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.
Rio de Janeiro, as the capital of the Empire and later the Republic of Brazil, had an extensive history of opera during the 19th century, well-documented by newspapers and magazines of the day, which included the conducting debut of Arturo Toscanini in a local performance of Aida in 1888, described in the memoirs of Brazilian composer and entrepreneur Artur Napoleão.
The edifices hosting these performances have succumbed to the ravages of time long since, though documents and scores relating to operatic life in Rio from this period are still to be found in local libraries.
The early years of the Republic (established by a military revolt which sent the Imperial family into exile, as a reaction against the abolition of slavery in 1888) saw an intense effort to modernize the capital. The population had been growing considerably as a result of the exodus of the freed slaves from the coffee plantations of the state of Rio, who went to the capital in search of better economic opportunities. They were joined by immigrants from abroad, particularly from Portugal and Italy.
The first decade of the 20th century saw a number of large scale efforts for modernization in Rio. These included improvements to the infrastructure of the port (which would have 3.5 kilometers of docks), the construction of broad avenues, particularly the Avenida Central (now known as Avenida Rio Branco), and the consequent demolition of large numbers of tenements in the center of the city. The opening of Avenida Central would make possible the construction of an imposing complex of public buildings in the area now known as Cinelandia, including the National School for the Fine Arts (now the National Museum for the Fine Arts), the National Library, and the Theatro Municipal, modeled after the Paris Opéra, and built sparing no expense, with the finest materials imported from Europe.
Rio's tropical location, and the extensive wetlands by the bay, had negative implications for public health, with regular outbreaks of yellow fever (transmitted by mosquitoes), bubonic plague (transmitted by rates), smallpox, and tuberculosis. President Rodrigues Alves (president, 1903-1906) entrusted to Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who had studied at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the task of dealing with these problems. He began with campaigns to kill mosquitoes and exterminate rats. In 1904, with Rio facing an epidemic of smallpox, Cruz proposed obligatory vaccination, and it was approved by the government. Unlike his previous campaigns, this one met widespread and often violent resistance by a frightened population, known as the Vaccine Revolt, and finally obligatory vaccination was suspended. Today, his work is revered in Rio, with an avenue in the South Zone, and a suburb in the North Zone, and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation for public health all bearing his name.
Silvio Barbato's opera The Scientist is not so much a music drama as a tableau vivant presenting representative scenes from the life of this great Brazilian. Act I, Scene I reveals Cruz meditating alone on his mission as doctor. Later he is joined by his wife Emilia and friend Salles Guerra, and they sing (in French) of his departure for Paris. Scene II presents Lapa, a center of bohemian life and prostitution at the time. Scene III shows a religious procession asking for relief from the plague.
Act II is notably less static and more dramatic. In Scene I, the President, Rodrigues Alves, sings of the necessity of vaccination, with mocking responses from a sort of Greek chorus, seated on stage. In Scene II we see the effects of the revolt on the Cruz family. Scene III presents a group of capoeiristas (capoeira is a Brazilian martial art) in the favela of Providencia. The opera closes in Scene IV with Cruz, alone once more, walking upstage into the ocean.
One might think that a country famed worldwide for the quality of its televised dramas might likewise produce stageworthy sung dramas for the opera house. The static quality of the libretto, choosing to represent a life, rather than an episode in the life, is the chief problem. Barbato's music mixes a restrained modernism (most effective in the solo-chorus exchanges between President Rodrigues Alves and his critics) with pastiches of Brazilian popular genres (it must be noted that even if they were less artistically ambitious, they were warmly welcomed by the audience, especially the capoeira). The least effective moment for the work was the tedious on-stage solo saxophone in Act I, Scene II, in which the orchestra is not heard for what seems like an eternity (and worse, before it re-enters, the sax is joined on the scene by an accordion). The excellent chorus of the Theatro Municipal is generally heard offstage, muffling its impact, and causing problems with its coordination with the orchestra.
Of the singers, those making the most impact were bass Sebastião Teixeira as Cruz, and the excellent baritone Lício Bruno as Rodrigues Alves (he had turned in a stellar Papageno earlier in the season). The scenery and lighting were modern and effective (including projections), and with the blue fabric waves of the ocean in the closing scene making a memorable impression.
Tom Moore