share both video and audio clips related to the production. The discussion will centre around comparisons of Baroque music and folk music, ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, and patrilineal and matrilineal dramatic song traditions.
Junior Fellow Nick Veltmeyer is the founder of Aureas Voces, and the recipient of the Trevor Pinnock and Daniel Taylor Award and Trinity College’s Bevan Organ Scholarship. Thomas Ayouti is also a Junior Fellow, as well as an actor and director. Anna Lewton-Brain is a doctoral candidate in English literature at McGill University.
The Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Nova Scotia have awarded funding for Aureas Voces’ production of Jimmy and Rosalia, scheduled for performances in the summer of 2021.
MASSEY MEMBERS: Please login using your registered Massey email to receive applicable discounts and offers.
Virtual Event
Speakers
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Nick VeltmeyerMassey Junior Fellow, Nick Veltmeyer is a graduate student in Historical Performance (Voice) at the University of Toronto with Daniel Taylor and Mary Morrison. Nick is an accomplished organist: an Associate of the Royal College of Canadian Organists and the Bevan Organ Scholar of Trinity College. Nick also held the position of organ scholar at St. James Cathedral and the University of King’s College. Nick’s research explores a dialogue between the oral and written traditions in Western music, with an emphasis on traditional Canadian folk music. He founded Aureas Voces Indie Early Music in 2018, and developed his newest composition “Jimmy and Rosalia: a folk opera” at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity.
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Anna Lewton-Brain
Anna Lewton-Brain is a doctoral candidate in English Literature at McGill University. Her dissertation, entitled “Metaphysical Music: Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Seventeenth-Century Song” examines the intersections of music and the Metaphysical poets in Renaissance English literary culture. Anna is also a Faculty member at Dawson College where she teaches courses on Shakespeare and poetics. Her literary and musical vocations intersect frequently: she has led workshops on music and poetry at the Montreal Baroque Festival, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge, and at the Guildhall School of Music in London.
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Thomas AyoutiJunior Fellow, Massey College; PhD student in French studies and in the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies
Thomas Ayouti is a queer, Franco-Iranian PhD student in French studies and in the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. His research explores how French writers and choreographers represented vulnerability in HIV/AIDS-related works. He studied philosophy, anthropology, and French literature at Sorbonne University and the University of Nanterre.
Thomas also works on a series of short essays on literary criticism. The first one, “présence des émotions, vulnérabilité critique” (presence of emotions, critical vulnerability) was published this year, the next essay, “dévorer les mots, la critique et son extractivisme” (devouring words, the critic and its extractivism) will be published in 2023.
Thomas is a dedicated lecturer at the UofT, TMU and Brock University where he teaches French, French and francophone literature and critical theory. Thomas is also a writer and an artistic director. He recently wrote the libretto of a monodrama, L’Épaisseur du silence (In the stiffness of silence).
