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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.
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
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.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
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.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
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.’
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
‘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.’
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
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."
Reviews
07 Aug 2005
Renata Tebaldi: A Portrait
For those without videos or DVD's by the Italian soprano, this is a must. For all the others, better to read attentively the sleeve notes as there is nothing new to be found on these two DVD's. The Concerto Italiano can be purchased separately with the same firm. The Bell Telephone Hour selections are still available on the several Great Stars of Opera-DVD's brought out by VAI or on the video exclusively devoted to the soprano. And the selections from Tosca (Stuttgart 1961) are culled from a complete performance, also put on DVD by VAI and somewhat misleadingly called "The only available video of Renata Tebaldi in her signature role" on the firm's web; for convenience's sake forgetting the words "at this moment" as VAI once published another complete Tosca (with Poggi, Guelfi and the late soprano's lover at the time, conductor Arturo Basile).
That being said let's concentrate on what is offered here. It is abundantly clear that the very great Tebaldi is to be found in the first items on the first DVD. There the voice still has the unimpaired velvet that would somewhat disappear after her first vocal crisis in February 1963 to be supplanted with a more metallic though still clearly recognizable Tebaldian sound. The pieces from La Boheme with Bjoerling are well-known and VAI is so honest to note that the sound is a synched audio recording made in the studio during the telecast to suit the kinescope image. This is the correct procedure as picture recording was rather primitive in the fifties and often directly recorded sound (which could be more easily preserved) and images (which got blurred or sometimes even got lost for a second) don't quite match if one doesn't take this road. Luckily the synching is done expertly and once more one is struck how natural an actress Tebaldi is; surely when compared with Bjoerling's stiff attitude.
One of the surprises of the lively debates on several opera forums after she died was the remarkable opinion of many veterans who saw both ladies that she was a more believable actress than Callas who seemed to many still to be stuck in the grand guignol-style of the thirties. We don't have Callas as Cio-Cio-San but it's hardly believable she could improve on Tebaldi's magnificent interpretation of the two arias (and in full colour as well. As a bonus you get these scenes somewhat longer in black and white as well but this hardly deserves the "first release" cry). I'm wondering if the full colour "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" is still somewhere in the archives. The sound track for that item (I often saw on Flemish Public TV) is derived from her second complete Boheme as was clear from the audible "Si" by Carlo Bergonzi between the two parts of the aria. A picture of that video found its way to the cover of the London-(not the Decca) issue of the opera on LP.
The telecast of 1961 is less to recommend. The picture is somewhat murky and the soprano has to wear some things which could make an impression on the Family Circle at the Met but are very much overdressed, even ugly in close-up. The excerpts from her Stuttgart Tosca are more worthwhile, though it is not for the strangled sounds of tenor Eugene Tobin or the dry voice of George London. I remember well the excitement almost 45 years ago when the opera (followed or preceded by an Otello with the horrible Hans Beier) was broadcast by Eurovision in Western Europe. Most countries had only one channel (the big ones had two) and commercial television didn't exist. At that time opera singers were still household names and the fact that Tebaldi would sing directly was front page news. She is in good voice though somewhat husbanding her means at the start and one now notices how she cuts short her top notes.
The Concerto Italiano was recorded by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1965; so just in time before the decline from 1968 onwards when her top register became completely unhinged and she refused any engagement in a complete opera performance outside the US as there alone she was sure the fans would turn in a deaf ear to her vocal shortcomings. In this broadcast she is at her best in Rossini's Regata Veneziani which she sings (and acts) with love and a dose of humour and which moreover poses no vocal hurdles as she must go no higher than high A. The long Tosca selection of the second act is less successful: not as to singing per se though the voice is steelier than in her great years but she is far more convincing, far more natural in her two complete theatre Tosca's. The cameras follow her closely and she is clearly overacting, always doing things, throwing looks, moving hands one second longer than is necessary. I fear the TV director is the culprit as there were no subtitles at that time and there was so much fear the audiences wouldn't "capture" the story; but four decades later it almost looks like a parody on Tosca. This time the soprano is more than ably partnered by the young Louis Quilico and he too has to squirm in overdrive.
Jan Neckers