Past Performances

Mary Berry’s Fashionable Friends (2023)

 
 
 
 
 
 

2023

Mary Berry’s Fashionable Friends
 
Friday, May 12 at 2:30 pm and 4:30 pm
Saturday, May 13 at 2:00 pm
 
Co-organized by Cynthia E. Roman, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, the Lewis Walpole Library, and Laura Engel, Professor, Duquesne University
 
An entirely new version of the comedy. 
Directed by Laura Engel, Duquesne University
Adaptation by Laura Engel and Amy Dick 
 
Featuring: 
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER
SADIE CROW
AMY DICK
ERIC LESLIE
 
Location:
The Lewis Walpole Library
154 Main Street

Farmington, CT 06032

The Play:

In 1801 Anne Damer, Mary Berry, and Agnes Berry embarked on a remarkable collaboration staging a performance of Berry’s comedy Fashionable Friends as an amateur theatrical production at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. Damer and Berry starred in the play as the titular fashionable friends; Damer played the seductive and sly Lady Selina and Berry the sentimental and clever Mrs. Lovell.

An associated scholar’s workshop on Female Friendship, Collaboration, and Creativity took place May 11.


2018

Horace Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother: A Staged Reading

Diana Beauclerk (1724-1808), The Mysterious Mother, Act 3d, Scene 3, 1776. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Presented by the Lewis Walpole Library and the Yale Center for British Art

Wednesday, May 2, 2018, 5:30 pm, Yale Center for British Art

Abridged by David Worrall, Emeritus Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University

Directed by Misty G. Anderson, Lindsay Young Professor of English, University of Tennessee

As part of the year-long celebrations of the tercentenary of Horace Walpole’s birth, the Lewis Walpole Library and the Yale Center for British Art are collaborating to present a staged reading of The Mysterious Mother. Completed just a few years after Walpole’s celebrated gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), this under-appreciated tale of incest and intrigue was initially circulated only among the author’s friends. Walpole never permitted it to be performed during his lifetime except as a private theatrical.  This performance is free and open to the public.

Following the reading there will be a talk-back session moderated by Catherine Sheehy, Professor of the Practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Yale University.  

CAST:

Countess of Narbonne         Georgina Lock
Count Edmund, her Son        Carlos Guanche  
Florian, his friend                      Gilberto Saenz  
Adeliza                                           Chelsea Phillips
Benedict                                        Charlie Gillespie 
Martin                                            Justin Crisp 
Peter Porter                                 Dale Townshend      
Servant                                           Stephen Clarke

The performance was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube:

Horace Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother: A Staged Reading

“Staging The Mysterious Mother,” a collection of essays, on 18th Century Common


2017

Playing in Parts: A Glimpse of Domestic Music Making in 18th-Century London

Grand Harmonie  performs in connection with our Spring 2017 exhibition,  The Land without Music .

When: Saturday, March 4, 2017, 3 pm, reception to follow

Where : First Church of Christ, Congregational, 1652,  75 Main Street Farmington CT

The concert is free and open to the public. 

Performers:

Chris Belluscio, English slide trumpet

Yoni Kahn, horn

Sarah Paysnick, flute

Emily Dahl Irons, violin

Sylvia Berry, fortepiano

Program:
Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805)
Violin Sonata in B-flat, Op. 5, No. 1
I. Allegro con moto
II. Grave
III. Presto assai
Emily Dahl Irons, violin; Sylvia Berry, piano

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sonata for horn and piano, op. 17
I. Allegro Moderato
II. Poco Adagio, quasi Andante
III. Rondo. Allegro Moderato
Yoni Kahn, horn; Sylvia Berry, piano

“Popular Handelian Airs from Vauxhall Gardens”
Chris Belluscio, English slide trumpet; Sylvia Berry, piano

Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)
Sonata for Keyboard and Flute, Op. 16 No. 1 in D Major WB 10 (c. 1780)
I. Allegro Assai
II. Andante
Sarah Paysnick, flute; Sylvia Berry, piano

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1806)
from Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI: 50 (London, 1795)
II. Adagio
III. Allegro molto
Sylvia Berry, piano

This concert will feature a grand piano built by John Broadwood & Son in London in 1806, and restored by Dale Munschy in 2011.

Other featured instruments include: 
Flute by Rod Cameron after C.A. Grenser (Dresden, 1760)
Violin by Aegidius Kloz (1701), bow by Dodd (ca. 1800)
English Slide Trumpet by Frederick Pace of London (ca. 1840)
French Orchestra Horn by Antoine Halari (ca. 1830)

2016

The Grand Tour: the Walpole Way

A concert by New Vintage Baroque based on music in the collections of the Lewis Walpole Library.

When: Saturday, November 5, 7:30 PM, reception to follow 

Where : First Church of Christ, Congregational, 1652,  75 Main St, Farmington, CT 

Program is free and open to the public.

Program Huitième Ouverture, François Couperin (French, 1668–1733) Caprice ou Sonate, Marin Marais (French, 1656–1728) Musettes, Nicolas Chédeville (French, 1705–1782) “Sento due fiamme in petto,” from Medo, Leonardo Vinci (Italian, 1690–1730) *Toccata per il Cembelo, Anonymous “Taci, o di morte,” from Medo, Leonardo Vinci Violin Trio Sonata in G Major, Domenico Gallo (Italian, 1730–ca. 1768) *Minuet, Geminiano Giacomelli (Italian, 1692–1740) *Minuet, Johann Adolph Hasse (German, 1699–1783) *Operas. Selections. Arr. keyboard, Gaetano Latilla (Italian, 1711–1788) Andante, from Alfred Masque, Thomas Arne (English, 1710–1778) Lasciami un sol momento, Giovanni Bononcini (Italian, 1670–1747) Minuets, Michael Dobney (English, fl. ca. 1810) Sonata in G Minor, HWV 404, George Frideric Handel (German, 1685–1759) * The Lewis Walpole Library collection

Co-sponsored by the Lewis Walpole Library and First Church of Christ, Congregational, 1652

For further information, contact: 860-677-2140 or walpole@yale.edu


Concert: Characters and the Catch

Saturday, September 24, 7:30 p.m.

First Church of Christ, Congregational, Farmington

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.

Program: Popular Catches from A Pocket Companion for Gentlemen and Ladies and Sonatas and Trio Sonata by Arne, Boyce, Abel and Handel

Inspired by the “Character Mongers: ” fall exhibition at the Lewis Walpole Library, Characters and the Catch is the second in a series of free chamber concerts featuring works from the Library’s collection of eighteenth-century music, performed by the New York-based ensemble New Vintage Baroque. The concert features popular catches from A Pocket Companion for Gentlemen and Ladies and sonatas and Trio Sonata by Arne, Boyce, Abel, and Handel.

Players:
Lindsay McIntosh, Executive Director & Baroque Oboe 
Owen McIntosh, Tenor 
Jeff Girton, Baroque Violin 
Arnie Tanimoto, Viola d’Gamba 
Paul Morton Holmes, Theorbo 
James Kennerley, Harpsichord


The Vauxhall Gardens!  A Concert

April 23, 2016

The first in a series of free chamber concerts featuring works from the library’s collection of eighteenth-century music, performed by the New York-based ensemble New Vintage Baroque.New Vintage Baroque

The concert featured works by G. F. Handel, William Boyce,  Carl Friedrich Abel,  and songs written and performed for Vauxhall Gardens.

Saturday, April 23, First Church of Christ, Congregational, Farmington.

2013

Attitudes Performed, presented in connection with the exhibition Emma Hamilton Dancing, performed at the Lewis Walpole Library. 

Images of the performance

2006

The library and Jonathan Edwards College sponsored the Opera Theatre of Yale College’s production of Elisir d’Amore, by Gaetano Donizetti, conducted by Nick Chong and directed by Ethan Heard. 
April 7 and April 8, University Theatre, 222 York Street

Saybrook College Orchestra, Perry So, Music Director, performed Selections from Candide by Leonard Bernstein, featuring Charlotte Dobbs, Soprano, and Amanda Ingram, Soprano, and Symphony No. 6 in B minor, “Pathétique” by Tchaikovsky. Sponsored by the Lewis Walpole Library and Saybrook College. 
May 21, Battell Chapel

W.A. Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was presented by the Opera Theatre of Yale College. 
April 22 and 23, The ECA Theatre on Audubon St.

2004

Commencement concert of operatic and orchestral music featuring Act 1 of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, performed by the Opera Theatre of Yale College and the Saybrook College Orchestra 
May 22, Battell Chapel

W.A. Mozart’s The Magic Flute was presented by the Opera Theatre of Yale College, Perry So, Conductor, Alex Yang, Stage Director, jointly sponsored by the Lewis Walpole Library and Jonathan Edwards College. 

April 2-3, 2004, University Theater

2003

Opera Theatre of Yale College
September 25, 2003, The Lewis Walpole Library

2002

Thomas A. Martin, Pianist
March 2, 2002, The Lewis Walpole Library

2001

“A Short, Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage,” selected scenes from Restoration plays, directed by Joseph R. Roach, Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater, Yale University, following the Lewis Walpole Library Lecture “Et in Arcadia ego: The Eighteenth Century of the 1920s” by Terry Castle, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University, 
February 16, 2001

The Way of the World, by William Congreve, February 8- March 3, 2001, at University Theatre, produced by the Yale Repertory Theatre as part of Yale’s Tercentennial celebration, sponsored by the Lewis Walpole Library/Beinecke Library/Yale School of Drama

1999

Postcards from Otranto: A Concert of 18th-Century Music, performed by The Four Nations Ensemble, Andrew Appel, Director
November 7, 1999
Yale Center for British Art