"My dearest friend left me, sleep and rest are gone with him. I do not know how to grasp myself; Sorrow weakens my eyes and mind. Grief and pain froze the heart, and this need brings me death." (Bastienne)

In November 2021, Concordia Ensemble presented a concert performance of  Mozart's charming singspiel Bastien und Bastienne. Alongside a quaint piano accompaniment in the intimate Ferguson Hall of St Stephen's Uniting Church, three Concordia Ensemble singers will explored a comedy of love. 

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Cast and Creatives

Bastien                           Alexander Young
Bastienne                       Lana Kains
​Colas                               Jeremy Boulton
Piano                              Stacey Yang

Dates

Friday November 12th, 7pm, St Stephen's Uniting Church, Sydney

Donate to this production

We are currently conducting a fundraising page through the Australian Cultural Fund. All donations through the ACF are tax deductible. At Concordia Ensemble, we believe in revitalising the classical music scene in Sydney through affordable ticket prices to our events. Additionally, we also believe in acknowledging the skill and passion of our performers through supporting them financially in their work. This is particularly welcomed, as the performers and staff lost most of their music related work during the lockdown and need financial support. Supporting our artists financially often cannot be balanced with offering affordable tickets. As such, we require the kind donations of supporters in order to facilitate our work.
​Your donation will be used to provide the performers and staff assisting on the night with a generous stipend to acknowledge their assistance. We would also appreciate assistance with covering venue fees associated with rehearsal and performance spaces.

Donate through the australian cultural fund

About the work...

Written in 1768 when Mozart was only 12 years of age, Bastien und Bastienne represents one of the composers earliest works. The work is a parody of the popular pastoral genre of the period, which featured rural characters in country settings. A shepherd or shepherdess such as Bastienne was a commonly appearing character in the pastoral genre. Notably, the singspiel specifically aims to satirise Jean Jacques Rameau's Le devin du village, which features a strikingly similar storyline. The one hour singspiel surprisingly lists three librettists: Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern, Johann Heinrich Friedrich Müller and Johann Andreas Schachtner, and is based on a French book, Amors de Bastien et Bastienne, by Justine Favart and Harny de Guerville.  

The music of the singspiel heavily draws from French and German styles of the time period. In particular, Bastienne's first aria is in the style of a true German lied, and the melody also features in his Trio in G for Piano, Violin and Violoncello, K. 564 (1788). The majority of the melodies featured are French in style. The orchestration, apart from the reconciliation scene is fairly sparse. The opening theme of the overture shares a resemblance with the opening movement of Beethoven's third symphony, Eroica, however, it isn't known whether Beethoven heard the singspiel in his lifetime, and the arpeggiation of the tonic chord was a common staple of the Classical period.  

The synopsis

Bastien loves Bastienne, and Bastienne loves Bastien, but both of them are somewhat confused about this. 
Enter Colas, keen to assist the two lovers with his 'magic'. He convinces Bastienne that Bastien has not run away with the lady of the manor, and instead entreats her to ignore him so that he may become jealous and return to her. 
Colas then unfortunately tells Bastien that Bastienne has taken on a new lover. 
Bastien too, requests the help of Colas, and he is more than happy to oblige with a spell in nonsensical 'Latin'. 
Bastienne, enjoying herself, decides to ignore him a little while longer until the two lovers agree that they have played the game long enough and decide to reconcile.