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.
![Elizabeth Zharoff as Violetta [Photo by Donald Cooper courtesy of English National Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/ENO%20La%20traviata%202015%2C%20Elizabeth%20Zharoff%203%20%28c%29%20Donald%20Cooper.png)
English National Opera’s revival of Peter Konwitschny’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata had many elements in common with the production’s original outing in 2013 (The production was a co-production with Opera Graz, where it had debuted in 2011).
Ben Johnson and Anthony Michaels Moore repeated their performances as Alfredo and Giorgio Germont and the smaller cast members were the same. The production was revived by Mika Blauensteiner who was the assistant director on the original production. The biggest changes were that the conductor was now Roland Böer, and the title role was sung by the American soprano Elizabeth Zharoff.
Konwitschny’s view of the opera is stripped down, anti-romantic and not a little dystopic. The opera is cut so that it plays for just under two hours, without an interval. The biggest loss is the party entertainment in Act 2, scene 2, but throughout Konwitschny has tightened the focus of the work so that Violetta and Alfredo are even more the focus of attention. The advantage of losing the intervals is the concentration of focus, and the way the ends of scenes bled into the next notably the prone party guests from act two, scene two, crawling away from Violetta at the opening of act three.
And the whole piece plays out against sets of red curtains, effectively this opera is set in the theatre. As the action progresses, curtains are opened so that more of upstage is revealed, till the very end when on a bare stage Elizabeth Zharoff’s Violetta walked through the final curtain (an elegant metaphor, or a corny gag depending on your point of view). There are no props beyond a chair and pile of books, no stage setting, no frippery, no big frocks. The focus is on Violetta, and Zharoff was on-stage virtually the whole time.
Ben Johnson as Alfredo
Konwitschny’s Violetta is a woman who seems to be acting all the time. Only at the very end does she take her wig off (a different one in each scene) to reveal her natural hair; her treatment by the Doctor (Martin Lamb) seems to involve considerable amounts of drugs &mdash: is she ill, or does she have a serious habit? She dies alone, on-stage, with the remaining cast members Anthony Michaels Moore, Martin Lamb, Valerie Reed (Annina) and Ben Johnson in the auditorium. So the focus is very much on the singer. In the 2013 production, Corinne Winters made a coruscating impression as Violetta, and if Zharoff did not quite match those memories she certainly took control of the role and blasted us with emotion.
Zharoff has a surprising sounding voice. Looking through her resume she sings lyric roles with quite a bit of coloratura, offering Violetta, Marguerite (Faust), Pamina, and Constanze. But in the theatre her voice creates a big, vibrant impression partly because she has a significant and constant vibrato. I have to confess that I rather prefer a cleaner voice in this repertoire, but Zharoff made it work. She was adept at thinning her voice out at the top and producing a fragility which was essential to her portrayal. The fioriture in act one’s Sempre libera were confidently done, she was expressive and there was never a sense of having to simply ‘get through’ the act. But with such a vibrato laden tone, inevitably the passagework does get occluded somewhat. This was a performance which grew. I felt that Zharoff was still finding her feet in act one, and there were tuning problems which will disappear. Dite alla giovine was beautifully crafted, but it was the final act which really moved, On a bare stage, with the action focussed on Violetta alone, Zharoff really held the stage and we appreciated the full emotional depth of her high-wattage account of the role.
Ben Johnson’s voice seems to have developed an even finer expressive sheen to it than before, this was one of the most beautifully crafted accounts of the role of Alfredo that I have heard. To a certain extent the timbre was at odds with the visual image, of the cardigan wearing nerd. But the very self-absorbed nature of this Alfredo certainly gets over some of the plots more ridiculous corners, you could well believe Ben Johnson’s Alfredo not noticing obvious things like Violetta selling up. My emphasis on the beauty of timbre should not blind you to the emotional depth of Johnson’s performance too. At the moment you are still aware of Johnson’s careful control, you never felt he was in danger of letting go the way the greatest exponents of this role have done. But Johnson’s achievement as young artist is superb and I look forward to hearing more of him in this repertoire (he will be singing Carlo in Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco at this year’s Buxton Festival).
Matthew Hargreaves as the Baron, Elizabeth Zharoff as Violetta, and Ben Johnson as Alfredo
Anthony Michaels Moore offered one of the most beautifully sung accounts of the role of Giorgio Germont that I have ever heard. Ramrod stiff of back, and clearly unable to communicate properly with his children, this was less of an ogre than a highly inhibited man. Sometimes I wished for a performance that was more rough-hewn, but listening to Michaels Moore’s sense of control and intelligent understanding of Verdi’s vocal line was a joy in itself. For much of his scene with Zharoff in act two, I had my eyes closed. Konwitschny brings Giorgio on with a young girl, the daughter to whom Giorgio refers, and too often during the Violetta/Giorgio duet it was the young girl who was the focus of attention. I felt I was being manipulated and did not like it. This is particularly true when, after getting worked up Giorgio strikes the girl. An act which leads directly to Violetta’s giving an and Dite all giovine, but surely a falsification of the emotional core of the scene.
The smaller characters were all strongly etched, even through the cuts. Matthew Hargreaves made a strong Baron and very much a nasty piece of work, Clare Presland was a party-girl Flora and Valerie Reid was a capable and sympathetic Annina.
Seeing the production again, it struck me how hard edged everything is. None of the subsidiary characters are likeable and the party scenes are positively toxic, why would anyone put up with these friends. They make Ben Johnson’s nerdish and inhibited Alfredo look positively normal. What also struck me this time was the sense of being manipulated; as the production has become more familiar I could sense more the way Konwitschny was arranging things so that we had to react in a certain way.
The production was sung in Martin Fitzpatrick’s modern sounding translation, and diction was excellent.
Conductor Roland Böer is music director of Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano. He conducted a finely controlled account of the score. His tempi were on the moderate to fast side, and this was very modern Verdi without any of the sort of indulgence we might sometimes expect. Böer did allow room for the singers, and his tempi were not overly rigid, but his relaxations and rubatos were relatively small scale. He avoided being overly brisk, but I did want him to linger a little more, to love the music a bit more. That said, he drew a very finely expressive performance from the orchestra with some lovely spun out lines.
This is not a neutral production of the opera (but then no production is), and it certainly explores the sorts of contemporary issues which interested Verdi. The composer wanted La Traviata to be a contemporary opera, something that can get lost in a big frock production. Konwitschny’s approach raises all sorts of issues about what it is to be true to the composer’s intentions. But he places a lot of responsibility on his cast and here, the revival cast were on fine form and created a thrilling evening of musical theatre that left you going home wondering and thoughtful (as well as humming Sempre libera).
Robert Hugill
Cast and production information:
Violetta: Elizabeth Zharoff, Alfredo: Ben Johnson, Giorgio: Anthony Michaels Moore, Flora: Clare Presland, Gason: Paul Hopwood, Baron: Mathew Hargreaves, Marquis: Charles Johnson, Doctor: Martin Lamb, Annina: Valerie Reed, Servant: David Newman, Messenger: Paul Sheehan, Girl: Aven Alqahdi/Emily Speed. Director: Peter Konwitschny, Revival Director: Mika Blauensteiner, Designer: Johannes Leiacker, Lighting designer: Joachim Klein, Translation: Martin Fitzpatrick. Conductor: Roland Böer. English National Opera, London Coliseum, 2nd February 2015.