Alder was the night’s star soprano, promising “an uplifting evening” as an antidote to global political turmoil.<\/p>\n
She transported audiences to Edwardian London with a cheeky medley of songs from My Fair Lady, and scaled the heights with her rendition of Vilja Song \u2013 the nostalgic showpiece of Franz Leha\u0301r’s operetta The Merry Widow.<\/p>\n
“I admire any soprano who has a huge voice but can do internalised, soft singing like that,” observed BBC Radio 3’s Georgia Mann. <\/p>\n
“That is the mark of true class.”<\/p>\n
The singer embraced the Last Night’s party atmosphere, adopting a cockney accent and flower-sellers costume for Wouldn’t It Be Loverly, and sporting a spectacular union flag ballgown for Rule, Britannia!<\/p>\n
The concert ended with the traditional programme of sea shanties and patriotic songs like Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory – as the audience waved flags, set off party poppers and waved stuffed toys.<\/p>\n
Bill Bailey reappeared at the end of the concert, playing Auld Lang Syne on the Royal Albert Hall’s famous “voice of Jupiter” organ – but not before bashing out an impromptu version of Europe’s rock classic The Final Countdown.<\/p>\n
It gave the season a suitably celebratory and idiosyncratic climax. <\/p>\n
This year’s season has totalled 86 concerts featuring everyone from jazz singer Samara Joy<\/a> to the world’s only one-handed pianist, Nicholas McCarthy<\/a>. <\/p>\n Highlights included the Vienna Philharmonic’s superlative performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No 9<\/a>, and star conductor Klaus M\u00e4kel\u00e4, who delivered an astonishingly emotional version of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony<\/a> with the Netherlands’ Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.<\/p>\n There was also a Prom dedicated to the music of The Traitors<\/a>; another featuring the music of Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann; and crossover concert with pop star Jade Thirlwall<\/a> and guitar virtuoso St Vincent<\/a>.<\/p>\n Almost 290,000 tickets were sold across the season and and millions more tuned into coverage across BBC Radio 3, BBC Sounds and BBC Television.<\/p>\n The festival will return on 17 July 2026, for its 131st season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alder was the night’s star soprano, promising “an uplifting evening” as an antidote to global political turmoil. She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-422317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115199662109185945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}