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.
![Luca Pisaroni [Photo by Marco Borggreve]](http://www.operatoday.com/LucaPisaroni.png)
Bass baritone, Luca Pisaroni, known to opera lovers throughout the world for his excellence in Mozart roles, offered San Diego vocal aficionados a double treat on October 28th: his mellifluous voice, and a recital of German songs.
The singer, who has been gradually expanding his operatic repertoire, has performed the Baroque roles of Maometto in Rossini’s Maometto II, Argante in Handel's Rinaldo and Pollux in Rameau's Castor et Pollux. American Mozart lovers, however, need not fear losing him. His first two American performances next year will be as Almaviva in San Francisco and Leporello at the Metropolitan Opera.
Most recently, Pisaroni, who now lives in Austria, has expressed a passion for German lieder. His San Diego recital at the La Jolla Atheneum was the fourth and last stop in an international German song tour in collaboration with pianist Wolfram Rieger. Their journey began on October 10 at Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw, and included performances in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Auditorium and the Vancouver Recital Society.
This was a generous program of songs by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert, which warmed up both vocally and emotionally as the evening progressed. The first Mozart songs found the singer a bit tentative and with slightly raspy low tones. With his voice warmed through the Mozart pieces, Mr. Pisaroni chose a lyrical, Italianate approach to them, producing flowing legato phrases, rather than coloring his voice to interpret words and emotion. The group of more dramatic Beethoven songs which followed, concluded with an ardent performance of 'Adelaide', and led into Mendelssohn songs and more exciting vocal territory. Mr. Pisaroni's full voiced and moving interpretation of Mendelssohn's 'Reiselied' (Traveler's Song), brought the first half of the program to a rousing conclusion..
The entire second half, which was devoted to Schubert - to songs inspired by Heine and Goethe's mostly despairing, melodramatic poetry - allowed Pisaroni to do what he does so effectively in opera - use his voice's range and color to portray strong emotions. From the first painful sledge hammer rhythms of 'Der Atlas' (Atlas), with which the song opens, Mr. Pisaroni interpretation conveyed the weightiness of the Titan's bitter lament on bearing the burden of the world and its sorrows. The singer brought control of voice and line, to 'Der Doppelgänger' (The Wraith), in which a lover has wretched visions of past torments. His 'Erlkönig' (The Erl King), that tempestuous and most theatrical of Schubert's songs, in which the singer must represent three different voices, rang with authority and conviction .
Vehement expressions of pain and sorrow come more easily into Pisaroni's voice than the quiet, inner variety. Songs with fewer apparent contrasts, be they rhythmic, melodic or other, though on equally painful, sorrowful subjects, have yet to engage him with the same intensity. Works such as the slowly paced, 'Am Meer' (By the Sea), with its long and often downward turning phrases, (a lover is lamenting that his lost beloved has poisoned him with her tears) would have benefited from deeper exploration of every word and every curve in its melodic line.
Mr. Pisaroni was not an animated recitalist. Lithe and amusing as he appears as Figaro, his body was still, and his hands quietly at his side. He wore a tight fitting garment with the lapels turned up toward his face, perhaps a bit too “buttoned up” for a warm San Diego evening.
Pianist Wolfram Rieger, always an accomplished and sensitive partner, provided a particularly memorable introduction to Beethoven's 'Lied aus der Ferne' (Song from Afar). I've enjoyed Mr. Rieger's performances with various singers in various venues in the past, but it seemed to me there was something unique about the sound of the great open Steinway piano in that small room, which allowed its 150 listeners to fully appreciate the virtuosity of the pianist's role in the recital.
How exotic in this day and age to have world two world renowned artists performing songs in a living room. This lover of the vocal arts was indeed grateful to Mr. Pisaroni, Mr. Rieger and the Atheneum for bringing San Diego this rare gift.
I would be remiss as a writer and translator if I did not comment appreciatively on the notes that Mr. Pisaroni and the Atheneum provided for the program notes. Not only were they informative, but most unusually (though I'm likely one of the very few people who noticed) the English translation of every poem cited the name of the translator.
Estelle Gilson
Program and performers:
Mozart: ‘Das Veilchen’, ‘Komm, liebe Zither’, ‘An Chloë, ‘Abendempfindung’; Beethoven: Lied aus der Ferne, Der Kuss, Zärtlicher Liebe , Adelaide, Mendelssohn: 'Neue Liebe', 'Gruss', 'Morgengruss' 'Allnächtlich in Traume', “Auf Flügeln des Gesanges' ,'Reiselied'; Schubert: 'Der Atlas', 'Ihr Bild', 'Der Fischermädchen' ,'Die Stadt','Am Meer', 'Der Doppelgänger', 'Auf dem See', 'Grenzen der Menschheit', 'Ganymed', 'Erlkönig','Wanderer's Nachtlied II'. Luca Pisaroni, bass-baritone; Wolfram Rieger, piano;. Atheneum, La Jolla, San Diego, California, October 28. 2014