“Rose in Bloom” is my debut recital disc, and like the blossoming of a flower, this opportunity feels like a special moment and a rite of passage. I have always been drawn to flowers, perhaps partly because my mother is a master gardener, and I am often touched by poetry about flowers and their life cycles. I have often sung the role of Sophie in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, an opera about the passage of time, and about savoring the bloom of the moment before it passes us by. When my dear friend So-Chung Shinn approached me about her and her husband Tony Lee’s commission of a new song cycle by Ricky Ian Gordon called Huit Chansons de Fleurs, I felt an immediate connection to the poetry. Ricky’s texts deal with themes of death and resurrection, the intoxication of fragrance, and the impermanence of beauty, not unlike Strauss’s opera, and Ricky’s music touchingly connects these poems into a life cycle of their own. I set to work right away with my teacher and pianist Gerald Martin Moore, looking through the wealth of vocal repertoire that is inspired by flowers, birds, insects, gardens… The lyric coloratura soprano voice has always been inclined towards songs about flowers and birds. The programme that results is, I think, a beautiful mix of well-known repertoire, new writing, and gems that have too long been neglected and now warrant rediscovery. The title “Rose in Bloom” reflects our garden theme, even as it also borrows the name of the character who sings “‘Neath My Lattice Through the Night” from Arthur Sullivan’s comic opera The Rose of Persia (1899). The role of “Rose-in-Bloom” was written for the soprano Ellen Beach Yaw, but the aria has never been recorded professionally in its original key of B Major, with the cadenza that was written for Ms. Yaw. Also of note is the inclusion of Saint-Saëns’s “La Libellule”, which was written for Sibyl Sanderson and is very seldom heard, and Michael Head’s “Bird-song”, another rarity. We also layer in two haunting melodies: Zemlinsky’s “Vöglein Schwermut” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Rose Enslaves the Nightingale”. Birds of all kinds are heard on this programme; the annoyingly persistent swallow outside your window, the lovesick nightingale who sings day and night to no reply, the bird of melancholy who visits death on its victims, and the lark with his heavenly greeting. Sometimes it is even the bird’s song that inspires the blossoming of the rose. I decided to end the programme by accompanying myself singing Ivor Novello’s “We’ll Gather Lilacs”. I will never forget the day Gerald introduced me to this song, during the height of the pandemic, and how I was unable to contain my tears as I sang. I performed the Novello remotely that year for the Opera News Awards. Now that we are performing for each other in person again, the arts feel very much in a state of reunion and rebirth. I dearly hope this record brings beauty to your lives and finds root in your hearts, as these melodies and poems have done for me. Erin Morley, October 2023
