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.
Houston Grand Opera commissioned Cruzar la Cara de la Luna from composer José “Pepe” Martínez, music director of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, who wrote the text together with Broadway and opera director Leonard Foglia. The work had its world premier in 2010. Since then, it has traveled to several cities including Paris, Chicago, and San Diego.
Prior to the arrival of the conquistadors, Mexican music was played on rattles, drums, flutes, and conch-shell horns. When the Spanish arrived they brought violins, guitars and harps, brass, horns, and woodwinds. Indian and mestizo musicians not only learned to play them, they also built their own instruments based on Spanish ideas, sometimes giving them new shapes and tunings. Today’s Mariachi groups include both traditional and folk instruments. An ensemble might include six to eight violins, two trumpets, and a guitar as well as folk instruments including a round-backed guitar called a vihuela, a deep-voiced guitarrón, and a Mexican folk harp. On October 10, 2014 in Symphony Hall, the Mariachi band stood in a semicircle around the back of the stage.
Houston Grand Opera commissioned Cruzar la Cara de la Luna from composer José “Pepe” Martínez, music director of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, who wrote the text together with Broadway and opera director Leonard Foglia. The work had its world premier in 2010. Since then, it has traveled to several cities including Paris, Chicago, and San Diego. This is a different kind of opera in that it combines musical theater with traditional Mexican song.
The story told of three generations of a family who lived on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. It was a familiar situation to many of the Arizonans who attended this performance. The librettists liked these cross-cultural families to the monarch butterflies which migrate from the States or Southern Canada to Mexico. As the opera opens, Laurentino, an elderly Mexican man, lies dying while his American son, Mark, sings a folksong. Lyric baritone Brian Shircliffe sang Mark with golden tones and excellent diction while demonstrating his virtuosity on the guitar. Octavio Moreno gave a fine character portrayal of Laurentino.
Cecilia Duarte and Vanessa Cerda-Alonzo were Renata and Lupita, the delightfully vivacious wives of Laurentino and his companion, Chucho. When the men went off to work in the States, Renata, Lupita, and the other townswomen were alone with their children and there were almost no men in town at all. Renata wanted to see her husband more often and she was willing to cross the border to do it. While she sang of her desire to have her next child born in the States, Lupita was happy in Mexico with the money her husband sent.
Unfortunately when Renata and her small son, Rafael, tried to cross the border, she became weak. She died in the desert. Victor, the smuggler took the boy back to Mexico where he grew up. Laurentino’s son, Mark, was born in the States, so the siblings did not know each other. The finale involves their being brought together by American granddaughter, Diana, sung by Brittany Wheeler. She got the two men to accept each other as brothers.
Although the show wass billed as an opera, the sound of the singers and instrumentalists was carefully amplified. The three women were all mezzo-sopranos but each had a distinctive timbre. Duarte’s lyric voice floated easily on the air while Cerda-Alonzo’s stentorian tones were reminiscent of Flamenco singers. Wheeler’s sound was warm and colorful. In the supporting roles of Rafael, Chucho, and Victor; David Guzman, Saúl Ávalos, and Juan Mejia added considerably to the worth of this performance.
The music was absolutely enchanting and it brought a great many new faces to the Arizona Opera audience. The applause at the evening’s end was deafening. This was the first Mariachi opera to be shown in AZ, but another is already being written. I, for one, won’t miss it.
Maria Nockin