Jed Wentz, Leiden University
Thursday 20 February 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01
David Bispham (1857-1921) was a celebrated American operatic singer famed for his acting skills. In 1910, with the composer Arthur Bergh accompanying at the piano, he performed a melodramatic version of Poe’s The Raven in which he spoke Poe’s text in time to the music. He would go on to perform the highly successful piece all over the United States. By all accounts, Bispham’s energetic and pathetic acting style had an overwhelming impact on the audience, guaranteeing the work’s artistic and commercial success. Indeed, the published score was supplemented with 10 photographs of Bispham in affective attitudes, associated with specific lines of text, encouraging purchasers to act out The Raven for themselves. This combination of images, text and musical score had the potential to create a shared physical bond, associated with a beloved poem, between audience and performer.
This lecture demonstration places Wentz’s own performance of Bergh’s musical setting of The Raven in the context of the original Bispham interpretation: research carried out in the New York Public Library has revealed the singer’s own score (with performative annotations), newspaper reviews and numerous photographs of the actor in the heat of the moment. A performance without music will close the presentation.
Jed Wentz has, in the course of a long career in Early Music, turned his hand to various tasks and has engaged with diverse disciplines. He has performed on historical flutes and conducted staged opera productions. He has done archival research and published in scholarly journals. He has had a light-hearted relationship with journalism: for years, he had a cooking column in a Dutch early music journal dedicated to recreating 18th-century recipes. He has worked intensively with Baroque dancers, and was declamation and acting coach to a HIP production of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s melodrama Pygmalion at the Baroque theatre in Cesky Krumlov. He is artistic advisor to the Utrecht Early Music Festival, teaches at the Amsterdam Conservatory, is assistant professor at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University and has performed with the Newcastle Kingsmen.