{"id":360358,"date":"2026-09-30T01:58:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T01:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360358\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T01:58:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T01:58:22","slug":"queens-closet-find-musical-threads-in-baroques-rich-tapestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360358\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen\u2019s Closet find musical threads in Baroque\u2019s rich tapestry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RichardRichard Betts<\/a><\/p>\n

Music & features writer\u00b7New Zealand Listener\u00b7<\/p>\n

29 Sep, 2026 05:02 PM3 mins to read<\/p>\n

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Gordon Lehany (foreground) and\u00a0Sharon Lehany (right) with other members of Wellington\u2019s Queen\u2019s Closet. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

We tend to think of \u201cBaroque music\u201d as one stylistic blob: a bit of counterpoint here, some wildly ornamental stuff there and Bach\u2019s yer uncle. <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s really not like that. Why would it be? The period covers roughly 150 years: 1600-1750. If you leap forward the same time
\n span from, say, Beethoven\u2019s last works, you\u2019re knee deep in the Sex Pistols.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can tell people this stuff,\u201d says music scholar Gordon Lehany, \u201cbut they quite rightly don\u2019t want you to talk at them. If you can show them through the music, it\u2019s much more effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wellington period orchestra The Queen\u2019s Closet, where Lehany is artistic and musical director and his wife, Sharon, is manager, is showing people in an elegant and ingenious way by following a poem, Ludovico Ariosto\u2019s early 16th-century epic Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando).<\/p>\n

Baroque composers regularly used it as base material, and the Lehanys are cherry-picking bits from three operas linked by Ariosto\u2019s work: La liberazione di Ruggiero, by Francesa Caccini, which premiered in 1625 and was the first opera written by a woman; Lully\u2019s Roland, written for Louis XIV (1685), and Vivaldi\u2019s Orlando Furioso, which is represented in two versions, from 1714 and 1727.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a programme Queen\u2019s Closet previously presented in 2023, but this time the group is adding light staging from Jacqueline Coats and related musical excerpts by Nicola Porpora, Luigi Rossi, Agostino Steffani and Handel. These are used as curtain and act music, which is how, Sharon Lehany says, opera would have been presented at the time.<\/p>\n

The clever bit is that because Ariosto\u2019s narrative provides the connective tissue, Queen\u2019s Closet has stitched together a coherent story \u2013 despite the music spanning a century and composers from France, different parts of Italy and Germany (Handel was yet to settle in England when he composed Rinaldo).<\/p>\n

Once they\u2019d worked out the story arc, it was about finding the pieces that told the story, she says. \u201cBut when we\u2019re populating a programme, there\u2019s always a process of thinking, \u2018What can we do that best showcases who we have and what we do?\u2019 And listening through and going, \u2018Oh, we\u2019ve got to use that because it will really suit so-and-so.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite selecting music that suits particular people, there\u2019s a reluctance at Queen\u2019s Closet to spotlight individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tempting to highlight singers,\u201d Gordon Lehany says, \u201cbut with [our] singers and in the ensemble, everyone is a soloist. The production is intimate, and everyone, whatever part or instrument, is holding a line by themselves a lot of the time. It frees up [an ability to] ornament and make things their own, but it also means, unless you put everybody\u2019s name on the poster, it\u2019s sometimes better to not put anyone\u2019s on.\u201d <\/p>\n

Queen\u2019s Closet, Furioso, Hunter Lounge, Te Herenga Waka \u2013 Victoria University of Wellington, October 11, 2pm.<\/p>\n

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Copy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Betts Music & features writer\u00b7New Zealand Listener\u00b7 29 Sep, 2026 05:02 PM3 mins to read \u200c Subscribe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[133969,133960,133957,133962,133956,133963,110725,133964,5367,2538,24357,9,24,63,133966,122,124,123,16147,125550,133967,133961,78601,133958,133968,133959,127203,88658,133965],"class_list":["post-360358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-bachs","tag-baroque","tag-baroques","tag-blob","tag-closet","tag-counterpoint","tag-find","tag-here","tag-in","tag-music","tag-musical","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-ornamental","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-rich","tag-some","tag-stuff","tag-stylistic","tag-tapestry","tag-tend","tag-there","tag-think","tag-threads","tag-uncle","tag-wildly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}