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."
Drawing on the dark viciousness and bitter malevolence of Prosper Mérimée’s ethnographical novella, Calixto Bieito’s Carmen rejects any notion of flamboyant exoticism and alluring eroticism, and presents us instead with a sordid twilight zone of sexual violence and brutal malice.
In a bare, sandy arena shrouded in dirt and dust, the battle of the sexes assumes a distinctly unpleasant tint as masculine bravura and matey-ness reveal their nastier side: all men are aggressive and sadistic, all women shallow and sexualised, collusive in their subjugation. In an indeterminate 1970s location - which, in an explanatory programme article, Maria M. Delgado terms a ‘border space’ - the only splashes of colour are a dirty Spanish flag (degradingly serving in Act 4 as a beach towel for a sun-seeking bather) and Micäela’s rather ugly hippy shirt: life here is perilous and desperate, and self-serving ruthlessness offers the only hope of survival.
It is a potentially intriguing and insightful concept: but, such deadening violence is by nature static rather than dynamic, and the problem with this at times startlingly discerning and imaginative production is that as it progresses it needs a shot of dramatic drive - rather like the battered Mercedes saloons of Act 3 that require a helpful shove from the band of itinerant migrants to get them rolling into position.
This lack of motion is, paradoxically, intrinsic to what is perhaps Bieito’s most powerful visual symbol - namely, the circular rings which serve as bull-ring, beach and bad-land, and which baldly announce the fatal confinement which Carmen can never evade. When, in Act 4, Lillas Pastia - an Arab marked as an outsider by his trashy bling and white suit - inscribes a white circle on the bare stage, we know unequivocally that the noose is pulling ever tighter around Carmen’s neck. The final image is the most shocking and most revealing: like a bloody carcass, the dead Carmen is dragged across the circle by a remorseless, deadened José - her animalistic intensity irrevocably and pitilessly quenched - as snatches of the toreador’s victory salute announce the latter’s destructive conquest in the bull-ring.
Elsewhere, the circle proves a less effective device, as in the first scene where a rifle-bearing soldier, clad only in boots and underpants, runs repetitively around the stage, his public punishment enforced until his is felled by fatigue. An obvious sign of repressive cruelty: but also a visual distraction, just when we are trying to get our bearings. Do we follow his futile rotations, and miss something of import in the opening moments? Or do we try to ignore him, in which case, why is he there?
Bizet’s Carmen seduces by song and dance. Movement underpins her dangerous power. So, it is unhelpful that here her Habenera is sung initially on the threshold of a telephone box (one of the set designer Alfons Flores’ few props) - is she phoning to taunt a former lover? - and subsequently standing stock still, centre-stage, facing the audience. Arrested and jailed, Carmen uses the slippery lilt of the Seguidilla to entrance and entrap José: the ambiguous modality of Bizet’s music and the physical impulses of the pseudo-gypsy dance prove hypnotically irresistible. But, this Carmen is tied, hands behind back, to a phallic flagpole, and the only gyrations she can venture are some tentative knee-bends - Peter Stringfellow would not be impressed. Similarly, in Act 2, when José arrives at Lillas Pastia’s ‘tavern’ - here a shabby Mercedes love-mobile - Carmen declares that she will dance for his honour and reward: the rhythmic impulse of her song is strongly physical, something which is hard to convey if you are hanging from an open car door.
This lack of motion is most problematic in Act 3: the stage is over-populated by sundry automobiles (admittedly the back seat of one provides a neat hiding place for Micäela) and a crowd of crooks and prostitutes, and there is simply no space for the principals to move. Restricted to the forestage and denied the freedom of corporeal expression, this Carmen is physically impotent, irrevocably diminished.
Bieito is keen to reverse our assumptions and stereotypes. Teasing us in the opening scene with an alluring brunette who, suggestively drawing on her cigarette, wanders nonchalantly through the salivating soldiers, he then presents us with a blonde Carmen dressed in a pencil skirt. In the title role, Ruxandra Donose sings with unfailing warmth; she is precise and technically assured. However, the part seems to lie a little too low for Donose and the necessary earthy, raunchy lustre is lacking. It does not help that her José, Adam Diegel, is a rigid stage partner. After a stiff start, the tightness and unyieldingness in Diegel’s voice did relax somewhat, and he injected genuine feeling and colour into the Act 2 Duet. Yet, there was a tendency for climactic phrases in the upper register to fade shapelessly. Despite his muscular, brawny physique, Diegel’s stilting stage presence severely diminished the emotional tension between the fated couple.
Elizabeth Llewellyn’s Micäela is certainly an outsider, her sparkling blouse and livid blue eye shadow a slightly disconcerting outburst of brightness in this otherwise drab milieu. This Micäela is no innocent; in Act 1, she professes to bring a greeting from José’s mother, but bourgeois sentiment is manifestly and unashamedly discarded when, rather than offering a demure peck on the cheek, she grabs her José in a passionate embrace. José’s subsequent words, “I see the face of my mother”, triggered an unfortunate snigger. Indeed, throughout the ‘prim and proper’ translation is strangely incompatible with the blatant nastiness of Bieito’s conception.
Llewellyn deservedly won the warmest ovation of the evening; her Act 3 aria was potent with passion and commitment. But, although there is not a phrase that is not perfectly shaped, a sound that is not infinitely agreeable, Llewellyn fails to convince dramatically, her feistiness at odds with the pure integrity of her music.
As Mercédès and Frasquita respectively, Madeleine Shaw and Rhian Lois were a formidable double act. But, giving Mercédès a pretty daughter who, luridly and inappropriately attired, is encouraged to join her elders in ‘entertaining the officers’ may further the theme of underage sexual abuse, but seems a questionable motif.
Graeme Danby is strong as a violent, thuggish Zuniga; and Duncan Rock made a fine Corporal Moralès. But, Leigh Melrose’s Escamillo was more self-satisfied local bigwig than adulated hero; he did not have the vocal or dramatic presence required.
The ENO chorus were committed and vibrant, but the lack of subtlety was a little wearing. From the men, there’s just too much groping and grunting: the women’s chorus in Act 1, as they unwind in nicotine-induced relaxation after a hard day in the factory, is disagreeably disrupted by the soldiers’ testosterone-fuelled antics, and it’s no surprise that Act 2 closes with a woman being brutally strung up on the flagstaff, her shrieking on the stake presumably a prelude to gang rape.
During the Entr’acte preceding Act 3 Bieito tries to suggest that underneath the foul vulgarity a compassionate sensitivity lingers: a naked male soldier sways gracefully, his modesty preserved by the enveloping mist, but his elegant intrusion in an otherwise graceless milieu seems merely an opportunity for some gratuitous nudity. Too often the chorus are physically static: the streetwise migrant children do not leap and play, but rather thrust their begging bowls accusingly at the audience; the restless crowd, eager for the pitting of man against bull, press impatiently against a rope which stretches the length of the stage.
Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth coaxed much refinement from his players, the woodwind and horns in particular conversing with the voices with beautiful clarity and a pleasing lack of bombast. Tempo-wise Wigglesworth doesn’t quite get it right though; after a breakneck first six bars, which left his players trailing in his wake, he put on the brakes resulting in a safe but somewhat unscintillating overture. Elsewhere the ensemble between pit and stage was less than satisfactory, although this may improve during the run. In general, the orchestral rhythms need a bit more bite and boldness.
There is much in this production to provoke reflection, and to encourage fresh evaluation of this well-known opera. Bruno Poet’s lighting creates startling, incisive effects.
There are many deft details, as when Carmen defiantly daubs a lipstick heart on a soldier’s breast, or when José slips on Carmen’s shoes as if she is a Barbie doll to be fashioned as he pleases. Likewise, the towering presentation and subsequent defilement and dismantling of the familiar Osborne bull emblem, which once littered the Spanish rural landscape, is a powerful visual gesture, suggesting the inevitable demise of this cruel masculine world, as symbolised by the posturing of the bullring. However, ultimately there is a frustrating lack of sexual frisson, or even emotional connection, between the three protagonists: this is no Ai no corrida.
Claire Seymour