Event
Lecture & Performance: Historic Music at Hampton to End National Park Week
Fee:
Free.Location: LAT/LONG: 39.416425, -76.588292
This is located at the Orangery up the hill. Either park in the main lot near the Visitor Center and then walk up the hill or park in the upper lot. For more information click https://www.nps.gov/hamp/planyourvisit/hours.htm
Dates & Times
Date:
Time:
Duration:
Type of Event
With the brief reception over by 4:30
Description
This year’s musically-themed National Park Week concludes at Hampton NHS with a special program on the afternoon of Sunday, April 27, 2025. Featuring both a lecture and a musical performance, the presentation highlights a notably rich period in American history. Attendees can step into Regency-era Maryland for a musical and literary afternoon during the War of 1812. What songs were being sung? What books were being read? Was it okay to enjoy that marvelous new novel by the author of Sense and Sensibility when the British were threatening to burn down your house? What about purchasing the latest fashions, direct from London, in the middle of a war?
Come for the pre-concert lecture and stay for the live performance of music in and related to the Hampton National Historic Site collections. The lecture, beginning at 2:45 PM, is titled "Hate the British, yet Love the Author of Sense and Sensibility”: Austenmania in Maryland During the War of 1812.” It will be delivered by Dr. Basil Considine, an opera composer and scholar of French opera and music from the Early National Period. He has assisted Hampton NHS for years in studying and identifying Eliza Ridgely’s harp and piano music in the park’s museum collections, and he is working on a scholarly biography of Eliza.
The vocal performance, Socialite/Siren Songs: Music and the Hampton National Historic Site Collections, follows at 3 PM. It showcases Elissa Edwards, an award-winning soprano singer and curator of historic house concerts. Also featured will be the Empressa Ensemble and Really Spicy Opera, with the world premiere of Jodi Goble’s “Isle of the Fay,” an eight-minute opera derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s incomplete final short story.
A brief reception with refreshments with follow the program, courtesy of Historic Hampton, Inc., Hampton NHS’s friends group.
You won’t want to miss this very special program to be held in the Orangery at Hampton National Historic Site, 535 Hampton Lane, Towson, MD 21286. The program is free to the public but is “first come, first served” with a limited attendance, so arrive early to claim your seat!