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.
![Katherine Broderick as Donna Anna and Iain Paterson as Don Giovanni [Photo by Donald Cooper courtesy of English National Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/Don_Giovanni_Katherine_Broderick_Iain_Paterson_credit_Donald_Cooper.png)
There’s nothing wrong with updating an opera as long as the director, designer and conductor share an understanding of the work’s principal ideas and motivations, conflicts and contexts, and have a clear vision of how they intend to communicate these in a new setting.
Sadly, director Rufus Norris, designer Ian MacNeil, and conductor Kirill Karabits, are desperately out of kilter in this miserable, in all senses of the word, production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
A sparking, spluttering lighting rig occupies centre-stage as the opening notes of the overture strike up; gradually it rises, resting askew, half-way to the rafters, and there it dangles redundantly for the rest of the performance, occasionally emitting a spark or flash. As the Stone Guest’s motif sounds, there’s some vacuous brutality in the dark recesses, a nameless women is brought before Giovanni to be abused, and we are clearly being told that this is going to be a ‘nasty’ evening. Never mind that Da Ponte’s Giovanni proves to be a rather ineffectual Casanova, not once carrying out a successful seduction in the course of the opera. We are in a modern degenerate dystopia, and Mozart and his librettist have clearly been left far behind in the eighteenth century.
With this re-reading, a crucial aspect of the original is lost: namely, the class conflicts inherent in the amorous entanglements and betrayals. The erratic costumes don’t help. Dressed initially in jeans and scruffy trainers, the Don dons an aquamarine eighteenth-century frock coat for his opening sexual encounter, complete with antique wig; he then exchanges this outfit for a slick red suit, aptly devilish over a black thug’s t-shirt, as debonair man-about-town, gaily throwing parties for the plebs; and finally, he slips into slobby black pyjamas adorned with the face of Christ and topped off with a hallowe’en mask. Frankly, Masetto’s shiny blue Primark suit is more stylish. This confused costuming destabilises our sense of the power relations between the protagonists; and makes a nonsense of the Masetto’s avowal, ‘At your service, sir’, when Giovanni interrupts the wedding party. The Enlightenment’s strict stratification of society, with its attendant modes of behaviour and codes of honour, has been jettisoned, making the Don’s philandering seem like tedious self-indulgence as opposed to radical subversion.
Hyperactive periaktoi, spun wildly in the urban gloom by masked marauders, present us with fleeting visions of dingy street-corners, Elvira’s Formica flat, a Seventies’ discotheque, as MacNeil tries in vain to conjure up an air of reckless abandon and amoral depravity.
All this is a waste of good translation and some strong singing. Jeremy Sams perhaps indulges in a few too many vulgar double entendres — ‘I’m tired of playing sentry/while he tries to force an entry’ — but his wit sparkles and the rhyming couplets spill out easily (perhaps a bit too profusely in the final scene), reminding us of the fun and alertness of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s buffa opera. Sadly, at times it is clear that the director does not care what the cast are actually singing about: when Zerlina tries to wile her way back into Masetto’s affection after his beating at the hands of Giovanni’s thugs (where does it hurt … here, or here …?), providing, one might think, ample opportunity for some affectionate petting … there is no chance of an ardent quiver or two, as Norris has seated her on a window sill, 15 feet away.
Brindley Sherratt as Leporello
Part of the problem was the pace, or lack of it. Kirill Karabits never once whipped up the necessary excitement and zip in the pit; the overture was ponderous and fuzzy, the recitative almost static, and during one of the greatest of operatic denouements, as Giovanni is sucked down to hell, the only thing electrifying was the exploding circuit which descended and despatched Giovanni to his death. Thus, Leporello’s catalogue aria — skilfully and side-splittingly re-imagined by Sams as a spin-doctor’s statistical presentation of his master’s conquests month by month, powerpoint, spreadsheets and all — never generated enough momentum to suggest the rush of the Don’s romping rampages, despite the artful timing and neat delivery of Brindley Sherratt’s yobbish Leporello.
The cast tried their best to inject some frisson. The women fared best. Deputising at the last minute for Rebecca Evans (afflicted with infected sinuses), Sarah Redgwick was dramatically convincing as the scorned and scornful Donna Elvira. Attired in a sharp red suit, her ‘Mi tradi’ was clear and penetrating, and she never once became the nagging harridan or neurotic hysteric of Giovanni’s imaginings. Katherine Broderick has a sufficiently hefty voice for Donna Anna, but at times it was rather shrill and ragged, especially in Act 1. Sarah Tynan’s Zerlina was ravishingly sweet, and she minced delightfully; her bright sound was consistently matched by John Molloy as Masetto. But whatever happened to subtle innuendo: why, oh why, was Masetto offered a boxing glove on a silver platter during Zerlina’s faux-subordinate ‘Batti, batti’?
Sarah Redgewick as Donna Elvira, Iain Paterson as Don Giovanni and Brindley Sherratt as Leporello
In the title role, Iain Paterson showed that he is a composed, accomplished singer, able to vary and control his voice, a confident stage presence. Yet, though the text was clearly enunciated and singing flexible and relaxed, he didn’t generate sufficient testosterone-fuelled dynamism — maybe the baggy Jesus t-shirt was to blame. Moreover, it was no fault of Paterson’s that his ‘Senerade’, delectably sung, made no dramatic sense: for, after a surfeit of comic crudities, Sams’ inserts sentimental longings for an ideal love, ‘the one I miss the most’, yearnings which are totally unconvincing. Mawkish projections of this ‘muse’ — assumingly an idealisation of female beauty — did not help.
As Don Ottavio, Robert Murray produced a warm tone and presented a generous heart as Donna Anna’s loyal, steady ‘protector’; he performed ‘Dalla sua pace’ with a consistently smooth line and striking radiance. Unfortunately, his portrait of integrity and loyalty was not assisted by the spangly, heart-shaped balloon he was forced to clutch, or the smooching couples dancing in distance. Murray suffered a fair share of the director’s indignities, encouraged inexplicably to remove his clothes at the end of the great Sextet? Matthew Best lacked a monumental majesty in the opening scene, but was suitable imposing at the close and made a striking image, slumped, white-suited and pallid against a graffitied wall. The chorus of identikit demons were, like their surroundings, unfocused and lacking spark.
The closing scene begins with Giovanni and his side-kick, slouched like drunken tramps on a grimy street, preparing a pavement picnic of takeaway left-overs drawn from a discount-store carrier-bag: an image that ironically rather sums things up — for, like the stale bread rolls they fling contemptuously at the Commendatore, there really is a lot of garbage in this production. The mock-fugue finale presents a simple moral: “if you’re bad you’ll go to hell” — relevant in more ways than one.
Claire Seymour