English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …).
Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.
Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.
Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.
For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.
'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’
‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’
There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.
‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.
The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.
With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.
Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.
"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."
The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”
The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.
OPéRA "Hayedée" à Compiègne Auber sort de l'oubli Jacques Doucelin [Le Figaro] [30 novembre 2004] Et de cinq ! Après Manon Lescaut, Gustave III, Le Domino noir et Les Diamants de la couronne entre 1990 et 1999, Pierre Jourdan vient...
OPéRA "Hayedée" à Compiègne
Auber sort de l'oubli
Jacques Doucelin [Le Figaro]
[30 novembre 2004]
Et de cinq ! Après Manon Lescaut, Gustave III, Le Domino noir et Les Diamants de la couronne entre 1990 et 1999, Pierre Jourdan vient de ressusciter un autre opéra oublié d'Auber, Hayedée ou le secret. Ce n'est point manie, mais respect d'une promesse faite voici quinze ans : défendre et illustrer le répertoire lyrique français par le Théâtre français pour la musique installé dans le Théâtre impérial de Compiègne lui-meme achevé et rendu à sa destination première grâce à l'acharnement du meme Pierre Jourdan. Un homme orchestre qui sait aussi bien gérer une salle, équilibrer une programmation qu'inculquer le beau style aux jeunes chanteurs dont il complète la formation.
Ajoutons que cet ancien réalisateur de télévision s'entend à assurer la rentabilité artistique de ses spectacles diffusés en DVD. Sans compter sa vocation d'ambassadeur du chant français à l'étranger par l'invitation de plusieurs productions au Covent Garden de Londres. On s'étonne qu'aucune synergie ne soit encore née avec l'Opéra-Comique dont Compiègne défend le répertoire de façon exemplaire. Favart ayant été promu Epic (Etablissement public à vocation industrielle et commerciale) et doté d'un budget artistique, les choses devraient changer.
Ce qui frappe dans Hayedée comme dans Noé de Bizet et d'Halévy (Le Figaro des 8 et 19 octobre) c'est l'homogénéité. Si Jourdan ne peut s'offrir Alagna ou Dessay, il compense par un travail de fond sur le style. A la tete du jeune et excellent orchestre Albéric Magnard. il a placé Michel Swierczewski qui ressuscita déjà Christophe Colomb pour le centenaire de Milhaud en 1992 avec pour héros un certain Laurent Naouri qui a fait son chemin depuis !
Ce chef d'expérience aime cette musique et sait la faire aimer. Ce qu'on voit est au diapason, des superbes toiles d'André Brasilier aux riches costumes de Pierre Capeyron. Isabelle Philippe campe une Hayedée à l'aigu facile au coté d'Anne-Sophie Schmidt plus à l'aise en Rafaela que dans Noé. Dans le role effroyable de Lorédan, le jeune ténor Bruno Comparetti témoigne d'un courage souvent récompensé et d'un vrai style. Il est bien entouré par le gentil ténor Mathias Vidal et la méchante basse Paul Medioni.
Comment sauver le livret aussi "tarte" de Scribe ? Du pire vaudeville qui ne prend pas la tete, mais exaspère : on se dit qu'il faudrait couper les dialogues parlés Pas d'originalité, mais des airs bien troussés comme celui dont on sait qu'il fera le tour des faubourgs et que sa partition se vendra dans les salons bourgeois : ainsi allait la publicité dans un siècle sans télévision et sans cinéma. Voilà qui explique l'énorme succès en Europe : 500 représentations rien qu'à Paris ! Pourquoi ? Le public a toujours préféré Salieri à Mozart.
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