Recently in Reviews
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
20 Oct 2009
Brilliantly Simple 'Tolomeo' by ETO
ETO’s production of Tolomeo for one night only at the Britten Theatre, capitalizes brilliantly on the necessary simplicity of this chamber-like opera, written at a time when Handel could no longer call upon fabulous sets and stunning effects, relying only upon great singing - and what singers he wrote it for, in fact the grand trio of Senesino, Cuzzoni and Bordoni.
James Conway’s production is beautifully sparse, using only wood and sand to create the shore upon which the characters are tested, and the cast are with him all the way, turning in performances of authentic power and directness.
The plot centres upon the perfidy of Cleopatra, who exiles her eldest son Tolomeo, condemns his wife Seleuce to slavery, and raises her younger son Alessandro to supplant him: these three are shipwrecked on an island ruled over by Araspe and his sister Elisa, who fall in love with Seleuce and Tolomeo respectively. Instead of opting for a grandiose royal sing-off, Conway goes for humanizing the characters, making the lovesick sympathetic even in their cruelty, and the shipwrecked and love-lorn intensely believable. The message seems to be that this music gives voice to the plaints of all the wretched, separated and dispossessed — and the fusion of this approach with grand Handelian arias works wonderfully well.
Clint van der Linde impressed me with his Oberon when he was a student at the RCM, so it was especially good to hear him as a fully developed artist, his singing confident and powerful once ‘Cielo ingiusto’ was out of the way. He was completely convincing as the shipwrecked king, both noble and touching in his grief for his presumed loss, and his arias were sung with the assurance and expressiveness which mark out a real Handel singer — ‘Torna sol per un momento’ was superb, every phrase finely placed and sung with sweet poignancy.
Katherine Manley bears a passing resemblance to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and her singing is of almost equal intensity — she was a very credible and sympathetic Seleuce, her acting as committed as her singing was pure in tone, and ‘Fonti amiche, aure leggere’ could hardly have been more eloquently sung.
Rachel Nicholls was an articulate and richly-toned Elisa, James Laing a sweet-voiced Alessandro, and Neil Baker an exceptionally strong Araspe — the last is a complex character, not the usual blustering villain, so it made sense to have a somewhat lighter voice than the usual Handelian basso in this part.
Scene from Tolomeo
The orchestra — especially the wind sections — played with delicacy and verve under the supportive direction of John Andrews, and the production as a whole left you wondering why this beautiful music is not more often heard. If you live near Malvern, Exeter or Cambridge, you will be able to catch it on October 29th, November 5th and November 19th respectively — most highly recommended.
Melanie Eskenazi