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.
Deborah Warner’s new production of Death in Venice is ravishingly beautiful, with stunning lighting designs by Jean Kalman who manages to capture the spirit of every facet of Venice and of the drama’s more general themes, from the misty eeriness of Aschenbach’s first gondola ride through to ominous darkening skies and blazing sunsets.
Against this backdrop, Ian Bostridge’s Aschenbach is vocally extraordinary, using his unique other-worldly voice to its best sensual advantage in response to this man’s yearning for the ability to be a part of the beauty of his surroundings.
But there is always a sense here that Aschenbach is not really experiencing Venice for himself: the opera becomes almost a solo drama with the rest of the ensemble as a mere, if glorious, backdrop. More worryingly, the staging’s overwhelming visual beauty and meticulous attention to detail means that Aschenbach’s internal disintegration is almost an afterthought, instead of being the drama’s principal theme. There is a proliferation of style over substance, a feast for the senses but very little for the soul to hold on to or be moved by.
One big thing missing is any genuine sense of erotic allure in the portrayal of Tadzio. The role is danced gracefully enough by Benjamin Paul Griffiths, but not enough thought has been given to the need to place him on a pedestal, to enable the audience to experience whatever indefinable quality it is which captivates Aschenbach. In the group of athletic boy dancers there are two or three who look and move in very much the same way, so Tadzio is often lost in the crowd. Indeed, when Iestyn Davies’s Apollo makes his first appearance the sudden presence of genuine homoerotic allure is so revelatory that one wonders what the purpose of Tadzio has been during the preceding hour or so.
There was a chance that cohesion could have been achieved through the multiple baritone roles, sung here by Peter Coleman-Wright. However, rather than develop the roles as different incarnations of the same sinister character, they are too cleanly defined and individually characterised, and as a result become merely a set of character vignettes which contribute little to the overall shape of the piece.
While Tom Pye’s set designs have a meticulous regard for atmospheric detail which is mirrored in the ensemble direction and choreography, the same cannot be said either for the orchestra (under Edward Gardner in the first production of his tenure as ENO Music Director) whose first-night playing seemed harsh and detached from the action, or for the chorus, whose ensemble singing was scrappy and well beneath their usual standard.
Though on the surface this production had everything, it was deeply frustrating in its failure to amalgamate the internal downward spiral of Bostridge’s extraordinary Aschenbach with the ensemble performance and ravishing surroundings. Ultimately, it failed to create a coherent whole – even from a set of almost faultless ingredients.
Ruth Elleson © 2007