Grammy-winning Daniel Belcher to premiere Your John Keats love letters at Manchester University
NORTH MANCHESTER, Ind. – Daniel Belcher, a Grammy-winning, internationally acclaimed operatic baritone, is performing the world premiere at Manchester University of a song cycle setting of love letters from English Romantic poet John Keats to Fanny Brawne, his betrothed.
It is part of “Voyages of Life and Love,” a guest artist recital at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 14 in Wine Recital Hall on the North Manchester campus. It is free and open to the public.
Belcher will sing the nine-movement song cycle Your John Keats, composed by Dr. Debra Lynn, director of choral organizations and voice study at the University. Keats wrote some of the letters from Italy, where he was sent for health reasons but did not survive.
Belcher will be joined by visiting artist mezzo-soprano Judy Marlett, who serves as professor of music at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho. She will perform Alan Louis Smith’s Vignettes: Ellis Island, a setting of oral accounts by immigrants during their journey to North America.
Belcher and Marlett will also perform two arias and a duet from a new opera recently premiered by Belcher called The Long Walk. Composer Jeremy Howard Beck based the opera on Brian Castner’s best-selling memoir of the same name. It follows Brian’s struggles to return to the U.S. after suffering trauma when he was commander of a bomb disposal unit in Iraq.
Dr. Pamela Haynes, MU assistant professor of music, will assist on piano.
Belcher and Marlett will also be featured soloists in the Oct. 16 debut performance of Lynn’s choral-orchestral work A Family Portrait, based on letters of a Civil War-era family. More information about this Manchester Symphony Orchestra performance and related events will be coming soon
About Manchester University
Manchester University, with campuses in North Manchester and Fort Wayne, Ind., offers more than 60 areas of academic study to nearly 1,600 students in undergraduate programs, a Master of Athletic Training, a Master of Pharmacogenomics and a four-year professional Doctor of Pharmacy. It has students from 20 nations and is home to the world's first undergraduate peace studies program, established in 1948. Learn more about the private, northern Indiana school at www.manchester.edu.
September 2017