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.
![Andrew Shore as Jakob Lenz and Jonathan Best as Joihann Freidrich Oberlin [Photo by Stephen Cummiskey courtesy of English National Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/Jakob_Lenz_Andrew_Shore_Jonathan_Best_c_Stephen_Cummiskey.png)
When the ENO does really innovative work, it does so with style. Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz may have taken 34 years to reach London fully staged, but this ENO production made such a strong impression that it might be years before it will be forgotten.
Wolfgang Rihm is one of the most important German composers of our time, and hugely influential. His orchestral and chamber music are well known in Britain, but less so his many operas. Jakob Lenz dates from 1978, when Rihm was only 24, but it’s an established part of the repertoire in Europe.
The Hampstead Theatre is a more claustrophobic performance space than the Young Vic or the Coliseum, which suits this opera well. Jakob Lenz was the Romantic poet who became insane. The stage is shrouded, as if in a mist, surrounded by realistic looking reeds. A reference to Wozzeck working in the reed beds, hallucinating mushrooms. The play on which Rihm’s Jakob Lenz is based was written by Georg Büchner who wrote Woyzeck, the source of Alban Berg’s opera.
Crazy, tangled images of reeds and water permeate this production Jakob Lenz is trapped in his madness: most of the action takes place on a narrow island on a stage within the stage. Lenz (Andrew Shore) keeps falling off the edge into real water, sometimes completely submerged. Pastor Johan Oberlin (Jonathan Best) doesn’t seem to notice, but Lenz’s friend Christoph Kaufmann (Richard Roberts) glances warily round the edges, careful not to lose his footing. It feels dangerous.
Andrew Shore as Jakob Lenz, Lillie Forrester as one of the children, Suzy Cooper as Friederike Brion
Lenz’s psychosis connects to these waters. He drags a young girl into the pond and drowns her. Or so he thinks. Reason blurs into unreality, just as land blurs into water in these reed beds. Lenz thinks the girl, whatever she may be, is raised from the dead because he prays. “Lenz”, incidentally, means “spring” which would not have been lost on poet, playwright or composer. The girl (Lillie Forrester) isn’t a real girl, but may be Lenz’s idealized projection of himself. “Logical, Logical!” he repeats later, as if mantras will restore order. In that sense, he’s not really so different to the pastor and to the church around which this village clings. An outline of the church looms over the proceedings, and its mirror image forms the platform on which Lenz moves.
Hyper-realistic staging for an opera where reality is so distorted that the narrative disintegrates. Lenz is obssessed by Friederike Brion (Suzy Cooper) who was interested in Goethe, not in Lenz, though in Lenz’s mind she is a kind of muse. She’s seen in powdered wig and face, like a ghostly wraith. An apparition as much as a character, and not a woman, as such. This very busy setting was wise, for Wolfgang Rihm’s music is too intense to be easy listening. British audiences aren’t used to Rihm yet and need picture postcard images from Caspar David Friedrich to distance themselves from the extreme emotion in this music.
Andrew Shore as Jakob Lenz and Richard Roberts as Christoph Kaufmann
But what music it is! Intensely atmospheric, almost pictorial. Oboes, bass clarinets, bassoon and cellos, moaning ominously like wind in the reeds, echoing the otherworldy choruses. A harpsichord screams in shrill desperation. Hollow wooden tapping, muted percussion like frantic heartbeats. Sudden cries from small trumpet. Strings plucked and beaten, sounds half heard from beyond the auditorium. Hearing Rihm’s Jakob Lenz audio only can drive you crazy, but that’s the point. Lenz is an artist. Oberlin isn’t, though he’s nice. Must artists be driven like Lenz is? Imagination is powerful because it hints at more than it tells.
Performance of a lifetime from Andrew Shore as Jakob Lenz, with strong support from Jonathan Best, Richard Roberts and Suzy Cooper, plus good chorus and actors. This isn’t an opera or a production for those who think Rusalka should be a pretty fairy tale, but it’s like a fairy tale in that it deals with subjects that can’t be easily explained. Georg Büchner’s original play (1836) treated psychosis in a modern, non-judgemental way. Generations before, Jakob Lenz might have been burned as a male witch. Büchner tries instead to understand, and Rihm gets us inside Jakob Lenz’s head, so we might feel as he does. It’s not comfortable, but most definitely important. Sam Brown is the director, Annemarie Woods the designer. For bringing Rihm’s Jakob Lenz to London, the ENO deserves every accolade.
Anne Ozorio