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.
![Natalia Ushakova as Maliella and Ivan Ožvát as Biaso [Photo courtesy of Slovenské národné divadlo]](http://www.operatoday.com/Jewels_02.png)
With 27 named roles and a large orchestra (including instruments such as mandolins), Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s 1911 opera, I gioielli della Madonna (The Jewels of the Madonna) might seem a surprising choice for a relatively small opera house like the Slovak National Theatre / Slovenské národné divadlo (SND) in Bratislava, Slovakia.
But the company’s music director and opera director is the Austrian conductor Friedrich Haider, who is something of a Wolf-Ferrari expert having recorded Wolf-Ferrari’s opera Il segreto di Susanna (Susanna’s secret) and the violin concerto, and the house has a large permanent ensemble with a big choir from whom it was possible to cast the large number of important comprimario roles.
Rather impressively the opera was double case and we saw the premiere at SND’s New Building on Friday 29 May 2015 with Kyungho Kim as Gennaro, Denisa Šlepkovská as Carmela, Natalia Ushakova as Maliella and Daniel Čapkovič as Rafaele, conducted by Friedrich Haider, directed by Manfred Schweigkofler with sets designed by Michele Olcese and costumes by Concetta Nappi. The SND Orchestra and Chorus, was joined by the Bratislava Boys Choir, and the Pressburg Singers.
Kyungho Kim as Gennaro
The plot is relatively straightforward, Gennaro (Kyungho Kim) is a young blacksmith who has three obsessions, his mother Carmela (Denisa Šlepkovská), the Madonna and his foster sister Maliella (Denisa Šlepkovská). This latter is rather wild, wanting to enjoy life but is kept confined by her family. She is being courted by Rafaele (Daniel Čapkovič) the head of the local Camorra.
The first act centres on a celebration for the feast of Our Lady, with a gloriously chaotic series of processions and lots of street characters, including an appearance from the statue of the jewelled Madonna. Act two is in the courtyard of Gennaro’s home and is a series of interactions, between Gennaro and Carmela, Gennaro and Maliella, Maliella and Rafaele. we learn that Carmela’s protective mothering of Gennaro arose because she nearly lost him as a child, and the fostering of Maliella was the result of a vow to the virgin if Gennaro survived. Gennaro tells Maliella of his obsession and she laughs at him, he vows to steal the jewels of the Madonna for her. Later Rafaele comes courting and the two have a love scene through the grill locking Maliella in. Finally Gennaro reappears with the jewels and the act closes with Gennaro covering Maliella with jewels before claiming her virginity. Act three is Rafaele’s gang’s hangout; an orgy in progress is interrupted first by the arrival of Maliella, traumatised by Gennaro’s taking of her virginity, and then by Gennaro with the jewels themselves. Though the gang has been having an orgy beneath an image of the Madonna, they are shocked by Gennaro’s sacrilege. But Wolf-Ferrari knew Jung and was cleaarly interested in the madonna/mother/whore parallels, and it is clear that for Rafaele, Gennaro has stolen the jewels (virginity) of his madonna (Maliella), and Rafaele loses interest in Maliella.
Though I gioielli della Madonna is commonly linked to the later Verismo school, the opera has both dramatic and musical differences. True the story has the dramatic shock value of a Verismo opera, but Wolf-Ferrari is like Verdi in being interested in the consequences of actions. Operas like Pagliacci end with the major dramatic coup, in I gioielli della Madonna Wolf-Ferrari continues into the remarkable third act where we explore the tragic consequences of actions and it ends in a mysterious and unnerving manner with Maliella’s disappearance (and presumed death) and Gennaro’s suicide; no big climactic moment. Musically there are similar differences, and certainly none of the driving passion and big, throbbing, orchestra supported tunes from Verismo.
František Ďuriač as Rocco, Natalia Ushakova as Maliella and Peter Maly as Ciccillo
Wolf-Ferrari was of mixed Italian and German heritage, and German trained in Munich under Rheinberger. His eclectic style is allied to a complexity in the orchestration and structure which makes for richness (when premiered the opera was far more popular in Germany than in Italy). There are tunes a-plenty including popular ones echoing the street celebrations, but all are melded into a remarkable synthesis ranging from Saint-Saens to Richard Strauss, with pre-echoes of Stravinsky and Shostakovich. Rather imaginatively, the Camorra are not depicted by dark music but they make their entrance to a jolly tune on the mandolins, though this can turn threatening when the knives come out.
The plot really requires the opera to be set in the correct period and location, intense devotion to the Madonna is a core component. Director Manfred Schweigkofler and designers Michele Olcese and Concetta Nappi moved the time forward to the 1950’s but wisely kept the basic structures, with Michele Olcese’s sets being formed of panels depicting scenes from Naples thus evoking the characteristic look and feel of the city. The production captured the liveliness and shabbyness of the street-life, but act one is not just about vibrant street life and processions, and Manfred Schweigkofler’s handling of the crowds enabled us to appreciate the quieter moments. He drew strong performances from his cast in all he more intimate moments. The large chorus threw themselves into the action with a will, and sang strongly. Perhaps there was a certain staidness in their manner, but this fitted in with the 1950’s setting, and the orgy was very effectively done yet firmly in period. The statue of the Madonna was a remarkable structure seemingly made of light, the design references became clear in act two when Maliella, covered with diamonds, began to resemble the twinkling brilliance of the statue.
Maliella is a big role, requiring a powerful lyric/dramatic voice. Natalia Ushakova’s repertoire stretches from Violetta through Tosca to Elsa and Salome. In the first act she brought out Maliella’s innate anger, even in the jollier moments such as her hymn to the joys of freedom, but she seemed a little careful and the rich orchestration threatened to overwhelm her. She seemed to relax somewhat in act two, in the series of powerful duets taunting Gennaro and flirting with Rafaele leading to an ecstatic duet with this latter. Natalia Ushakova seemed to throw caution to the winds and gave an incendiary account of her final scene.
Scéna
Kyungho Kim’s Gennaro was a sober, intense young man with a neatly observed obsessive nature. Kyungho Kim’s voice had a richly powerful dark timbre allied to an heroic steadiness which brought forth a finely consistent account of the taxing role. His final scene, being castigated for sacrilege by the Camorra was as powerful as it was harmonically innovative with Wolf-Ferrari stretching tonality to breaking point. Though Gennaro’s obsessions make him a rather difficult to love character, Kyungho Kim’s performance went a long way towards eliciting our sympathy.
Daniel Čapkovič was neatly suave as the oily Rafaele, but allied to a powerful voice with a fine burnished tone. But the role need intensity and power as well as suaveness and a sense of line, and Daniel Čapkovič had the necessary reserves, but he always sang with the required seductivness so that Rafaele was attractive and dangerous, rather than boorish. Denisa Šlepkovská was a strong Carmela, warmly sympathetic of voice and monstrous in the intensity of her smothering love for Gennaro and indifference to Maliella’s will for freedom.
The numerous smaller roles were strongly taken, with lots of cameos on the first act such as Igor Pasek’s dim Biaso, Maxim Kutsenko’s charming Totonno, the Rafaele’s rather scary lieutenants Ciccillo and Rocco played by Peter Maly and Frantisek Duriac, the three girls providing lively entertainment to the Camorra played by Jana Bernathova, Maria Rychlova and Katarina Florova and many, many more.
Just as important was the orchestra, under Friedrich Haider’s strongly inspiring direction. Throughout the orchestral playing had an impressive sense of flow, with details brought out and a lovely timbre to the playing. This did not sound like an unfamiliar score, and clearly there had been a lot of preparation which paid off.
The performances are being recorded with the hope of finding a record company to issue a recording, let us hope that they are successful.
Wisely the production chose not to indulge in too many modish modernism, in such a complex and unfamiliar opera conveying the music and drama’s essential purpose was clearly a priority, and this was certainly achieved. I was in a press party, and was the only member of the group to have seen the opera before (at Opera Holland Park in 2014), and all were impressed both by the quality of the work and the performance.
The performance by SND was an immense achievement for the whole ensemble, but more than that it was a vividly, vibrant piece of musical theatre and showed that Wolf-Ferrari’s opera might yet achieve its place.
Robert Hugill
Cast and production information:
Gennaro: Kyungho Kim, Carmela: Denisa Šlepkovská, Maliella: Natalia Ushakova , Rafele: Daniel Čapkovič, Biaso: Igor Pasek, Totonno: Maxim Kutsenko, Ciccillo: Peter Maly, Rocco: Frantisek Duriac, Stella: Jana Bernathova, Concetta: Maria Rychlova Serena: Katarina Florova. Conductor: Friedrich Haider, Director: Manfred Schweigkofler Sets: Michele Olcese Costumes: Concetta Nappi. The SND Orchestra and Chorus, the Bratislava Boys Choir, the Pressburg Singers. Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava, 29 May 2015.