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.
UC Opera now have a half-century’s reputation to live up to; they were responsible for the UK premieres of such works as Das Liebesverbot, The Maid of Orleans, Alzira, Oberto and the 1847 version of Macbeth.
There is unquestionably a need for a company such as this on London’s operatic scene; they continue to fly the flag for works which would not otherwise be performed, and are almost unique in offering these obscure works in staged performance rather than in concert.
The company exists independently of the academic functions of University College London, which does not even have a music department; instead the company draws its large and enthusiastic amateur chorus, orchestra and lesser principals from the University College Union Music Society, and hires in young professional artists for the leading roles – alumni include Felicity Lott, Robert Lloyd and Jonathan Summers, and Charles Mackerras served briefly as Musical Director during the 1950s.
Die Hochzeit des Camacho was written by Mendelssohn between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. It is a lively, folksy comic opera based on an episode from Don Quixote, about a conspiracy on the part of the young and amiable Basilio to save his beloved Quiteria from a forced marriage to the wealthy but unprepossessing Camacho. After many complications, some largely pointless interventions by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and a faked suicide, Basilio gets the girl; her father and Camacho accept their union and all live happily ever after.
The production, by Duncan McFarland, was set in the context of a bedtime story being told to a young boy (Oliver Kirk) by his nurse (Liz Lea). This gave the feel of a cosy Christmas family movie. Christopher Giles’s set was simple but imaginative and versatile, with three brightly-coloured moving wooden huts transforming the stage from the child’s nursery into all manner of different locations. There were bright, attractive costumes for the young cast too.
The opera was sung in English, and the best individual performances came from two fine tenors – medical student Hal Brindley gave a strongly sung and charming account of Basilio’s sidekick Vivaldo, while postgraduate linguist James Crawford gave an excellent characterisation of the eponymous Camacho (really quite a minor role). Stephen Brown’s Basilio and James Harrison’s Carrasco (Quiteria’s father) also sang well; Håkan Vramsmo’s Sancho Panza was likeable and smoothly sung. But elsewhere there were problems; Margaret Cooper’s Quiteria was strong in the upper register but weak in the middle; her conventionally operatic soprano was inadequately balanced by Sarah Rea’s treble-like Lucinde. The veteran professional bass Deryck Hamon was seriously stretched in the role of Don Quixote. Projection of dialogue was problematic for professional and amateur soloists alike; sometimes the singing was inaudible too. The chorus was excellent, but the biggest problem was the orchestra, an amateur ensemble, whose timing and tuning were simply painful at times despite Charles Peebles’s poised and well-phrased direction.
This is the fifth UC Opera production I have seen, some with high musical standards. This was far from the best. Perhaps they will fare better in 2008 with Lalo’s Fiesque.
Ruth Elleson © 2007