Search - Peter Bellamy :: Transports: A Ballad Opera

Oral tradition in the best musical sense.

Charles M. Richmond | Boston, MA., USA | 06/15/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The late Peter Bellamy was one of the pillers of British folk music. His distinctive voice had the ability to invoke visions of coal blackened miners, tar dabbed seamen, the drone of pipes, and the anguish of men at war. In Transports he has enlisted other great voices to tell a story of petty crime, prison, love, and redemption. Every song stands alone, yet the sum is an aural opera."

A classic folk concept album

Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com | ...in Middle America | 11/13/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the 1780s, with the Americas closed as a dumping ground for the criminal class and other assorted ne'er-do-wells, England decided to ship its convicts off to the rocky shores of Australia. Among the hundreds of prisoners on the penal transports of the "First Fleet" were Henry Cabell and Susannah Holmes, a young couple who met in jail, but had to make it all the way to Botany Bay before they were allowed to be wed. This dense song-cycle chronicles their journey -- convicted of petty theft, detained for several years in an English jail before being deported to Australia, and finally wed under colonial law, later to become one of the founding families of the new nation. The cast is a veritable "who's who" of the British folk scene: Peter Bellamy wrote the libretto, and enlisted a phalanx of the most talented British trad singers to help out, including June Tabor, Nic Jones, Martin Carthy and The Watersons, each taking on a role within the operetta. Dolly Collins' orchestral arrangements are mildly impenetrable or overly flowery at times, and overall the album lacks variation, but the material itself is very powerful and the story is quite compelling. Recommended!"