A Vagabond’s daydream
Sir Simon Keenlyside

Unforgettable in Falstaff at La Monnaie last season, Sir Simon Keenlyside has been gracing the world’s most prestigious opera stages for four decades: a rich and varied career, recognised with numerous awards, including a Laurence Olivier Award for lifetime achievement, an ECHO Klassik, numerous Gramophone Awards, and the title of Knight of the British Empire, awarded for ‘services to music’.

Throughout his many journeys, a single musical compass has guided his steps. During this recital, the baritone invites you to follow him along the paths of a figure who has haunted the imagination of artists and poets as well as philosophers: the vagabond. In turn a symbol of freedom, imagination, escape and independence, takes on these different shapes depending on the composer. In the work of Robert Schumann, he takes the form of a lonely minstrel who asks his king for a simple cup of wine; in that of Gustav Mahler, that of a saint who speaks to animals. And while Richard Strauss takes you on nocturnal wanderings, Francis Poulenc gives you a taste of a painter’s Parisian ‘vie de bohème’. No one knows where this journey will lead. One thing is certain: there will be beauty to be found along the way.