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.
![John Eliot Gardiner [Photo by BBC/Chris Christodoulou]](http://www.operatoday.com/Gardiner.png)
John Eliot Gardiner conducted a much anticipated performance of Monteverdi’s first opera L’Orfeo at the BBC Proms on 4 August 2015, with his own Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.
This was far more than a mere concert, performed from memory by the choir and a team of young soloists includingKrystian Adam as Orfeo, Mariana Flores as Eurydice and La Speranza, FrancescaAspromonte as La Musica and La Messagera,Gianluca Buratto as Caronte and Plutone,Francesca Boncompagni as Proserpina,Andrew Tortise, Nicholas Mulroy, Esther Brazil, Gareth Treseder, James Hall and David Shipley, this was a full staging with action and dancing taking place on the platform in and around the instrumentalists.
The vast expanse of the Royal Albert Hall is, frankly, not the most sensible place to perform a work like L’Orfeo. It demanded, and received, intense concentration from the audience. John Eliot Gardiner used quite large forces, with a choir of over 40 (including eight members of the Monteverdi Choir Apprentices Programme). The soloists were also in this group with most stepping out to sing their roles. The orchestra numbered some 30 people, but the moments when they were all playing was very rare and much of the vocal line was accompanied by the continuo group of harpsichord, organ, harp, cello and four chitarrones.The peculiar effect of the acoustic could be heard in the opening toccata when the cornetts and sackbuts filled the hall, leaving the other instruments virtually inaudible.
Monteverdi Choir with Krystian Adam in the foreground
John Eliot Gardiner is a veteran of Proms performances and understands how to make the Royal Albert Hall work. His tempos allowed space for the music to develop and it was noticeable that he directed all the music, even the smaller scale sections where in a smaller venue the conductor would be redundant. But Gardiner’s speeds seemed as if they were also a personal choice, this felt like a performance where we were being encouraged to stop and smell the daisies. There was a consistently relaxed feeling, and a constant sense of allowing space for the elaborate vocal lines to flourish. The great moments such as Orfeo’s Possente spirto possessed a mesmerising beauty and a sense that the incredible ornament was really part of the music, but they completely lacked urgency and a feeling of the drama progressing. L’Orfeo is an opera in which very little happens and we did rather lose the sense of a dramatic narrative. This was perhaps one of the longest performances I have experienced, lasting well over two hours if you include the pauses for re-tuning with well over 110 minutes of music.
This was very much an all singing, all dancing production. Mariana Flores and Francesca Aspromonte took a lively part in the dancing during Acts One and Two, and there was no sense that this staging was ‘semi’, it fully occupied the stage. No director or choreography was credited, but the singers all used a rather stylised gestural language which, in a performer like Krystian Adam, I started to find mannered rather than expressive. One of the strengths was the intense way the smaller roles were characterised, the various nymphs, shepherds and spirits who step out from the chorus and then retire. Here they became a strong part of the drama.
For me the most thrilling moment was the opening, with the Prologue sung by Francesca Aspromonte as La Musica. She sang with daring slowness, but made every single note and phrase tell despite quite a slim-line voice. Having a number of native Italian speakers in the cast meant that this was a production in which the text really did mean something, and we certainly didn’t need surtitles. Rather neatly Aspromonte accompanied herself (very creditably) on a guitar at one point. Not every singer managed to make such a strong impression, but when Aspromonte returned as La Messagiera she was equally vivid, though here she was forced to deliver the solo whilst walking through the promenaders accompanied simply by an ambulant chitarrone player.
Mariana Flores and Francesca Aspromonte (dancers)
Mariana Flores was a charming, soft-grained Eurydice who never quite managed to make a strong impression musically and rather over-acted her love for Orfeo to compensate. She made a poised La Speranza.
Krystian Adam as Orfeo was of course the centre of attention. Adam did not sing to the hall, and forced everyone to concentrate, to centre their attention on him. It was a performance well worth concentrating on. He has a lovely, flexible soft-grained lyric voice and had clearly though about the intensely elaborate vocal line so that it had a naturalness to the way it sat in his voice. Possente spirto was completely mesmerising, and time really did stop. Fatally so, in that we often seemed to lose a sense of dramatic urgency. But this was one of the most beautiful accounts of the role that I have ever heard.
Gianluca Buratto was a wonderfully dark voice Plutone and Caronte. Finely implacable as Caronte, he revealed ultimately a softer side as Plutone. Here he was aided by Francesca Boncomopagni’s elegant, slim-voice but highly expressive Proserpina.
The smaller roles were all very finely taken. Esther Brazil stood out as the Nymph, whilst Andrew Tortise effortlessly commanded both the music and the stage as Shepherd I and Apollo. I am a little unclear who played whom for the rest, as I think the programme got things wrong. Gareth Treseder was credited as Shepherd 2 and Spirit 2, with Nicholas Mulroy as Spirit 1, but I think that it was the other way round. No matter, they and James Hall and David Shripley, produced some vivid and highly characterised singing.
The Monteverdi Choir were in superb form, singing with a lovely flexibility and vividness. The performance was almost worth it for them alone, and the lightness of their performance belied the large number.
All were well supported by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists. Inevitably in a venue as large as the Royal Albert Hall the individual solo instrumental contributions can blur, but the overall effect was a stunning riot of virtuoso technique and orchestral colour.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner presided over a profoundly beautiful, and strongly characterised account of the score. There were some glorious moments, and this was very much about the power of music. But, for me, Gardiner’s approach robbed it of the underlying dramatic urgency that the plot needs.
Robert Hugill
Cast and production information:
Orfeo: Krystian Adam, Eurydica/La Speranza: Mariana Flores, La Musica/La Messagera: Francesca Aspromonte, Caronte/Plutone: Gianluca Buratto, Proserpina: Francesca Boncompagni, Andrew Tortise, Nicholas Mulroy, Esther Brazil, Gareth Teseder, James Hall, David Shipley.Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Sir John Eliot Gardiner. BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, 4 August 2015.