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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."
Reviews
![Judith Howarth as Madam Butterfly [Photo by Tristram Kenton courtesy of English National Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/Madam_Butterfly__012.gif)
21 Jun 2009
Madam Butterfly - English National Opera, London Coliseum
Following the death of the American film director Anthony Minghella, ENO were left with a gap in the season vacated by the new production which he had been engaged to direct, and what better way to do so than by bringing back his immensely popular 2005 staging of Madam Butterfly? Minghella’s widow, Carolyn Choa (who has worked on the production from its original conception) was charged with resurrecting the production in tribute.
And a worthy tribute it is. This season’s cast is easily the strongest that Minghella’s staging has yet enjoyed here at the Coliseum (it’s a co-production with the Met, and the Lithuanian National Opera). Judith Howarth returned to the title role from the last revival, with a portrayal that has grown in stature since the last time. Her fullish lyric soprano remains a touch on the light side, but gives a real sense of being at one with the orchestra, and picks out the delicacy of the dialogues with Pinkerton and Suzuki; she draws the character with just the right balance of strength and vulnerability.
The two men, both appropriately imported from the USA, are new to both the production and the company; Brian Mulligan’s Sharpless is particularly worthy of praise, acting with skilled subtlety such that every inner thought came across. Bryan Hymel sings Pinkerton in a strong, clear tenor; if his phrasing is rather linear and matter-of-fact it only serves to add to the superficiality of the character.
In fact, the whole staging serves to highlight Pinkerton’s superficiality, or rather the superficiality which he ascribes to Nagasaki and its inhabitants. The drama unfolds in a world of heightened, fantastical colours, the vibrant hues of Han Feng’s costume designs contrasting with the shiny black letter-box of a set, evoking the curiously chaste exoticism which so fascinates Pinkerton. Two of Blind Summit Theatre’s brilliant bunraku puppets act as Suzuki’s co-servants, introduced by Goro in Act 1 while Pinkerton is cooing over the novelty value of his new marital home; it is quite clear before he even states it overtly that Cio-Cio-San stands no chance of being treated as a ‘real’ wife. The most fully characterised of the puppets is that used for Butterfly’s young son, the intricacy of its movements almost bringing the child to life - but retaining that layer of artificiality which underlines that even Sharpless to some extent doesn’t have a full understanding of the Japanese as human equals. The orchestral prelude to the final scene features a dream sequence in which a puppet Cio-Cio-San is reunited in a pas de deux with a human Pinkerton; a realisation of a deeply held wish on Butterfly’s part, but at the same time almost an acceptance on her part of his perception that the two belong to separate worlds.
Ultimately, this approach results in a degree of emotional frustration for the audience; somehow I want Pinkerton to be jolted too late into recognising Butterfly for the person she is. I yearn for a sudden gear-change into ugly realism at the end; for Butterfly’s suicide to be graphic and literal. Instead, the blood flowing from her body is unfurled in red silk by balletic extras. It all makes a consistent point; Pinkerton is going back to his convenient, socially-sanitised American existence, and perhaps he never will truly grasp the magnitude of what he has done to his first wife back in Nagasaki.
Judith Howarth as Madam Butterfly, Christine Rice as Suzuki and Bryan Hymel as F. B. Pinkerton
If there is a shortage of raw emotion on stage, there is an abundance of it in the pit. Edward Gardner, fresh from his revelatory Peter Grimes, gives a blazingly passionate account of the score, unequalled in my memory - and the chorus have rarely sounded better, either; the humming chorus was firm in intonation and ethereal of timbre. The supporting cast is exceptional, particularly Christine Rice’s Suzuki and Michael Colvin’s Goro.
Ruth Elleson © 2009