Stephen Stubbs

This year's Boston Early Music Festival opened with an unusually wide-ranging concert by Teatro Lirico, a chamber ensemble led by lutenist Stephen Stubbs, one of BEMF's artistic directors. The concert was titled "La Folia," named for a chord progression that was to 17th-century music roughly what the 12-bar blues was to early rock 'n' roll: a basic template into which could be poured all kinds of improvisation and variation. Its connotations of folly and madness made it especially suitable for dance music.

For its second annual chamber opera production, the Boston Early Music Festival mounted a crowd-pleaser, at least by 18th-century standards. George Frideric Handel composed his 1718 pastoral “Acis and Galatea’’ for semi-staged performance at Cannons, the lavish country estate of his patron, the Earl of Carnarvon; transferred to London, it became one of the composer’s most popular efforts. Stage director Gilbert Blin layered high concept on the piece, turning it into a backstage musical at Cannons itself: the earl and his wife playing the enamored shepherd and...

CAMBRIDGE -- It's easy for an audience to tell when musicians are enjoying themselves; our gauge has been sensitized by hearing so many concerts in which the music-making is more dutiful than joyful. Tragicomedia succeeded on Saturday not just because of highly skilled musicianship, but because of the great character of the performance and the palpable enthusiasm of everyone onstage. The audience probably left Cambridge's First Church thinking that playing 17th-century music was the best job in the world.

This year's Boston Early Music Festival opened with an unusually wide-ranging concert by Teatro Lirico, a chamber ensemble led by lutenist Stephen Stubbs, one of BEMF's artistic directors. The concert was titled "La Folia," named for a chord progression that was to 17th-century music roughly what the 12-bar blues was to early rock 'n' roll: a basic template into which could be poured all kinds of improvisation and variation. Its connotations of folly and madness made it especially suitable for dance music.

Reprinted from late editions of yesterday's Globe. An exotic and irrational entertainment, Johann Mattheson's "Boris Goudenow" may not be a great opera, but it offers more than three hours of delightful music, and that's plenty good enough. Mattheson's opera had to wait 295 years for its first staged performances, enterprisingly presented this week by the Boston Early Music Festival. The composer was a considerable musician best remembered today for having dueled with Handel (his sword broke on one of Handel's metal buttons)

For its second annual chamber opera production, the Boston Early Music Festival mounted a crowd-pleaser, at least by 18th-century standards. George Frideric Handel composed his 1718 pastoral “Acis and Galatea’’ for semi-staged performance at Cannons, the lavish country estate of his patron, the Earl of Carnarvon; transferred to London, it became one of the composer’s most popular efforts. Stage director Gilbert Blin layered high concept on the piece, turning it into a backstage musical at Cannons itself: the earl and his wife playing the enamored...

LES VOIX BAROQUES Stephen Stubbs, director Boston Early Music Festival At: Jordan Hall, last night The concert offerings of this year’s Boston Early Music Festival got off to a strong start last night with a performance by Les Voix Baroques, a protean Montreal-based ensemble here under the direction of Stephen Stubbs, with some instrumental support by members of the BEMF Orchestra. The program focused on 16th- and 17th-century settings of the Biblical “Song of Songs,’’ by composers as diverse and varied as...

The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) opera company will complete its residency in Salem's historic Old Town Hall (32 Derby Square) tomorrow as concludes its rehearsals  and preparations for its fourth annual Chamber Opera Series production at Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music on Saturday and Sunday. The performance will feature an international cast of singers, instrumentalists and Baroque dancers. About 32 artists and crew members spent the last two weeks in Salem for intensive rehearsals.

The Boston Early Music Festival presented two more concerts on Saturday night, and it was rather like a family get-together that changes tone once the youngsters are packed off to bed. The French ensemble Le Poème Harmonique, directed by Vincent Dumestre, set the kids' table with a program pursuing the origin of French children's songs. Traced to their source, the songs were threaded into a quasi-revue -- three singers, ringed by a quintet of players, moving with theatrical demeanor.

Reprinted from late editions of yesterday's Globe. An exotic and irrational entertainment, Johann Mattheson's "Boris Goudenow" may not be a great opera, but it offers more than three hours of delightful music, and that's plenty good enough. Mattheson's opera had to wait 295 years for its first staged performances, enterprisingly presented this week by the Boston Early Music Festival. The composer was a considerable musician best remembered today for having dueled with Handel (his sword broke on one of Handel's metal buttons)

CAMBRIDGE -- It's easy for an audience to tell when musicians are enjoying themselves; our gauge has been sensitized by hearing so many concerts in which the music-making is more dutiful than joyful. Tragicomedia succeeded on Saturday not just because of highly skilled musicianship, but because of the great character of the performance and the palpable enthusiasm of everyone onstage. The audience probably left Cambridge's First Church thinking that playing 17th-century music was the best job in the world.

Karina Gauvin strode onstage at the Boston Early Music Festival Wednesday night, flaunting a silk cerise stole, eyes flashing, blond hair flying, diva cleavage heaving. And then the Canadian soprano proceeded to sing up a storm in arias from Johann Georg Conradi's opera "Ariadne" to open a program celebrating BEMF operas past. Gauvin took the title role in this BEMF opera two years ago, and she provided a demonstration of what this year's opera, "Boris Goudenow," sorely lacked: female singing enlivened by vivacity, virtuoso technique, and luscious tone.