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.
![A scene from Cléopâtre [Photo by Christian Dresse courtesy of Opéra de Marseille]](http://www.operatoday.com/IMG_0362-photo-Christian-DR.gif)
There are forces to be reckoned with at l’Opéra de Marseille — a first class orchestra, a first class chorus, first class casts (with notable exception, see below) who inhabit an extraordinarily fine old opera house.
(And, yes, Roberto Alagna as Enée [Aeneas]).
French grand opera adores the mezzo-soprano voice, among its greatest roles are legendary personages who expound human warmth and honest sensuality. Just now there were three of these unique creatures in Marseille — Cléopâtre, Cassandre and Didon — all in the person of French mezzo-soprano Béatrice Uria-Monzon (born of a Spanish father).
Mme. Uria-Monzon was the Carmen ne plus ultra on major stages twenty years ago. Her roles are now mature women of courage and resolve (like Tosca too, Mme. Uria-Monzon’s current rôle fétiche). At fifty years of age now Mme. Uria-Monzon reads as a beautiful woman in her vocal prime. Her sound is big and secure, beautiful and elegant, uniformly produced throughout the mezzo register. Her expressive subtleties, her musicianship are created by rhythm and volume gradation more so than by variation of color.
Not that Massenet’s Cléopâtre is among French grand opera’s greatest works. Having long since given the world his masterpieces Massenet kept turning out operas, the last opera, Cléopâtre, premiered posthumously in Monte Carlo (1914). It is almost the same story as Dido (beautiful woman entraps vulnerable man who abandons her). By 1912, the year of his death, Massenet knew how to write an opera, the final count was forty.
Cléopâtre takes place in a warring world (lots of fanfare) engendering wrenching farewells not to mention betrayals (lots of singing). It was therefore a very pleasurable afternoon if you like fanfares and arias (well, we all do) and you do not look to closely or expect too much. Marseille’s venerable metteur en scéne Charles Roubaud endowed this slight work with a perfect staging that would have pleased the monegasques (those who reside in Monaco) in the heady days just before the first world war.
Its hero, Marc Antoine was impersonated by handsome Canadian (Quebec) baritone Jean François Lapointe who sings well and seems most at home in giddy moments. His rival for Cleopatra’s attention, Spakos was keenly portrayed by Marseille born tenor Luca Lombardo, and Mark Anthony’s faithful and forgiving wife Octavie was beautifully sung by Canadian (Quebec) soprano Kimy McLaren. Conductor Lawrence Foster realized the maximum possible from Massenet’s score.
As Carthage’s Dido in Berlioz’ Les Troyens mezzo soprano Béatrice Uria-Monzon towered in stature far above Egypt’s flighty Cleopatra. Berlioz’ endows his tragic queen with sublime music. The Berlioz muse is iconoclastic, quite personal, even naive allowing this heroine an emotional simplicity and honesty that explodes first in delicate sexuality and finally in rage at Aeneas. Mme. Uria-Monzon as Troy’s Cassandra on the other hand needed to threaten the Trojans with her prophecies. These menaces lie in an emotional range less present in Mme. Uria-Monzon’s persona, though such violent utterances did find resonance within her voice.
It was a concert version of Les Troyens in Marseille, within this format Mme. Uria-Monzon shined, creating first Cassandra and then Dido in her voice then adding minimal physical movement in gesture and expression that carefully etched and held character even in concert format. Overt physical action was however implicit in the Berlioz orchestra, the five trumpets and four trombones detailing its bellicose happenings (the finale of the Trojan War, the proto-Hannibal invasion of Carthage and, not least, the founding of Rome).
Seventy-two year old American conductor Lawrence Foster, the lone linguistically foreign presence (well, save a tenor from Texas), drew an always driving, rhythmically square, colorfully detailed performance from the Marseille Orchestra who skillfully created non-stop thunder, be it military description or deeply personal emotional statement. Mo. Foster is the new music director of the Marseille orchestra, its first in many years. He has the task of honing it into an ensemble of true stature. Much progress has already occurred, there is the assumption that obvious deficiencies will soon disappear as well.
The violins are solid (twelve firsts and twelve seconds), the cellos and violas sang quite beautifully. Berlioz makes much use of a wind quartet (flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon) in various combination to color his story, and these players proved fully capable of providing this big time maestro and Berlioz what they demanded. The French horn duet was intoned and echoed in appropriately sweet and supple tones, a very visible and very appreciated orchestral high point of the evening.
Among the high points of the five hour evening was the fourth act Anna (Dido’s sister) and Narbal (a government minister) duet discussing, no surprise, duty versus love. In this concert performance several roles were double cast, not just the tour de force of Cassandra/Dido. Bass Nicolas Courjal sang Narbal, Priam and the ghost of Hector. He is a beautifully voiced young singer who early in the evening had made Priam’s description of the sack of Troy especially moving.
Texas tenor Gregory Warren as Iopas softly sang the Ode to Cérès as well as the Song of Hylas in sweetly beautiful tones (he also urgently delivered a few messenger one-liners). In a staged performance both of these stand alone songs assume greater relief than in a concert performance. Here they were the only episodes where scenic atmospheres were sorely missing.
The field of mezzo-sopranos (not a soprano in sight) was completed by Clémentine Margaine as Dido’s sister Anna and Marie Kalinine as Aeneas’ son Ascanio. Mlle. Margaine is obviously a Carmen of stature whose bolder presentation served to underline the subtlety and delicacy of Béatrice Uria-Monzon’s Dido.
Not to forget the Trojans and the Carthaginians, the eighty or so voices of the Opéra de Marseille chorus who suffered and raged with Berlioz’ inimitable gusto and proved themselves an ensemble of true operatic stature. The tenors made an exceptionally beautiful sound.
That leaves Aeneas, Roberto Alagna. Sad to say this famous tenor was a black hole in an otherwise superb evening. He was obviously unprepared, losing his way in his big moment in the fifth act; unsure of himself he resorted to inappropriate tenorial vocal mannerisms (heaving the voice, exaggerated scooping); unable to trust his musicianship he compensated with non-stop gesturing; apparently unable to deliver the nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie he availed himself of sotto voce, vocal trickery that simply caricatured a lover. Most disappointing were the antics he affected as he was being booed.
Michael Milenski
For an appreciation of the Opéra de Marseille please see Marseille, Capital of European Culture
Cléopâtre: Cast and Production
Cléopâtre: Béatrice Uria-Monzon; Octavie: Kimy McLaren; Charmion: Antoinette Dennefeld; Marc Antoine: Jean-François Lapointe; Spakos: Luca Lombardo; Ennius: Philippe Ermelier; Amnhès: Bernard Imbert; Sévérus: Jean-Marie Delpas. Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra de Marseille conducted by Lawrence Foster. Mise en scéne: Charles Roubaud; Décors: Emmanuelle Favre; Vidéos: Marie-Jeanne Gauthé; Costumes: Katia Duflot; Lumières: Marc Delamézière. Opéra de Marseille, June 23, 2013.
Les Troyens: Cast and Production
Didon / Cassandre: Béatrice Uria-Monzon; Ascagne: Marie Kalinne; Anna: Clémentine Margaine; Hécube / Polyxène: Anne-Marguerite Werster; Enée: Roberto Alagna; Chorèbe: Marc Berrard; Panthée / Mercure: Alexandre Duhamel; Narbal / Priam / Ombre d’Hector: Nicolas Courjal; Iopas / Hylas: Gregory Warren; Un Chef grec / 1ère sentinelle: Bernard Imbert; Prêtre de Pluton / 2ème sentinelle: Antoine Garcin; Helenus: Wilfried Tissot. Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra de Marseille conducted by Lawrence Foster. Opéra de Marseille, July 15, 2013.
Photos: copyright Christian Dresse, courtesy of Opéra de Marseille