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.
![Ildar Abdrazakov as Mefistofele [Photo by Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/SFO_Mef_15.png)
Here is the exception. The revival of an old opera production need not always be perceived as an expedient (read cheap) solution to getting a season of opera put together, but may pass instead as an artistically thoughtful choice.
Just now San Francisco Opera has presented Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, in a 25 year old production by Canadian stage director Robert Carsen who was 34 years old at its premiere in Geneva in 1988. Carsen’s production, designed by Michael Levine (who was 27 years old back in 1988), is brilliantly witty. Maybe its racy titillations (bared female breasts and exposed male genitalia) were racier back in the ’80’s than they are now but they still brightly illuminate Mefistofele as one of opera’s more bizarre artifacts.
What the Carsen production did not have at its 1989 premiere in San Francisco was conductor Nicola Luisotti whose exuberant showmanship and spectacular musical making have found, finally, an opera production that is their match. It is no secret that the glories of the Luisotti pit frequently dwarf what is on the stage in San Francisco, or more often ignore the intentions of the stage, meager may they be these days. Here however the Boito, Carsen and Luisotti collaboration was one clearly envisioned in heaven.
The 1860’s were heady times in Paris and Milan, Offenbach was at the peak of his fame making fun of both love and antiquity sparing, strangely, religion. In Milan however there were a few outrageous poets (messy haired ones) who took on anything sacred to the Italians, be it personal appearance, God or Goethe. One of them (these scapigliature) was Arrigo Boito, 26 years old in 1868, who deftly extracted a few passages from the bible of bourgeois Romanticism, i.e. Goethe’s Faust and construed them to cruelly satirize nineteenth century self-fulfillment aspirations.
Patricia Racette as Margherita and Ramón Vargas as Faust
These were not modest times operatically — Verdi’s Don Carlo comes in 1867. The fully developed 19th century Italian sound was widespread as evidenced by the many composers who contributed to the Messa per Rossini (1869). A man of letters and a man of his times Boito could write music as well as librettos. The operas Mefistofele and Nerone are his musical legacy. Their style is typically Italian of the period, warmed somewhat with oltralpe sonorities (beyond the Alps means Wagnerian, a dirty word in Italy just then). It is good music.
Obviously Boito’s Mefistofele is massive, given it addresses the always important struggles of good and evil. God and the Devil confront one another, Faust is in between, Marguerite is pathetic and Helen of Troy is untouchable. Robert Carsen manages all this with enough supernumeraries to turn a village fair into a Chinese New Year of the Snake running amok in the Garden of Eden, a huge chorus of nymphs and satyrs is unleashed into an out-of-control bacchanal, and a pristine ballet revels to the beauty of classical architecture shining in an hyper elaborated harp solo. All of this overseen by a massive chorus of heavenly angels who are joined by legions of cherubim at the moments when the glory of God rises to its utmost clamor.
Needless to say everyone has a very good time, most of all maestro Luisotti who can unleash the forces of heaven themselves in massive choirs of praise as well as confront God with outright derision — those two piccolos screaming over the orchestra were only some of the whistles you heard (the fischio [whistle] is obvious derision in Italy), the rest were real. In spite of being condemned to death even poor Marguerite has a good time — her aria is one of the splendors of the soprano repertory. It was in fact an exquisite duet with the maestro, the diva in quite fine voice at the third performance.
Carsen’s indulgence of affection for Boito’s youthful escapade was sweetened by the casting of Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas as Faust. His is a voice of great beauty still most at home in the light lyric repertory (he was San Francisco’s Nemorino). At 53 years of age Vargas now takes on heavier roles, like Boito’s Faust as well as Gustavo III in Un ballo in maschera last summer at Orange. Here he sang with consummate style and musicianship, and with the maestro made a quite moving declaration of love to Helen. Nonetheless he remains a miniature tenor for the big repertory and therefore could perfectly embody a pretend Romantic hero caught up in all this fun.
Much the same can be said for the Mefistofele of Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov. He gave a maximally effective performance, vocally and histrionically. In fact Mr. Abdrazakov was absolutely adorable as a pretend villain whose sole purpose is to give rise to lots of fortissimo music. While it surely was expedient to cast Adler Fellow Marina Harris as Helen of Troy it was not appropriate. However fine a young singer may be it is rare that an Adler Fellow may have the presence, personality and experience to hold the stage in a major role. After all, San Francisco Opera boasts that it performs on the international level. Or does it?
The Robert Carsen/Michael Levine production is huge, and hugely fun. It is a masterpiece that was well worth reviving. If you miss it just now in San Francisco you can catch it at the Met in 2015 (conductor and cast not yet announced). And, uhm, it was anything but cheap to get this production back on the stage after twenty five years of travel.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Mefistofele: Ildar Abdrazakov; Margherita: Patricia Racette; Faust: Ramón Vargas; Elena: Marina Harris; Marta: Erin Johnson; Pantalis: Renée Rapier; Wagner/Nereo: Chuanyue Wang. Chorus and Orchestra of the San Francisco Opera. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti; Production: Robert Carsen; Stage Director: Laurie Feldman; Choreographer: Alphonse Poulin; Set and Costume Design: Michael Levine; Lighting Design: Gary Marder. San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. September 14, 2013.