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."
![Angela Gheorghiu as Magda [Photo by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/RONDINE_Gheorghiu_as_Magda_.png)
The first thing that hits you about the Met’s production of La Rondine is the beauty of the sets and costumes (from the classy team of Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino, respectively) — especially in contrast to the tawdry glitz of the recent Thaïs.
Someone spent money on this thing, which originated at Covent Garden. Gustav Klimt at his grandest has evidently muraled Magda’s intimate salon (probably while seducing Magda and her maid, if I know Gustav), the casual student café of Act II is suitable to some grand hotel on the Place Vendôme, and the Riviera inn where Ruggero and Magda hole up in Act III has become an art nouveau orangerie of stained glass grape arbor three stories high. Overproduction adds undeniable pleasure to the Met experience, however it may undercut the small-scale work at hand by raising expectations that will not be fulfilled.
La Rondine is often called Puccini’s Viennese operetta. The inspiration was, indeed, a Viennese libretto, set in sophisticated France, dealing with sophisticated emotions — none of its lovers would think of picking up a dagger or making a public scene; they’re not into “drama” — which is pretty funny for characters in a Puccini opera. A rich man’s elegant mistress feels restless, takes up with a young lover, realizes settling down with him to a bourgeois life is not her style, and returns — like the swallow of the title — to her nest. True love won’t keep you in Klimts or emeralds, honey. Regrets. The road not taken. No call for the undertaker or the priest.
The scale is intimate, the emotions internal, and the musical setting is intimate too, lilting and sensuous and utterly beguiling. (This is opera in the twentieth century?) It works sublimely on the small screen — my first experience of La Rondine was a television movie starring Teresa Stratas. Angela Gheorghiu compares well to Stratas as a beauty and as an actress (high compliments, these). I suspect her intimate looks and sighs will play even better in HDTV, and that her detailed acting was designed for Covent Garden, which is half the size of the Met. She had not warmed up properly to possess “Che il bel sogno di Doretta,” the opera’s one big aria, but that’s Puccini’s fault for putting it two minutes after curtain rise so he can go on recollecting it all evening. For the quartet in Act II and the love duet in Act III, Gheorghiu was more than prepared. It is not a voice of Tebaldi or Price size, but she has her own polished way with a Puccini phrase, and his bloom suits hers much better than, say, Donizetti, where (with fewer instruments to conceal her?) she can sound arch and stretched.
Angela Gheorghiu as Magda and Roberto Alagna as Ruggero
Her partner is Roberto Alagna, of course, and they certainly play
and sing lovers convincingly together. But Ruggero offers the tenor so little
that you wonder why Gigli bothered with it — the standout tenor part is
the secondo uomo, the poet Prunier, and here Marius Brenciu, in his
first Met appearances, was light and suave with a very pleasing run up to
head voice when called for. His amie of the night was Lisette
Oropesa, a Met Young Artist alumna, who played Magda’s chirpy maid,
having an affair with the poet, going for a big break in cabaret and,
failing, returning to her old nest — no Adele audition for
this gal. Oropesa has personality but her voice, on this brief exposure, did
not. The quartet for the paired and (as we do not yet know) ill-fated lovers
was delicious, and their story has that fragrant pessimism that afflicts late
Lehar (whose librettists drafted this story too). Love excuses everything in
Act I, but let’s be real — it always dissipates before the final
curtain.
Marius Brenciu as Prunier
What the world wants now is a new Puccini opera. La Rondine is
not new, of course, but the brand is right, and it’s never
been popular, so it’s ripe for discovery. Singers of Magda and Ruggero
need fear no comparison with the interpretations of Callas and Pavarotti,
because they never sang it, and hardly anyone alive remembers Bori or Gigli.
The opera contains little familiar music — though, in a sense, all of
it is familiar — aside from “Il sogno di Doretta,” which no
lyric soprano worth her salt can resist. (When Gheorghiu sings it, it is
difficult not to sigh for Leontyne Price, but she had time to warm
up, as she never sang the entire opera.)
No one living is going to write two hours of new Puccini (though heaven knows Andrew Lloyd-Webber and several movie composers would if they could), and that is really what the new audience discovering opera (and eagerly courted by Peter Gelb) wants: a Puccini opera to discover for themselves. There have even been productions of Edgar, which hasn’t even got a great showpiece tune to commend itself. My advice to opera companies courting this crowd is the great number of neglected but lovely works by Puccini’s contemporaries and rivals, just waiting for the right singers and a production like this one. Okay, there are howlers like Francesca da Rimini or Sly or Cyrano, which even a Scotto or a Domingo couldn’t save, but there are also fascinating scores like Cristoforo Colombo (Franchetti), Cassandra (Gnecchi), La Fiamma (Respighi), L’Oracolo (Leoni), Il Piccolo Marat (Mascagni), L’Amore dei Tre Re (Montemezzi). Take a chance. (It would help if there were a proper verismo soprano around to sing them, I grant you — no, I can’t think of one either.)
Lisette Oropesa as Lisette (foreground) in a scene from Act I
But I never leave La Rondine, even a performance as glamorous and charming as this one, without feeling unsatisfied, shortchanged — as if there has not been enough feeling, enough melodious anguish, as if the company should complete the evening somehow, with Il Tabarro, say, or scenes from Tosca or Manon Lescaut — something to fulfill the expectations raised by Puccinian melody from the very first chord.
La Rondine is an appetizer, or tapas perhaps — it’s not a full entrée, never mind dessert.
John Yohalem