Ceruleo
Biography Ceruleo
Ceruleo
Formed in 2014 at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Ceruleo create dramatic programmes using spoken text alongside music for two sopranos and continuo. Every member of the group performs as a soloist, and they use all available combinations of instruments and voices to create innovative and captivating performances. They specialise in the music of Restoration England and Seventeenth Century Italy.
They released their first album, ‘Love Restor’d - Songs from Restoration England’ in December 2022 and throughout 2023 brought the programme to audiences around the UK, with concerts in London, at the York Early Music Christmas Festival, and from Exeter in the south up to Helensburgh in Scotland.
Their staged show about Henry Purcell, written by Clare Norburn and directed by Thomas Guthrie, toured around the UK in 2018-20. ‘Burying the Dead’ was performed at Festivals including the Buxton International Festival, Lake District Summer Music, Brighton Early Music Festival, Ryedale Festival and Baroque at the Edge at LSO St Luke’s. They also created ‘Rival Queens’, an immersive operatic experience for Handel & Hendrix in London.
They were selected to be part of the prestigious Brighton Early Music Festival’s Live! Scheme and have given recitals at venues including St John's Smith Square, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Handel & Hendrix in London, the Courtauld Gallery and for Newbury Spring Festival, the London Handel Festival, the Folkestone Literature Festival and live on BBC Radio 3's 'In Tune'.
★★★★ “Burying the Dead at LSO St Luke’s – this is one show that deserves greater exposure…”
Richard Morrison, The Times
★★★★ “The group feels more like a Baroque chamber ensemble than voices and accompaniment. Instrumental and vocal lines interweave, so that the purely instrumental numbers feel like a continuation of what has gone before. A lovely disc, and an engaging introduction to the world of Restoration song.” Planet Hugill
★★★★ “Sopranos Emily Owen and Jenni Harper are at their best in the duet from Dioclesian, ‘O the sweet delights of love’, where they control the waves of ecstasy with technical aplomb and conviction, and they blend impressively in the reflective ‘O dive custos’ on the death of Queen Mary… The instrumentalists are very good.” BBC Music Magazine
