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.
![Amanda Echalaz as Butterfly [Photo by Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of Chicago]](http://www.operatoday.com/MADAMA_BUTTERFLY_DBR_5025.gif)
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s current new production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, an effort shared with Houston Grand Opera and the Grand Théâtre de Genève, tends to emphasize emotional involvements against a backdrop of spare sets.
This exposure of the individual characters, their hopes and conflicts, requires that the performers communicate musically in the midst of shifting narrative turns and a gamut of anguished feelings. The original production was directed by Michael Grandage with sets and costumes by Christopher Oram; for Chicago the production is directed by Louisa Muller. Cio-Cio-San / Butterfly and Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton are sung by Amanda Echalaz and James Valenti, both making house debuts. Butterfly’s attendant Suzuki is performed by Maryann McCormick and the American Consul Sharpless by Christopher Purves, the latter also appearing here for the first time. The Lyric Opera Orchestra is led by Marco Armiliato, who makes his Chicago Lyric conducting debut with these performances.
At the start of Act One the Japanese marriage broker Goro, sung by David Cangelosi, and Pinkerton discuss business matters relating to the house which the protagonist has rented for his current relationship with Cio-Cio-San. When describing both the household members in the service of the bride, and guests who will attend the ceremony with Pinkerton, Cangelosi’s Goro is masterfully acted and sung with obsequious gestures and with a good sense of idiomatic delivery. Mr. Valenti’s Pinkerton seems appropriately distracted when hearing Goro’s recitation of domestic details. Valenti’s facial expression remained unchanged during this scene and the following exchange with Sharpless who enters in a breathless rush to witness on site Pinkerton’s plans. Valenti’s lyrical spirit emerges when he sings “Dovunque al mondo’ (“Everywhere in the world”) in his soliloquy to Sharpless on the wandering and risk-taking Yankee sailor. It is surely this attempt to stay in character, seeking pleasure until he settles someday with a proper “sposa americana,” that explains Valenti’s grinning stage demeanor and understated vocal line. At times both he and Purves’s Sharpless were unfortunately challenged in their vocal projection by overly vigorous orchestral volume.
As Cio-Cio-San enters with her companions, the excitedness of the young women is appreciated by their host. Despite her own demure behavior vis-à-vis Pinkerton this Butterfly is skilled at giving orders to her retinue of serving companions. Ms. Echalaz sings with secure pitch, at first investing her line with a noticeable amount of vibrato as a means to expressing her mix of ardor and nervous expectation. Once her character feels more comfortable in this conjugal setting, to which she assigns blind faith, Echalaz varies the expression of vocal color. She describes her few treasured possessions with a nonchalant tone for the pot of rouge, yet her description of the “cosa sacra” (“sacred possession”) — the knife of her father’s suicide — is pronounced with pure, unwavering focus. Once the Bonze, uncle of Cio-Cio-San and a Buddhist priest, enters and curses her resolve, the ultimate societal and personal isolation of the young woman has begun. As the Bonze, David Govertsen delivered an appropriately menacing and lyrically convincing impression, while also competing with an unyielding orchestral force. The departure of authorities and extended family leave the protagonists alone for perhaps their most celebrated expressive music in Puccini’s score. Valenti and Echalaz sang this duet touchingly from his rising vocal line on “Viene la sera” (“The night approaches”) to Butterfly’s naïve pronouncements “Ah dolce notte! quante stelle!” (“Oh, beautiful night! So many stars!”). At times during this first and the following acts the voices seemed muffled as though the set, constructed of graduated panels, were absorbing some of the performers’ vocal projection.
Amanda Echalaz as Butterfly and James Valenti as Pinkerton
Act Two of Madama Butterfly begins as an extended duet for Cio-Cio-San and Suzuki, the latter despairing over the failure of Pinkerton to return within three years. Ms. McCormick’s Suzuki featured some of the most expressive dramatic singing of this performance, as she released rich, dark pitches in her warnings of their precarious financial household. In reply Cio-Cio-San’s famous aria “Un bel di” (“One fine day”), assuring her faith in Pinkerton’s return, was sung with careful attention to top notes alternating with lines sung piano for their introspective emphasis. Sharpless interrupts this intimate scene and tries repeatedly to communicate the contents of Pinkerton’s letter. Purves’s Counsul showed the ideal mix of anguish and frustration in both acting and singing as he tries to broach the topic with Butterfly. Once the cannon-shot is sounded, Butterfly is again lost in her world of determined faith: she and her child, with Suzuki joining in support, scatter flower petals to signal their welcome of Pinkerton.
The “Humming Chorus” performed between Acts Two and Three was subtly audible as the central structure of the stage revolved. In the final scenes Echalaz’s descent into renunciation of her life and child was as complete as her earlier trajectory of hope. Pinkerton’s brief appearance and aria, “Addio, fiorito asil,” (“Farewell, flowery refuge”) was here sung by Valenti with the ability to integrate this vocal piece into the dramatic flow. His brief lyrical outburst simply added in this production to the tragedy as Madam Butterfly proceeds to the decision that she realizes is now inevitable.
Salvatore Calomino