Gabriella Swallow, Richard Bonynge and Sally Silver

National Dance Awards at Covent Garden for services to ballet.
On 26 January 2012, Bonynge was promoted within the Order of Australia to Companion, for “eminent
service to the performing arts as an acclaimed conductor and musical scholar, to classical singing and the
promotion of opera, and through the collection and preservation of operatic manuscripts”.
This recital disc of songs by Jules Massenet with Richard Bonynge accompanying the soprano Sally Silver on
the piano follows their recording of songs by Michael William Balfe, and is to be followed by another recording of
songs by William Vincent Wallace for future release.
GABRIELLA SWALLOW
Belfast-born cellist Gabriella Swallow commenced her musical studies at Chethams’ School of Music. In 1999 she
was awarded an ABRSM Scholarship to study cello at the Royal College of Music. She graduated in 2003 and was
presented the prestigious Tagore Gold Medal by RCM President, HRH The Prince of Wales. Gabriella continued
as a Postgraduate Scholar at the RCM. In 2005 she graduated as a Master of Music with distinction.
In 1999 she founded the Sans Souci Piano Trio with violinist Elizabeth Cooney. In 2002 the trio reformed
with the renowned composer and pianist Huw Watkins. Dedicated to the performance of new and rare British trio
repertoire.
Gabriella’s solo performances include Edwin Roxburgh’s Partita , Tim Souster’s Sonata for Cello, Wind, Brass
and Percussion, concertos with the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra, and recently the world premiere of Mark-
Anthony Turnage’s A Few Serenades . She is the dedicatee of Jonathan Cole’s Elegy which features in the acclaimed
folio Spectrum for Cello. Gabriella performed the rarely heard Hugh Wood Cello Concerto with the Royal College
of Music’s Sinfonietta under Neil Thomson. She has collaborated with the dancer and choreographer Eva Recacha
on Xenakis’ solo cello work Kottos. Other festival appearances in the UK have included Dartington International
Summer School with the London Archduke Trio and the Snape Proms in Aldeborough.
Gabriella made her South Bank debut in 2007 as soloist with the London Sinfonietta in Mark-Anthony
Turnage’s About Water and also the world premiere of Paul Max Edlin’s cello concerto with the South Bank
Sinfonia at the Sounds New Festival. In 2009 she and percussionist Genevieve Wilkins founded their duo ‘The G
Project’ launched at the Forge, Camden in April 2010 performing new works by some of UK’s leading composers.
Equally as important as her classical collaborations Gabriella regularly performs and records with some of
the most prominent Jazz musicians on the scene. She has played as guest at Ronnie Scotts.
In June 2005 Gabriella was appointed Principal Cello of the London Contemporary Music Group.
She plays a cello by Charles Harris Snr made in Oxford in 1820.
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Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (12 May, 1842 – 13
August, 1912) was born in Montaud, then an outlying
village and now part of the city of Saint-Étienne, in
the Loire. His father was a struggling metal worker
and when he was six, the family moved to Paris due to
his father’s ill-health. There his mother started taking
piano pupils. She also taught Jules who showed such a
natural aptitude that at the age of 11 he was admitted
to the Paris Conservatoire where he studied with the
famed operatic composer Ambroise Thomas.
In 1863 he won the Grand Prix de Rome
with his cantata David Rizzio and spent three years in
Rome. There he met Franz Liszt, at whose request he
gave piano lessons to Louise-Constance “Ninon” de
Gressy. Ninon became Massenet’s wife in 1866.
Massenet’s first opera, a one-act entitled La
Grand’ Tante, was produced at the Opéra Comique in
1867. In 1877 Massenet’s exotic opera Le Roi de Lahore
had a highly successful premiere at the Paris Opera,
marking the beginning of his ascendancy as France’s most prolific and celebrated operatic composer.
In 1878 Thomas invited him to become a professor at the Paris Conservatory, where Massenet achieved
considerable success, influencing an entire generation of French composers including Charpentier,
Chausson, Hahn, Enescu and Koechlin.
In 1876 he received the Légion d’honneur and was appointed a Grand Officer in 1899. In 1878, at the
age of 36, he became the youngest member ever elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
In addition to his operas, Massenet composed concert suites, ballet music, oratorios, cantatas and
over two hundred and eighty songs, including eight song cycles, several collections and many individual
pieces. The earliest of Massenet’s song sketches date from August 1862 to poems of Victor Hugo and
Lamartine. His first song cycle, Poème d’avril, was written just a few years later to poems of Paul-Armand
Silvestre, who had become a close friend. Massenet set many of his poems over his career, as did several
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