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.
Any production of Wagner’s Ring cycle needs some kind of coherence, so it is logical for a staging of Die Walküre to continue where the previous instalment, Das Rheingold, left off. In the case of the Royal Opera’s new production, though, that turns out to be not such a good thing at all.
Die Walküre
Royal Opera House, London
Andrew Clements [The Guardian, 7 Mar 05]
Any production of Wagner's Ring cycle needs some kind of coherence, so it is logical for a staging of Die Walküre to continue where the previous instalment, Das Rheingold, left off. In the case of the Royal Opera's new production, though, that turns out to be not such a good thing at all.
Click here for remainder of article.
Bryn Terfel's First Wotan as Horns and Hounds Bay
By PAUL GRIFFITHS [NY Times, 7 Mar 05]
LONDON, March 6 - The new Covent Garden production of Wagner's "Ring" revolved Saturday night into its second quadrant, with a performance of "Die Walküre" every bit as exciting as the "Rheingold" in December. Once again, the excitement was thoroughly and fundamentally musical, its dual sources in the singing and in the pit, where the company's music director, Antonio Pappano, made the score consistently intense and animated.
Click here for remainder of article.
Wo sich Wotan die Finger verbrennt
VON PETRA HAIDERER [Die Presse, 08 Mar 05]
Covent Garden präsentiert eine neue "Walküre" - Vorhang auf zum Sammelsurium lächerlicher Einfälle!
Der "erste Tag" von Wagners Büh nenfestspiel knüpft optisch direkt am "Vorabend" - Rheingold (Pre miere Dezember 2004) - an. Hunding hat offenbar den Göttern die Möbel abgekauft (Bühnenbild: Stefanos Lazaridis). Er ist bekanntlich ein rauer Bursche, die Ledersessel sind aufgeschlitzt, die raumhohe Terrassentür ist zerbrochen. Schmächtig statt "mächtig" haben die Wurzeln der Esche Platz. Den schönen Marmortisch der Götter hat der Haudegen unversehrt gelassen. Ein Glück, denn über den kullert Siegmund abgehetzt ins Zimmer. Sieglindes Gemach hängt schräg im Raum, einige Stufen führen hinauf. An der Decke surrt leise ein grosser silberner Ventilator.
Click here for remainder of article.
Royal season centrepiece leaves much to be desired
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 7 Mar 05]
After a decade of famine, London is feasting on Richard Wagner's four-part epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.
The longest and most ambitious work ever completed for the opera stage is packing in the crowds not just at the Royal Opera House, where Die Walküre opened on Saturday, but at the Coliseum, where The Twilight of the Gods will next month complete English National Opera's long-gestated Ring.
Click here for remainder of article (subscription to Financial Times online required).
Amid the nonsense, a towering Terfel fulfils his destiny
[Daily Telegraph, 8 Mar 05]
Rupert Christiansen reviews Die Walküre at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden
No opera begins with more tense expectancy than Die Walküre, as Wagner's orchestra depicts the fugitive Siegmund running desperately through a storm.
Illustrating this breathtakingly dramatic music with strobe lighting is the first of many shallow theatrical clichés that mar Keith Warner's new staging - an infuriating mixture of the corny and chic, littered with gimmicky special effects (some of which went horribly wrong) to the detriment of grandeur and credibility.