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.
![Missy Mazzoli [Photo by Stephen Taylor]](http://www.operatoday.com/Missy-Mazzoli-credit-Stephen-Taylor.png)
On October 8, 2015, Los Angeles Opera presented Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The opera was part of L A O’s “Off Grand Program” which features chamber works in spaces smaller than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
On October 8, 2015, Los Angeles Opera presented Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The opera was part of L A O’s “Off Grand Program” which features chamber works in spaces smaller than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Originally performed in 2012 at a Manhattan venue called The Kitchen, Song from the Uproar is Mazzoli’s first opera and a most promising work.
She based the scenario on the journals of Swiss-born Isabelle Eberhardt, which she stumbled upon in a Boston bookstore. Isabelle was an irrepressible free spirit who lived from 1877 to 1904. While other women of the Victorian Age were held captive by marriage and large families, Isabelle traveled North Africa, sometimes in male garb, free of the conventional behavior required of either European or North African women.
A unique person who forged her own path, Isabelle stayed true to her ideals through her short but fascinating life. During her seven years in Africa, she fell in love, was the victim of an assassination attempt, suffered betrayal by her lover, and lost her life in a desert flash flood. Luckily, some of the pages from her journals survived to let later readers know of her courageous life.
Abigail Fischer as Isabelle [Photo by Craig T Matthew]
Mazzoli and co-librettist Royce Vavrek told Isabelle’s story by combining live and pre-recorded music with original video by filmmaker Stephen Taylor whose images of the desert, desert dwellers, and flashes of light transported the audience to Isabelle’s world. Zane Pihlstrom’s sparse scenery and Alixandra Gage Englund’s simple but inventive costumes combined with S. Katy Tucker’s projections and Scott Bolman’s lighting to add to the ambience of turn-of-the-twentieth-century North Africa.
Mazzoli’s music is often subtle and luminous, and with less amplification we might have heard more of the score’s natural radiance. The piece itself is spellbinding and easily kept the audience’s attention for a little over an hour. Singing the role of Isabelle in the fifteen songs that comprise this work was mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer. She has a luscious, creamy, somewhat vulnerable sound and the expressive ability to touch the hearts of the audience.
Sopranos Celine Mogielnicki and Amelia Watkins, mezzo Kate Maroney, tenor Tomás Cruz, and baritone Wayne Arthur Paul assisted her with vocal harmony and added considerably to the piece’s visual interest with their renditions of Gia Forakis’s stylized dance. Accompanying the singers, the NOW Ensemble, led by Steven Osgood, consisted of Logan Coale, double bass; Mark Dancigers, electric guitar; Campbell MacDonald, clarinet and bass clarinet; Andrew Rehrig, flute and piccolo; and Michael Mizrahi, piano.
Produced by Beth Morrison Projects, the opera was part of L A O’s “Off Grand Program” which features chamber works in spaces smaller than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
This work is quite different from the average opera performance and its unique qualities were a joy to experience. The last line of Song from the Uproar reads: “These hours are no more than moments of light in this blanket of blazing stars.” Perhaps they were no more, but most assuredly they were no less. I hope we will hear a great deal more from both Royce Vavrek and Missy Mazzoli.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Isabelle, Abigail Fischer. Chorus: Tomás Cruz, Kate Maroney, Celine Mogielnicki, Wayne Arthur Paul, Amelia Watkins. NOW Ensemble: Logan Coale, Mark Dancigers, Campbell MacDonald, Michael Mizrahi, Andrew Rehrig. Stage Director, Gia Forakis. Conductor, Steven Osgood. Projection Design, S. Katy Tucker. Film, Stephen Taylor. Lighting, Scott Bolman. Scenery, Zane Pihlström. Costumes, Alixandra Englund. Sound Engineering, Jay Eigenmann.