The premiere of ‘Nice Weather For Witches’ by Elena Langer will take place at the Oxford International Song Festival in October 2025.  

Baba Yaga: Songs & Dances of Death is a thrilling new production, created in partnership with Beethovenfest Bonn, and given its full premiere tonight. It combines music, dance, spoken word and a specially commissioned song cycle by Elena Langer, to explore Baba Yaga, the mysterious figure from Slavic folklore, and her related female archetype, the Death-Skeleton Woman in Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. Devised by mezzo-soprano Rowan Hellier, who is sought after both as a singer and an innovative curator, the programme includes music ranging from Dvořák to Tori Amos.

Rowan is joined by dancers Ana Dordevic and Carola Schwab and pianist Sholto Kynoch. The choreography is by Andreas Heise, who has directed work for Garsington Opera, the Salzburg Festival and Norwegian National Opera, amongst many others. His version of Winterreise with Juliane Banse was an unforgettable highlight of the 2023 Festival.

This production is co-directed by Rowan Hellier and Andreas Heise. Costumes and lighting are designed by Sascha Thomsen.

Program:

• Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904)
• Dejte klec jestřábu (Give a hawk a cage) (1880) Op. 55
  from Cigánské Melodie (Gypsy Songs)
• Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881)
• Lullaby (1875)
  from Songs and Dances of Death (‘Pesni i pljaski smerti’)
• Leoš Janáček (1854 – 1928)
• The barn owl has not flown away
  from On an Overgrown Path
• Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904)
• Když mne stará matka (Songs my mother taught me) (1880) Op. 55
  from Cigánské Melodie (Gypsy Songs)
• Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881)
• Serenade (1875)
  from Songs and Dances of Death (‘Pesni i pljaski smerti’)
• Leoš Janáček (1854 – 1928)
• Kvítí milodìjné ‘Love Herbs’
  from Moravian Folk Poetry in Song
• Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904)
• Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém ‘Song to the Moon’ 
• Trad. Scottish
• The Witches’ Reel 
• Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881)
• Trepak (1875)
  from Songs and Dances of Death (‘Pesni i pljaski smerti’)
• Elena Langer (1974)
• Nice weather for witches 
• Trad. Lithuanian
• A-a-a You Little Son (Lullaby) 
• Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873 – 1945)
• Baba Yaga 
• Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881)
• Polkovodec (‘Field marshal’) (1877)
  from Songs and Dances of Death (‘Pesni i pljaski smerti’)
• Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915 – 1940)
• Jak na hedvabny mech jsem hlavu kladl na bila nadra tva ‘Like on silk moss I laid my head on your white bosom’
  from Sparks from Ashes
• Leoš Janáček (1854 – 1928)
• Povez mi, synecku ‘Calumny’
  from Moravian Folk Poetry in Song
• Jake Heggie (1961)
• Snake
  from Eve-Song
• Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881)
• Baba Yaga
  from Pictures at an Exhibition
• Tori Amos (1963)

Happy Phantom