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.
![Viktor Antipenko and Inna Los as Pinkerton and Butterfly [Photo by Richard Brusky]](http://www.operatoday.com/_D3S4-RICHARD-BRUSKY-872-2.png)
Audiences at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan first saw Madama Butterfly on February 17, 1904. It was not the success it is these days, and Puccini revised it before its scheduled performances in Brescia.
There, it was a resounding success. Nevertheless, the composer continued making revisions. He presented a third version for the Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1906, and more changes on two occasions in 1907. That fifth version from 1907 is the standard score generally heard today.
Giacomo Puccini saw David Belasco’s one-act play Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan in London during the summer of 1900. Adapted from John Luther Long's 1898 short story, Madame Butterfly was based on the recollections of his sister, Jennie Correll, who had been to Japan with her husband as Methodist missionaries. The play opened at the Herald Square Theatre in New York City before moving to London. Puccini’s librettists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, used Belasco’s play, Long's short story and Pierre Loti’s semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel, Madame Chrysanthème, as the basis for the opera’s text.
Audiences at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan first saw Madama Butterfly on February 17, 1904. It was not the success it is these days, and Puccini revised it before its scheduled performances in Brescia. There, it was a resounding success. Nevertheless, the composer continued making revisions. He presented a third version for the Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1906, and more changes on two occasions in 1907. That fifth version from 1907 is the standard score generally heard today.
On June 12, 2015, Opera Las Vegas presented Madama Butterfly at the University of Nevada’s Judy Bayley Theater. Ian Mangum’s scenic design consisted of a small Japanese style house with flowering trees on either side. The Japanese ladies looked most attractive in Jennifer Van Buskirk’s flowered kimonos while the male characters wore period outfits appropriate to their nationalities.
Suzuki, Stephanie Weiss; Pinkerton, Viktor Antipenko; Goro, Joseph Gaines; Butterfly, Inna Los; with chorus.
Following the tradition of Japanese theater, Director Henry Akina used graceful stagehands completely dressed in black with veiled faces to perform onstage tasks such as supplying lanterns for the love duet. Akina showed his audience both sides of the story, Butterfly’s desire to become an American wife and her life in the Japanese society that surrounded her. He enabled the singers to create memorable characters that will live on in the minds of onlookers long after the end of each performance.
General Director Luana DeVol chose large voiced singers and the performance was a golden age singfest. Russian tenor Viktor Antipenko had a bright burnished tone and the ability to connect with the audience’s emotions. In the first act he was a patient and devoted lover who never expected Butterfly to think of him as a long-term husband. Despite Sharpless’s warning, it was not until the last act that Pinkerton realized what he had done. His “Addio, fiorito asil di letizia e d'amor!” (“Farewell, flower-clad refuge of joy and love”) was heart rending as he realized that Cio Cio San’s face would always haunt his dreams.
Moldavian soprano Inna Los is a small woman with a huge voice, and that makes her a perfect choice for Madama Butterfly. Puccini accompanied Cio Cio San’s music with a relatively heavy orchestration, but the story tells us that she was only fifteen years old. At the end of Act I Pinkerton carried his young wife upstage toward their bedroom.
Los’s characterization matured over the space of the opera. A giddy young girl enjoying her wedding at the beginning, Butterfly later became a caring wife and mother who knew how to economize when times were difficult. She sang her aria “Un bel dì” (“One Fine Day”) with powerful tones and passionate involvement that brought tears to many eyes and won her a well deserved round of applause. At the end she had to realize that there was no longer a place for her in Pinkerton’s world. Like her father before her, Butterfly concluded that if she could no longer live with honor she would be strong enough to do what her culture demanded. When she tumbled out from behind the screen there was not a dry eye in the house.
As American Consul Sharpless, Daniel Sutin was a bureaucrat who paid more attention to form than he did to Butterfly’s emotional well-being. He sang with dark tones and his voice was a good contrast to that of Antipenko. Actually, the whole cast was well balanced. As Suzuki, Stephanie Weiss sang substantial harmonies with Los and their Flower Duet was enchanting.
Joseph Gaines was an amusing Matchmaker who added a bit of levity to a tragic story. The choice of Brian James Myer’s obviously shallow Yamadori as a suitor for Butterfly showed how little the men of the Nagasaki paid to serious matchmaking. Eugene (Trey) Richards was an impressive Bonze whose curse colored much of the rest of the opera. Valerie Sokolov Ore sang Kate Pinkerton’s few lines well and gave the audience the impression that she would be a good mother to little Dolore.
Megan Frank’s choristers sang their Humming Chorus with plangent harmonies presaging the tragedy to come. It is the conductor who holds the entire performance together and Gregory Buchalter’s attention to detail made this production memorable. His interpretation involved brisk pacing and increasing tension along with subtly nuanced expressivity as the gripping story drew ever nearer to its inevitable conclusion. Buchalter, the company’s artistic director, is a find for Opera Las Vegas. I wish they would present more than one opera a year with this fine conductor.
Maria Nockin
Madama Butterfly, Inna Los; Lt. Pinkerton, Viktor Antipenko; U.S. Consul Sharpless, Daniel Sutin; Suzuki, Stephanie Weiss; Goro, Joseph Gaines; Prince Yamadori, Brian James Myer; The Bonze, Eugene (Trey) Richards; Imperial Commissioner, Nathan Van Arsdale; Registrar, John Wennstrom; Yakuside, Kurt Sedlmeir; Butterfly’s Relatives: Gloria Grev, Patricia Newell, Claire Marie Reynolds; Kate Pinkerton, Valerie Sokolov Ore; Dolore, Noah Sirulnik; Conductor, Gregory Buchalter; Director, Henry Akina; Chorus Director, Megan Franke; Scenic Design, Ian Mangum; Costumes, Jennifer Van Buskirk; Lighting Design, Virginia Adams; Supertitles, Wendy Moss.