‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival (10th-17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse and imaginative programme of 40 performances and events.
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Eboracum Baroque is a flexible period instrument ensemble, comprising singers and instrumentalists, which was founded in York - as its name suggests, Eboracum being the name of the Roman fort on the site of present-day York - while artistic director Chris Parsons was at York University.
‘There could be no happier existence. Each morning he composed something beautiful and each evening he found the most enthusiastic admirers. We gathered in his room - he played and sang to us - we were enthusiastic and afterwards we went to the tavern. We hadn’t a penny but were blissfully happy.’
When soprano Eleanor Dennis was asked - by Ashok Klouda, one of the founders and co-directors of the Highgate International Chamber Music Festival - to perform some of Beethoven’s Scottish Songs Op.108 at this year’s Festival, as she leafed through the score to make her selection the first thing that struck her was the beauty of the poetry.
“At the start, one knows ‘bits’ of it,” says tenor Mark Padmore, somewhat wryly, when I meet him at the Stage Door of the Royal Opera House where the tenor has just begun rehearsals for David McVicar’s new production of Death in Venice, which in November will return Britten’s opera to the ROH stage for the first time since 1992.
“Trust me, I’m telling you stories …”
When British opera director Nina Brazier tries to telephone me from Frankfurt, where she is in the middle of rehearsals for a revival of Florentine Klepper’s 2015 production of Martinů’s Julietta, she finds herself - to my embarrassment - ‘blocked’ by my telephone preference settings. The technical hitch is soon solved; but doors, in the UK and Europe, are certainly very much wide open for Nina, who has been described by The Observer as ‘one of Britain’s leading young directors of opera’.
“We need to stop talking about ‘diversity’ and think instead about ‘inclusivity’,” says Bill Bankes-Jones, when we meet to talk about the forthcoming twelfth Tête à Tête Opera Festival which runs from 24th July to 10th August.
The young Hong Kong-born British composer Dani Howard is having quite a busy year.
For Peter Sellars, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a ‘visionary’ work, a utopian opera centred on a classic struggle between a father and a son written by an angry 25-year-old composer who wanted to show the musical establishment what a new generation could do.
“Physiognomy, psychology and technique.” These are the three things that determine the way a singer’s sound is produced, so Ken Querns-Langley explains when we meet in the genteel surroundings of the National Liberal Club, where the training programmes, open masterclasses and performances which will form part the third London Bel Canto Festival will be held from 5th-24th August.
“Sop. Page, attendant on the King.” So, reads a typical character description of the loyal page Oscar, whose actions, in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, unintentionally lead to his monarch’s death. He reveals the costume that King Gustavo is wearing at the masked ball, thus enabling the monarch’s secretary, Anckarstroem, to shoot him. The dying King falls into the faithful Oscar’s arms.
A mournful Princess forced by her father into an arranged marriage. A Prince who laments that no-one loves him for himself, and so exchanges places with his aide-de-camp. A melancholy dreamer who dons a deceased jester’s motley and finds himself imprisoned for impertinence.
‘Aloneness’ does not immediately seem a likely or fruitful subject for an opera. But, loneliness and isolation - an individual’s inner sphere, which no other human can truly know or enter - are at the core of Yasushi Inoue’s creative expression.
What links Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Cavalli’s La Calisto? It sounds like the sort of question Paul Gambaccini might pose to contestants on BBC Radio 4’s music quiz, Counterpoint.
Though she won praise from the literary greats of her day, including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and Siegfried Sassoon, the Victorian poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was little-known among the contemporary reading public. When she visited the Poetry Bookshop of Harold Monro, the publisher of her first and only collection, The Farmer’s Bride (1916), she was asked, “Are you Charlotte Mew?” Her reply was characteristically diffident and self-deprecatory: “I’m sorry to say I am.”
“It lives!” So cries Victor Frankenstein in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein on beholding the animation of his creature for the first time. Peake might equally have been describing the novel upon which he had based his 1823 play which, staged at the English Opera House, had such a successful first run that it gave rise to fourteen further adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novella in the following three years.
It sounds like a question from a BBC Radio 4 quiz show: what links Handel’s cantata for solo contralto, La Lucrezia, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and the post-punk band Joy Division?
The first two instalments of the Academy of Ancient Music’s ‘Purcell trilogy’ at the Barbican Hall have posed plentiful questions - creative, cultural and political.
For a company founded in 2013, Odyssey Opera has an astounding track record. To take on Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is ambitious enough, but to do so within only a year of the company’s founding seems almost single-minded.
Notoriously difficult to cast, Die tote Stadt has a tireless soprano role demanding both power and grace. Even more infamously difficult is the tenor role of Paul. The indomitable soprano Meagan Miller took on the challenge of Marietta with epic grace and skill, while tenor Jay Hunter Morris heroically wrangled the punishing role of Paul. In the end, this fledgling company boasted a sold-out house to the Boston premiere of this rarely performed opera—and only one year after the company’s inception.
“I think the opera company has already, in a very short order, done some very important things,” says Artistic Director and Founder Gil Rose.
Meagan Miller [Photo by Kristin Hoebermann courtesy of Grant Communications]
Indeed, Odyssey Opera’s previous seasons display an intrepidity and ingenuity in its programming. Late last spring, it offered a summer feast of English delicacies, from Vaughn Williams to Argento. The multi-evening festival meant that opera-goers could take in Powder Her Face one night and Fantastic Mr. Fox in the next. Again, Odyssey Opera forged fearlessly ahead through repertoire that was not only challenging, but obscure enough to cause any major opera house to hesitate.
The cause for the hesitation? The general “unknown” nature of these operas. When planning a season, a company usually must think of its subscribers. More and more opera houses have become a slave to the “subscription model,” in which opera companies hope to snag as many patrons as possible at the announcement of their season. It’s a surefire way to garner followers if the usual suspects are among the offerings: Traviata, Carmen, and pretty much anything by Puccini. Unfortunately, the subscription model has a twofold problem: it limits artistic expression, and it isn’t a guarantee of financial success.
Odyssey Opera Artistic Director Gil Rose has no desire to run his company on the subscription model. In fact, he says, “I refuse to perpetuate a system that is failing opera.”
Tamara Mancini to perform the role of Chimène in Massenet’s Le Cid [Photo courtesy of Zemsky Green Artists Managment]
By refusing the traditional structure of a subscription season, Odyssey Opera has the freedom to focus on two specific times of year during which performances will take place: the fall, with a concert opera, and the late spring, with an approximately two week festival of operatic works before the summer rush to various festivals in the countryside.
This fall, on September 18th, Maestro Rose presents Massenet’s Le Cid, with an 80-voice chorus and the full Odyssey Opera Orchestra. Massenet tops the charts as a composer often chosen for a season at a typical opera house, but the offerings usually include the likes of Thais or Manon. Le Cid is rarely performed.
“I have a real interest in works that, for whatever reason, haven’t made it into the standard accepted repertory,” says Gil Rose of Le Cid.
Indeed, Odyssey Opera’s previous seasons have included composer names familiar to all opera lovers, such as Wagner, Mascagni, and Verdi, but operas with names that even the biggest buffs may fail to recognize. Large orchestras, demanding operatic roles, or superfluous cast size may have been a few factors contributing to these opera’s obscurity, but many times it’s simply the luck of the operatic history draw. Gil Rose brings excitement and artistry back to these forgotten classics, employing top-tier musicians and singers and offering performances that have garnered rave reviews. Odyssey Opera reignites opera with the excitement that has drawn audiences for so many years: the opportunity to see or hear something unexpected.
Paul Groves to perform the role of Rodrigue in Le Cid
“I think that people should keep an eye on [Odyssey Opera] if they want to hear and see things they’ve never seen or heard before,” says Maestro Rose. “It’s definitely not ever going to be run-of-the-mill.”
Le Cid is anything but run-of-the-mill. Based on the tragicomedy by Pierre Corneille, Le Cid presents the conflict of love, duty, and honor in wartime Castile. With lush orchestration and soaring melodies, this Massenet opera is more than deserving of the reinvigoration given to it by Odyssey Opera. Staying true to its mission, Odyssey Opera manages to give the care needed to operas that have unjustly fallen to the wayside. And this is only the beginning—Gil Rose has set Odyssey Opera onto a path of artistic excellence within the realm of exiled classics.
“The metaphor of an Odyssey and being on a journey, and never sure where we are traveling next—that’s Odyssey Opera.”
Le Cid will perform one night only, September 18, 2015 at 7:30 PM at NEC’s Jordan Hall. Tickets range from $20 to $100. More information is available via Odyssey Opera’s website, or by emailing tickets@odysseyopera.com.
Alexis Rodda