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.
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
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.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
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.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
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.’
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
‘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.’
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
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."
Two of the important late twentieth century stage directors, Robert Carsen and Peter Sellars, returned to the Aix Festival this summer. Carsen’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterpiece, Sellars’ strange Tchaikovsky/Stravinsky double bill is simply bizarre.
A far cry from Christopher Alden’s controversial 2012 Midsummer Night’s Dream at the ENO where 0beron is the headmaster of a boys school and Theseus is his former lover, Robert Carsen’s 1991 production of Le Songe d’une nuit d’été for the Aix Festival floats high above the sexual and social complexities of Shakespeare’s raciest play.
The Carsen production however has become a classic because of the simplicity of its exposition, the intellectual innocence of its concept and the maximal minimalism of its execution. Thus twenty-five years later the Aix Festival has brought this splendid production back to its theater of origin, the Archevêché in a co-production with the Opéra de Lyon where it was staged in 2008.
The excellent Orchestre of the Opéra de Lyon was in the Archevêché pit with its music director Kazushi Ono to illuminate this complex 1960 Britten score, sculpting its lovers, whispering the mysteries of its fairy world, and teasing its rustic actors and opera itself. As often in Britten human actions are played out in an atmosphere of innocence, created just now in Aix by 20 boys from London’s Trinity Boys Choir.
Director Robert Carsen has often collaborated with designer Michael Levine (notably for Boito’s Mefistofele, another Carsen production that has achieved classic stature). The Midsummer Nights Dream exploits a favorite Robert Carsen texture — cloth. The entire stage is a bed complete with huge pillows covered with a brilliant saturated green coverlet. The night sky is another huge mass of saturated color — blue.
Two pairs of lovers in beds, Tytania and Bottom in far right bed, Lawrence Zazzo as Oberon, Miltos Yerolemou as Puck
Photo copyright Patrick Berger courtesy of the Aix Festival
The fairies are dressed in identical blue and green suits, their hands covered in brilliant red gloves, a color that betrays the hidden and maybe dangerous mysterious of the fairy world. The coup de théâtre is when the fairy world instantly vanishes (whooshed into the lofts by cables) and the blank golden lighted stage has become Athens. No hidden digital magic, just overt mechanical human ingenuity — and it is sublime theater.
Nothing could be simpler, and that is the Carsen brilliance. Here this simplicity transforms the absurdities of Shakespeare’s 17th century world into the absolute normal for Britten’s premonition of the psychedelic ’60’s, no questions asked. It is a distilled theatrical language that was new to the operatic stage in the ‘90‘s. It has withstood the test of time, and for this Midsummer Night’s Dream it once again it effectively stripped away layers of insignificant complications to reveal an unusual innocence in the complicated artistic soul of Benjamin Britten.
The Aix Festival provided a splendid cast led by the green wigged Oberon of American counter tenor Lawrence Zazzo who boasts a male colored alto voice that he used to musical perfection. Tytania was sung by French soprano Sandrine Plau in a shimmering and smooth high voice that made her magical. Bottom was sung by British bass Brindley Sherratt with welcomed authority and wit. Central to the success of this edition of the Carsen production was the Puck played by well known actor Miltos Yerolemou (Star Wars VII - the Force Awakens, Game of Thrones, Wolf Hall) whose 5’3” height left him in the world of boys but whose forty-some years added what seemed to be innocent depravity.
One has come to expect excellent casts at the Aix Festival, and this expectation was upheld throughout the huge cast.
A Peter Sellars production is expected to be off-the-wall, as was his Zaïde (2010) at the Aix Festival (a remount of the 2006 Lincoln Center production) where a huge sheet metal wall was pounded on throughout the performance. Just now the maximally gifted, perpetual adolescent (he is 57 years old) has remounted his 2012 stagings for Madrid’s Teatro Real of Stravinsky’s Persephone and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta. Once again it is all about walls, this time though they are full stage flat backdrops that rise and fall throughout the two brief operas, lighted in various hues and intensities.
Usually Mr. Sellars collaborates with off-beat (though firmly in the publicly-supported-art mainstream), culturally diverse designers (like for Perm Opera’s [and ENO’s] recent Indian Queen). But for this production Sellars’ set designer was George Tsypin, an designer fully vetted by virtually every mainstream stage director who toys with advanced theatrical ideas.
We entered the Grand Théâtre de Provence to an a vista set — a few black door frames construed center stage topped by primitive bird heads. We left more than three hours later and it was still sitting there, only by then all of the usual maskings that created the stage picture had disappeared revealing the fully open stage space, Mr. Sellars and Mr. Tsypin stubbornly reveling in this hackneyed image.
Maxim Aniskin as Robert, Ekaterina Scherbachenko as Iolanta, Arnold Rutkowski as Vaudémont
Photo by Pascal Victor courtesy of the Aix Festival
Mr. Sellars has long held a fascination for Oriental theater forms thus the black covered stagehands of Noh theater were transformed into concert-black dressed choristers who assisted in the storytelling in both operas, construing themselves in geometric shapes from time to time on the stage to sing while they made the uniform, formalized arm motions typical of the abstractions of Asian theater.
Like Zaïde, neither Persephone nor Iolanta are masterpieces, all the better for Mr. Sellars theatrical explorations, here light and dark. In Iolanta it was transcending blindness into sight, in Persephone it was the light of earthly life to the darkness of hell, and back again and back again.
Iolanta, Tchaikovsky’s last opera, is more in the music theater genre than it is opera, its simple story (blind girl regains sight) told in a series of songs and a couple of duets that forlornly replay the great Tchaikovsky moments. Mr. Sellars mostly kept his actors standing in the doorways and relegated his romantic leads to mostly lying still on the floor when not rolling on the floor.
Dominique Blanc (in blue) as Persephone, Paul Groves (lying) as Eumolpe, dancers left of principals, plus chorus
Photo by Pascal Victor courtesy of the Aix Festival
Persephone (1933) comes from Stravinsky’s neo-classic period where much use is made of formalized tableau. It is circus-like theater of catatonic rhythmic repetition according to Stravinsky contemporary Theodor Adorno (a philosopher and aficionado of Schöneberg). Considering Persephone from this point of view it becomes a perfect vehicle for Mr. Sellars’ theatrical genius.
When not done as a concert performance Persephone is danced, a sort of pantomime. Mr. Sellars used four Cambodian dancers who naively imitated André Gide’s narrated and sung poem. One recalled the two Cambodian dancers who wandered aimlessly around the stage for the duration of his 1997 Salzburg staging of Le Grand Macabre.
Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis did not conduct the performance I attended due to illness. It was ably conducted by his assistant, and maybe it was this inexperience that hindered any sense of musical sweep to the evening. Mo. Currentzis is director of the Perm (Russia) Opera (about 800 miles east of Moscow) and is now a frequent collaborator with Mr. Sellars.
The strong voiced, Russian speaking cast for Iolanta sang loudly in fine Russian un-nuanced voices and style. The lone foreigner was American bass Willard White who was the tale’s elegantly voiced Muslim doctor. American tenor Paul Groves was splendid as the Eumolpus, priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries (Persephone abducted into Hades by Pluto). The musical highpoint of the evening was the lovely Tchaikovsky a cappella prayer sung by the chorus of the Opéra de Lyon. It is very rare to hear a 48-voice choir of trained operatic voices singing beautiful, soft music. Simply stunning.
The 2010 Aix audience had no patience for Sellars’ Zaïde. The 2015 audience greatly appreciated this boring double bill. Maybe you had to be French.
Michael Milenski
Casts and production information:
Oberon: Lawrence Zazzo;: Sandrine Piau; Puck: Miltos Yerolemou; Theseus: Scott Conner; Hippolyta: Allyson McHardy; Lysander: Rupert Charlesworth; Demetrius: John Chest; Hermia: Elizabeth DeShong; Helena: Layla Claire; Bottom: Brindley Sherratt; Quince: Henry Waddington; Flute: Michael Slattery; Snout: Christopher Gillett; Starveling: Simon Butterriss; Snug: Brian Bannatyne-Scott; Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed et Moth: Benedict Hill, Lucas Pinto, Andrew Sinclair-Knopp et Jérémie de Rijk (members of the Trinity Boys Choir. Trinity Boys Choir; Orchestre de l’Opéra de Lyon. Conductor: Kazushi Ono; Mise en scène: Robert Carsen; Décors et costumes: Michael Levine; Lighting: Robert Carsen and Peter van Praet; Choreography: Matthew Bourne. Théâtre de l’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, July 16, 2015.
Iolanta: Ekaterina Scherbachenko; René: Dmitry Ulianov; Robert: Maxim Aniskin; Vaudémont: Arnold Rutkowski; Ibn-Hakia: Willard White; Alméric: Vasily Efimov; Bertrand: Pavel Kudinov; Marta: Diana Montague; Brigita: Maria Bochmanova;
Laura: Karina Demurova. Perséphone: Dominique Blanc; Eumolpe: Paul Groves; Perséphone: Sathya Sam; Déméter: Sodhachivy Chumvan (Belle); Pluton: Chan Sithyka Khon (Mo); Mercure, Démophoon, Tripolème: Narim Nam. Direction musicale: Teodor Currentzis; Mise en scène: Peter Sellars; Décors: George Tsypin: Costumes: Martin Pakledinaz et Helene Siebrits; Lighting: James F. Ingalls. Orchestra, Chorus and Childrens Chorus of the Opéra national de Lyon. Grand Théâtre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, July 17, 2015.