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.
![Brian Jagde as Cavaradossi and Patricia Racette as Tosca [Photo by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/03--Tosca.gif)
Who is Patricia Racette? Sexually ripe Nedda, maternal Cio-Cio-San, neurotic Sister Angelica? But now the jealous Tosca? And without question Mme. Racette has again proven herself the Puccini heroine par excellence of this moment.
Patricia Racette is a powerful lyric soprano who like all great singers possesses a unique voice, its signature sound is the interplay of excited overtones. This excitement, these vocal nerve endings possess all of these Puccini victims, and transmit their vulnerability, their super human strength, their beauty, above all a melodramatic feminine humanity that has endured one full century now, and will still be real as long as there may be humankind.
Mme. Racette is a committed and skilled actress, but more so she is an honest artist. Her voice is in its prime, as it has been and will be for some time. To her voice she adds intelligent and straight forward musicianship that ties us securely to her character, thus we are held captive by her very presence even in the numerous pantomimes when Tosca does not sing, but silently observes the murdered Scarpia, and approaches the dead Cavaradossi. It is her rock solid artistry in service to real human drama that seduces us.
Mark Delavan as Scarpia
If in the first act la Racette does not find the persona of a jealous diva, one we suspect we would find in the more usual spinto voiced Tosca. Racette does persuade us that she is a woman in love, and a woman vulnerable to powerful men, fiery revolutionaries and corrupt functionaries. At the opera’s end, finally trapped by these forces she frees herself in her dramatic leap. And what a leap it was — in spread eagle form, the euphoria of liberation. Patricia Racette is a bona fide diva.
These days in the War Memorial when Nicola Luisotti is on the podium individual performances are tied to the pit, an aria is really a duet, and such was the case last night in a stunning delivery of Vissi d’arte, the maestro in his euphoria of pillaging every possible tremor of feeling from a very willing orchestra, the soprano but a part of his larger whole. Scarpia and his henchmen plotting to ensnare Angelotti, Cavaradossi and Tosca captured with a musical force nearly equal to Verdi’s Otello, culminating in a Te Deum that had much more to do with Luisotti and Puccini and the joy of sheer power than with Scarpia.
The maestro plumbs a depth of sound and searches color in the orchestral voice, and only then pushes forward the flow of musical action. This creates a stop and go rhythm of often extreme tempos, fast or slow. Last night in the second act in particular these fluctuating tempos musically riveted us to the interplay of Tosca and her tormentor, and in the third act bound us to her nervous fear.
Tosca’s tormentor, the Scarpia of bass baritone Mark Delavan, was not driven by the pure, unadulterated lust that usually drives this politically privileged baron. Instead Delavan toyed with his power, the seduction of Tosca was played as a game with himself, as proof of his privilege, not as release of his unbridled libido. Delavan found a humanity in Puccini’s villain that was supremely ugly, more offensive than exercising sexual prowess. Utilizing the inherent beauty of his now mature voice he thoroughly embodied the bloated, entitled political aristocracy. This was Mark Delavan as an estimable artist. We would have expressed our appreciation had he stayed around for the bows at the end of the opera.
Mark Delavan as Scarpia and Patricia Racette as Tosca
Against all this, a quirk of impresario privilege, San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley cast an Adler Fellow as the artist and revolutionary tenor Cavaradossi. Young tenor Brian Jagde held his own to some degree, while definitely out of his league. He possesses a young, vibrant voice and secure high notes. He lacks the squillo that would make his voice Italianate, nor is he yet schooled in the style. There was the occasional catch that sometimes might have been the tenorial sob and other times might have been a momentary catch in an overburdened voice. While Mr. Jagde was abundantly rewarded by the crowd for his performance the fact remains that the War Memorial is not an appropriate stage for a young singer to break in a role.
Supporting roles were superbly cast. Christian Van Horn made a detailed and very present Attavanti who set the stage for a revolutionary tone to Puccini’s opera. Tenor Joel Sorensen etched a sniveling Spoletta, brutalized by Scarpia and Adler Fellow Ao Li was right-on as Sciarrone. Not to overlook the low key, masterful, not too intrusive Sacristan of Dale Travis.
The production was the 1997 remake of the 1923 production, and it is time to send it to the dump — its nostalgia has been lost and it is boring. The staging of this umpteenth revival was however masterfully managed by Jose Maria Condemi. Hopefully Mr. Condemi will write a book to reveal the now secret (maybe best left untold stories) of staging these San Francisco Opera Tosca follies.
Michael Milenski
Cast and Production
Floria Tosca: Patricia Racette; Mario Cavaradossi: Brian Jagde; Baron Scarpia: Mark Delavan; Angelotti: Christian Van Horn; Spoletta: Joel Sorensen; Sacristan: Dale Travis; Sciarrone: Ao Li; Jailer: Ryan Kuster; Shepherd Boy: Ryan Nelson-Flack. San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti; Stage Director: Jose Maria Condemi; Production Designer: Thierry Bosquet; Lighting Designer: Christopher Maravich. San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. November 16, 2012.