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.
![Teapot (François Piolino), Child (Khatouna Gadelia), and Chinese Cup (Elodie Méchain) [Photo © Simon Annand]](http://www.operatoday.com/L%27ENFANT109_Teapot%20%28Franc%CC%A7ois%20Piolino%29%20Child%20%28Khatouna%20Gadelia%29%20Chinese%20Cup%20%28Elodie%20Me%CC%81chain%29Credit%20Simon%20Annand-1.png)
Surrealist fantasy with wit and style! L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortilèges, the Ravel Double Bill at Glyndebourne, mixes charm, intelligence and nightmare.
The audience applauded the scenery, but this time the praise was sincere. Ravel's music and ideas come alive. I'm tempted to say, "beyond our wildest dreams", because dreams release the creative imagination. Ravel begins L'enfant et les sortilèges with strange mock-orientalism, to emphasize the alien nature of what is to come. The child (Khatouna Gadelia) throws a tantrum, reflected in the stamping ostinato in the music, and the repetitive, angular vocal line. "Méchant! Méchant! Méchant!". Table, chair and Maman's skirts loom menacingly, overwhelming the child. This is what it feels to be little, dwarfed by the world of adults. The child rebels and rips his room apart. But the objects he wrecks have feelings, too.
"L'enfant et les sortilèges" says director Laurent Pelly "lasts about 45 minutes, but has the depth of an opera of three or four hours". (read the interview in Opera Today here). Ravel's music is extraordinarliy vivid, but his concepts don't easily translate into visual images. Pelly, however, is a master at bringing abstract ideas to life, as anyone who has seen his Glyndebourne Humperdinck Hansel und Gretel would know. The Teapot and the Chinese cup dance, their "human" bodies exposed beneath the hard exteriors of their form. Ravel glories in mad chinoiserie, which conductor Kazushi Ono plays up with manic relish. The words aren't real but dadaist invention, even in Colette's original. At Glyndebourne the surtitles flash "Sessue Hayakawa" .Since this Glyndebourne production is a co-production with Seiji Osawa's Saito Kinen Festival, it will be seen by Japanese audiences who will get the joke (and can read the nonsense "Chinese" writing). Hayakawa was a Hollywood megastar from the 1920's, who subtly subverted western stereotypes of Asian people. Ravel is sending up the whole notion of western attitudes to the East.
And by exploring exotic genres, Ravel expanded the palette of mainstream western music. Even in Colette's original French text,the Teapot and teacup sing in cod-English "Sir, I punch your nose. I knock out you, stupid chose (thing)". Shepherds and Shepherdesses jump out of the wallpaper the Child has defaced, singing of bizarrely coloured dogs and lambs. Everything safe and familiar is transformed. Ravel writes mock-pastoral,while the pastorals do a solemn mock baroque dance. Visions of Le petit Trianon! Revolution is afoot. The Fire explodes, threatening to engulf the room. Kathleen Kim shoots out of the fireplace in a structure that resembles flame. Kim also sings the Nightingale and the Princess. As theatre, the Fire is a dramatic stunning device, but also reminds us this Child has unleashed dangerous forces.
Some of Ravel's concepts are so abstract that they're a test of any director. Arithmetic, for example, which is so important to Ravel that he embeds the formal logic of mathematics into his music (The connection with L'heure espagnole is obvious) In the 1987 Glyndebourne production, the The Little Old Man who represents Arithmetic was surrounded by cardboard cut-outs of numbers. Pelly, however, brings out the true inner significance. The Child has rebelled against maths homework, and now the Glyndebourne chorus appears as identikit Child to mock him. The formality of rows and series - is this a droll in-joke about Ravel's music, and the music which followed? Kazushi Ono defines the structure with clarity, and the chorus moves with precision. Surrealism liberates the imagination, but art needs an element of intellectual rigour,
Sofas, chairs and clocks, Cats, animals and insects, all confront the Child with their human-ness. In the Garden, adult values no longer dominate. Here, the Child will learn the true nature of humanity Pelly, who designed the costumes, doesn't trivialise the "animals" but shows them as realistically as is possible (given that Bats and Squirrels don't sing). So different from the twee "animals" in Melly Still's The Cunning Little Vixen (review here). Here, animals are treated with dignity, for that's the message of the opera, that no-one is supreme in this universe.The Glyndebourne chorus transform into trees, each one individualized. Even "statues" move. The darkness now is less nightmare than transformative dream. At last the Child recognizes that selfishness is cruel. He caged and tortured the Squirrel, but now looks into her eyes and sees things throgh her perspective. The Squirrel was sung by Stéphanie d'Oustrac, who also sings the Cat. At last, the Child can be a child again and call "Maman! up towards the lighted window. Laurent Pelly's L'enfant et les sortilèges is a masterwork of emotional intelligence and sensitivity, absolutely informed by Ravel's music.
Stéphanie d'Oustrac also sang the main role of Concepción in L'heure espagnole. Elliot Madore sang Ramiro the Muleteer who carries clocks around so effortlessly that he becomes a Grandfather Clock in L'enfant et les sortilèges (where he also sings the Tom Cat). This constant role-changing might stress singers, but is very much part of the meaning of both operas, so they all performed well. Torquemada the clockmaker thinks life can be regulated by clockwork, but as his wife discovers, things don't always go as planned. François Piolino sang Torquemada, and also the Teapot, the Frog and the Old Man of Arithmetic). The staging of L'heure espagnole seems relatively dated compared with the sheer genius of Pelly's L'enfant et les sortilèges, but its clutter also suggests why we need clocks (and Arithmetic, and indeed of the mechanisms of the world around us).
This production will be screened from 19th August in cinemas and online, and will eventually be released on DVD.
Anne Ozorio
Cast and production information:
Ramiro: Elliot Madore, Torquemada: François Piolino, Concepción: Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Gonsalve : Alek Shrader, Don (Don Inigo Gomez: Paul Gay, The Child : Khatouna Gadelia, Mother, Chinese Cup, Dragonfly : Elodie Méchain, Grandfather Clock, Tom Cat: Elliot Madore, Armchair, Tree: Paul Gay, Teapot, Old Man oif Arithmetic, Frog: François Piolino, Fire, Princess, NIghtingale : Kasthlerren Kin, Shepherd: Natalai Brzezinska, Shepherdess: Hilka Fahimna, Cat, Squirrel : Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Bat: Julie Pasturaud, Owl: Kirsty Stokes, Director, Costumes : Laurent Pelly, Set Design for L'heure espagnole: Caroiline Ginet and Florence Evrard, adapted by Carioliune Ginet, Ser Design for L'enfant et les sortilèges: Barbara de Limburg, Lighting: Joel Adam, Costumes : Laurent Pelly and Jean-Jaques Delmotte, London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Glyndebourne Chorus, Conductor@ Kazushi Ono. Glyndebourne, Sussex, England. 4th August 2012