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."
![Martin Gantner (The Hoopoe) [Photo by Robert Millard courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/Birds_LAOpera01.gif)
The Recovered Voices series at Los Angeles Opera, in its second season, springs from James Conlon’s fascination and love for the operas of composers whose lives and/or careers came to an end under the Nazi regime.
Thanks to the support of Marilyn Ziering and the Ziering Family Foundation, Los Angeles Opera can bring to the stage operas otherwise unlikely to receive a production at a major house, although at one time most of the operas featured so far or planned for the series had that distinction. In fact, Walter Braunfels’s Die Vögel (The Birds) apparently enjoyed a fair amount of success before WWII threw a shadow over both the opera and its composer. Seen on Saturday, April 18th, that initial success and subsequent obscurity both became understandable.
An allegory adapted from Aristophanes’s play of the same title, Die Vögel begins with Good Hope (Brandon Johanovich) and Loyal Friend (James Johnson) on a search for Hoopoe, leader of the birds. The humans want to join the birds, finding their own species increasingly repugnant (an important aspect undramatized by the libretto). The birds, initially suspect, eventually accept the men, who then motivate the birds to establish a “bird civilization” in the clouds, to rival that of man’s below. This somehow upsets Zeus, as Prometheus warns the birds, to no avail. Zeus strikes the bird civilization with thunderbolts, and the men, realizing their complicity in the disaster, leave. Good Hope exits with a broken heart, however, as he had fallen in love with the Nightingale. There’s too little of Aristophanes’s stinging wit or satire, and most of the opera comes across as a feeble Magic Flute-wannabe, with Good Hope as an ersatz Tamino.
The first act, the shorter of the two, starts with some quite lovely music, including a vocalise for the Nightingale. However, the narrative’s lack of conflict or conventional development means that Braunfel’s score always seems to be excited or passionate about events that don’t warrant the emotional outpouring. The second act picks up the pace somewhat, and the last 30 minutes or so of the opera soars with the birds, as the humans wish to do. The intervention of Prometheus makes no sense, and probably isn’t intended to, but Brian Mulligan sang his set piece with dark gusto. After Zeus’s dramatic attack on the bird city, the birds gather on stage for a gorgeous ensemble, and as the men leave, the Nightingale, a high-lying role for coloratura, reappears, to sing as Good Hope takes his sad leave.
Conlon directed a fine cast, with Désirée Ranactore managing the challenging music of the Nightingale skillfully enough to make understandable Good Hope’s obsession with her. Martin Gantner as Hoopoe and James Johnson as Loyal Friend sang their thinly characterized parts well, but the star of the men was last year’s Richard Tucker winner, tenor Brandon Johanovich. His is a big, masculine sound, with an easy top at this young stage of his career. The opera world will probably be looking to have him sing some of the bigger tenor assignments. He already has a Turiddu and Cavaradossi or two under his belt. Hopefully he won’t be tempted to even larger roles, as his talent, if carefully nourished, should produce a long and rewarding career.
Darko Tresnjak, of the San Diego Old Globe Theater, directed this silliness probably as well as just about anyone could. Scenery designer David P. Gordon’s set oddly combined palm trees and a series of six or seven luminous cloud shapes, set up in three rows. The transformation to the bird city probably would have made more sense if it had been more than some tiny Greek temples affixed to stilts. Linda Cho’s costumes designs also seemed to go for a sort of silky Ancient Greek tunic look, except for the fairly contemporary look of the humans. As not a lot of sense was being made on stage, nonsense designs couldn’t hurt.
Braunfels’s score certainly received all the attention and love from James Conlon any conductor could lavish upon it. Despite the fine singing and superior orchestral performance, this run of Die Vögel hasn’t revealed a lost masterpiece. The afternoon had some delights, however, so opera lovers a bit jaded with the usual repertory have to be thankful for the exposure to a work of such rarity. Next season, the Recovered Voices series continues with Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten.
Chris Mullins