WE JOIN AUSTRALIAN BARITONE MORGAN PEARSE FOR RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS’ SONGS OF TRAVEL AS PART OF A STUNNING AFTERNOON OF SONG.

Performing as Figaro in The Barber of Seville, Morgan Pearse’s debut performance with the English National Opera in 2015–16 announced a baritone of uncommon allure and magnetism. Renowned for his clarity of tone and enthralling performances, in 2016 he also won the prestigious Cesti Competition. Beyond the operatic stage, his recital programs from the Wigmore Hall to the Melbourne Recital Centre have confirmed him as an artist of refined and rare interpretive talent.

Anthony Hunt is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied as a repetiteur in the specialist opera course. From 2013 he was Chorus Master with Opera Australia, until returning to Adelaide in 2020 as Chorus Master and Head of Music at State Opera South Australia, and as Director of Music at St Peter’s Cathedral.

The Australian String Quartet joins Morgan for the peripatetic pleasures and pitfalls of Robert Louis Stevenson’s verse – set with the singularly deft touch of Ralph Vaughan Williams and arranged for baritone and string quartet by Quentin Grant. Samuel Barber’s brooding Dover Beach concludes the first half. After interval, Morgan and Anthony continue the program’s eastward amble with the elegant songs of Gabriel Fauré, finishing with Hugo Wolf’s late-Romantic lieder.