Brighton Year-Round 2026

Kitty-Maria Clarke, Marcus Martin, Nick Boston Soprano and Piano Recital St Nicholas Church, Brighton

Kitty-Maria Clarke, Marcus Martin, Nick Boston

Genre: Live Music, Music

Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Soprano Kitty-Maria Clarke, pianist Marcus Martin and guest singer Nick Boston warm up the opening 2026 concert at St Nicholas with operatic and popular classics. It’s all about crushes and sexual excitement.

Puccini’s flirty Musetta song ‘Quando me vo’ from his 1896 smash La Boehme is perfectly suited to Clarke’s tessitura. She floats engagingly and stings her lover with jealousy.

Mozart’s hormonally fired-up teen Cherubino from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro comes next with ‘Voi Che Sapete’ with its darting lust delicately figured by Martin contradicting all the scattergun sexuality. This is 1786 and all can happen, if within closets….  Clarke enjoys this but makes Cherubini more plaintive with a lower register (as in the text but she makes this count); since this aria unlike his first is fixated on the Countess who definitely responds. Indeed in the third of the Beaumarchais trilogy (Marriage followed The Barber of Seville, set by Paisiello and famously later by Rossini) they’ve actually had an affair. Quite right too.

Bach’s C major Prelude – the very first from the first Book of the 48 – furnished Gounod with the perfect bass line to add his hyper romantic religious aria for his 1859 Ave Maria. Gounod was an effective and unusual mass setter: his St Cecilia Mass for instance, wrapping popular French Catholic sentiment with genuine fervour. Clarke rapturously floats this and lands it in Gounod’s sweet-spot piety, aided by Martin’s discreet reminder on of Bach.

Franz Lehar’s 1905 Merry Widow Waltz duet with Nick Boston is received with wild enthusiasm. Boston is  a warm tenor who perfectly points up Clarke’s joyful soprano line. As the vocal lines wind round each other, you can imagine the intense flirting and rapturous falling-in-love moment as it happens during the waltz. Clarke’s voice tells how much she loves it as much as Boston, and so do we.

Clarke returns to the more plaintive ‘Danny Boy’ or ‘Londonderry Air’ with lyrics by Frederic Weatherly. This is where Clarke, as in the Gounod and indeed Mozart finds an affect that’s mining a deep vein of sentiment without being sentimental. The last ringing note is a highlight.

Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 My Fair Lady does some violence to Shaws acerbic vision but has delighted as much as the original. Clarke’s way with ‘I Could Have Danced all Night’ returns is to an innocence of first and initially rather reluctant love (very Pride and Prejudice). Martin relishes the waltz time and Clarke fines her voice to girlish excitement. Martin adores the pianistic coda too!

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1984 ‘Pie Jesu’ written for Sarah Brightman is a work some of us remember new-minted. Hearing the whole through-composed Requiem it’s still a highpoint. It reminds us how religious sentiment is no bad thing and Lloyd-Webber follows the tradition of Gounod. Which we’re reminded of here. It’s a far quieter and more reflective piece than I remember in this transposition; despite the ecstatic and stratospheric ending in Clarke’s vocal reach.

Gilbert & Sullivan from The Pirates of Penzance from 1879 has some more reflective numbers to counter its generally rumbustious music. ‘Poor Wandering One’ allows Clarke far more range with coloratura drama and dotted rhythms out of ‘Queen of the Night’ territory via Donizetti. Clarke’s wild swoosh and virtuosic fireworks make this her showpiece.

We end where we began: with Puccini. His one comic opera Gianni Schicchi from his 1918 Il Trittico or trilogy of one-act operas, has always seemed to me one of his very best. The hit though is the warmly affecting though not tragic (in the least) aria of a daughter pleading to the eponymous hero her father, to allow her to marry the man she loves. Who’s the one blameless member of a family so nefarious Schicchi’s about to cheat them out of their inheritance! ‘O Mio Babbini Caro’s is exquisitely rendered by Clarke who channels some of the innocence of the Lerner & Loewe. Here though it’s pinned back to stratospheric melt. A glorious melismatic swoop and the short recital is over.

Clarke’s warm hug of a voice recalls the best kind of popular soprano who’d never be out of her depth in an intimate opera house.

Published January 22, 2026 by Simon Jenner