Emma Kirkby

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

Henry is a proud monarch who flies in the face of the church in seeking to divorce Queen Katherine and marry Anne Bullen. As cardinal Wolsey, the powerful Lord Chancellor of England, attempts to bend Rome to the King's wishes, the court reverbates with political intrigue and accusations of treachery.

In Handel's day this best-loved of all oratorios was performed by fewer than forty instrumentalists and a chorus, less than thirty strong, of boy trebles and men. That is the tradition to which Christopher Hogwood has returned in his performances with the Academy of Ancient Music. Members of the Academy all play instruments of the period or accurate modern copies. In this recording the choruses are sung by boy trebles and male altos, tenors and basses, members of the Choir of Westminster Abbey. The soloists improvise embellishments in the arias and, in certain cases, join in the singing of the choruses, just as they would have done 240 years ago. The recording takes full advantage not only of Westminster Abbey's fine acoustic qualities, but also of the incomparable architectural splendor of the surroundings.

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The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.