Events

Jessica Gould, soprano
Pascal Valois, early romantic guitar

The fall of the Ancien Régime radically re-shuffled the social order throughout European capitals, ushering in a new era in inter-religious understanding and mass democratization.

As the ghetto walls separating Jew from Gentile came tumbling down along with the unquestioning acceptance of clerical and royal authority, a newly ascendant bourgeois class demanded new compositions for the domestic sphere, with popular references and playable scores accessible to those with neither an aristocratic pedigree nor a piano.

Songs for soprano and Early Romantic Guitar by Cimarosa, Crescentini, Doisy, Haydn, Domenico Puccini and Fernando Sor join jewel-like arrangements from the popular operas of the day by Rossini and Halévy, speaking of an age of liberation and a growing taste for Bel Canto singing.

The historic Brotherhood Synagogue on Gramercy Park, housed in a mid 19th-century structure that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, sets the stage for songs from an age of liberation.

Pascal Valois, French Canadian virtuoso on Early Romantic Guitar, joins soprano and Salon/Sanctuary Artistic Director Jessica Gould, playing an instrument constructed in 1821.

“A dramatic intensity that honored the text” ¬— The New York Times

“Pascal Valois and his instrument are united in an absolutely masterful and rigorous delivery.”— Journal Le Métropolitain de Toronto

"gentle and affecting...intense and dramatic...a joyous luminosity" — Lute News, UK

"An extraordinary voice, very clear diction, rich and inimitable sound" — Monica Huggett