Cal Performances 2024-25 Review: Soprano Julia Bullock & the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Julia Bullock Inspires in Performances of Early Music Works Featuring Female Baroque Composers & More
By Lois Silverstein
Julia Bullock and the Age of Enlightenment Orchestra offered a jewel of a performance at the University of California, Berkeley on Sunday, January 19th. The Age of Enlightenment Orchestra, based in London, is a period instrument orchestra that formed in 1986. They specialize in 17th to 19th century music (and sometimes beyond) composers such as Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and many others. In addition to playing on period instruments or replicas of them, from the time the music was written, they research the sound of the music from its original era. Because they are fascinated by the ideas of the Enlightenment, largely its revolutionary character, and because they believe that music changes lives, they prepare their performances in ways that are original and inventive. Called “Glorious and wacky, breathtaking and mischievous,” they threw away the rule book. “Put a single conductor in charge?” they asked. “No way. Specialize in the repertoire of a particular era? Too restricting. Perfect a work and then move on? Too lazy. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was born. Questioning. Challenging. Trailblazing.”
This was indeed a good pairing with soprano Julia Bullock, UC Berkeley 2024-2025 Music Residency artist, who herself aims to integrate her musical life with community activism. Bullock, who has organized benefit concerts for two non-profits serving war-affected children and adolescents through music education, the Shropshire Music Music Foundation and International Playground, has also participated in the Music and Medicine Benefit Concert for New York’s Weill Medical Center. She also serves on the advisory board of Turn the Spotlight, which works to promote equity in the arts.
Musical Highlights
The orchestra opened with Handel’s “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from “Solomon” (1749). Brisk and lively, the piece seemed to proclaim the Golden Age of Baroque that was to settle over the auditorium for the next two plus hours. Bullock’s first aria was also Handel’s “Verdi Prati,” in Italian, from Handel’s “Alcina” (1735). Standing center stage and stunning in her beige trousers and black shirt, Bullock became at once, a perfect Queen of Sheba, regal, and expressive. The line “You will lose your beauty,” a piquant comment on the young woman vocally resplendent right there and then. Instantly, audience members were drawn in. Despite the overhead subtitles, only in English, she sang more than the words, offering a long musical line totally embodied, the two together, content and music deftly delivered, and on a subject that counted. Nothing simply decorative here, which we might think at first. Substance grew from what she brought to the subject in her phrasing, in the musical repeats, which were just about new expressions in themselves.
Bullock’s second aria followed two more offerings from the Orchestra’s Selection from Vivaldi ‘s Concerto in E Major and Bach’s Air from Suite Number 3 in E major, each in a unique sound, less obviously plucked than blurred, at moments a bit more merged than distinct.
Then, Bullock entered again, this time as Cleopatra. She was vivacious, fully in command of her emotions and the virtuosic music. The marvel of her flexibility in moving from a high, resonant upper register to a captivating low, was remarkable. One of the things Bullock has elsewhere commented on that she loves about Baroque music is the need to combine the depth and range of the emotion with the challenges of the music itself, the flexibility it requires, the swift shifts of sound, embroidering the notes while holding the temperature of the feelings expressed. With a strong upper register, her face beaming, as Cleopatra from Handel’s “Giulio Cesare in Egitto,” jubilant and elated that Caesar was alive. She beamed. Here her voice shown its brightest colors. Her facial expressions continued to be as flexible as her tone. A bird in flight with not a sign of its wings, moving all the time. Here was a genuine Cleopatra, in a moment, present and delectable.
Following the Intermission, Bach’s 3rd Brandenburg Concerto in G major (1718) Bullock sang a work by Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), keeping with her strong interest in presenting women’s musical compositions, “Che si può fare” Op.8 (1664). Strozzi was well-known in her era, Bullock said before she sang, and encouraged listeners to explore her work, which she so admires. She spoke about the song’s content, keeping with her intention of making sure the audience stayed the course of woman’s plight as Strozzi herself expressed it. “Che si può fare” – what can be done,” is the message, a familiar lament of woman dealing with a faithless love. Disasters keep raining down on me,” she sings. “What can be done? She is a victim of the stars, of the heavens. What can be done? The universe being against her. What stood out was Bullock’s commitment of sound and sense throughout the aria. It was as if she were discovering it for the first time. However, the actual power of her rendition illustrated her grief but not her helplessness. The voice conveyed the intensity of the sorrow, real and poignant, but her presence stirred us to see the artist letting us know, and rousing us to do more take it passively. The audience responded with warm appreciation. Bullock knows how to be the heroine. The music drove the emotion, the emotion kept growing out of the music. It was an exposition of rich and dedicated sound and feeling. In other words, poetry squared.
Selections from Telemann’s “Water Music” (1723), Lully’s music for “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” (1670) followed. Bullock continued on to Purcell and “The Fairy Queen” and Shakespeare’s “If Love’s a Sweet passion” and the familiar question of lovers past and present, if this was so, why the torment? The oxymoron of feeling alive and well, how come we suffer so? There are wounds and tickles, a game which lovers submit to play. A perfect subject for a voice whose lows and highs gather strength from each other and stoke fire in a small space. Bullock gave us at once the power and the intimacy of the musical and poetic subject.
Following Purcell and Pachelbel with a marvelous trumpet solo by one of the orchestra members, with its clear tone and exacting rhythmic lines, Rameau’s “Les Indes Galantes (1735-6), Bullock sang the familiar Handel piece from “Samson,” “Let the Bright Seraphim,” HMV 57 (1743). Her voice was lucid and luminous. Bullock was a bright flame in the midst of the colloquy of strings, harpsichord, winds, and brass. The encore was a woman’s composition, Élisabeth Claude Jacquet de La Guerre ‘s “Act four, scene six from “Céphale et Procris.” Claude Jacquet is another woman composer Bullock has put forth, a fine finale to a performance that aimed to please and inspire.