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’.
‘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’.
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.
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.
Company XIV Combines Classic and Chic in an Exquisite Cinderella
Company XIV’s production of Cinderella is New York City theater
at its finest. With a nod to the court of Louis the XIV and the grandiosity of
Lully’s opera theater, Company XIV manages to preserve elements of the French
Baroque while remaining totally innovative, and never—in fact, not once for
the entire two and a half hour show—falls prey to the predictable. Not one
detail is left to chance in this finely manicured yet earthily raw production
of Cinderella.
Company XIV Combines Classic and Chic in an Exquisite Cinderella
Though the story remains faithful to the well-known and oft-interpreted
Cinderella story, Company XIV dazzles the audience with novelty from every
angle. The dancers move with the grace of trained ballet dancers while
seamlessly shifting to modern dance, propelling their sculpted bodies in
rhythmic thrusts. There’s the nod to the traditional movement of the court of
Louis the XIV, particularly in the courtly scenes of the Prince’s ball, but
only for a moment, after which the party devolves into a series of
hypersexualized dance duos.
What’s most satisfying about it all, especially for the opera aficionado,
is that it works. Of all the recent attempts to bring opera back into
relevance or to recapture the excitement, sensuality, and titillation opera and
ballet held for audiences in the Baroque Era, this production is the most
successful. It combines sex with beauty, novelty with tradition, and never
feels like an unconvincing effort to innovate innovation’s sake. It
is sexy, it is innovative, and yet it’s still just the same
fairy tale of Cinderella—except the audience is thrown between ecstasies of
laughter, fascination, and confusing sympathies with characters usually given
perfunctory depictions.
Allison Ulrich and Davon Rainey
The true queen of the stage is Davon Rainey, playing the part of
Cinderella’s Step-Mother. He manages to portray the fragility of a woman
fearing the passing of time and the loss of her own beauty, while instantly
snapping to a cruel, vindictive version of the classic evil step-mother. He
sashays around the stage with equal parts feminine sexiness and masculine
vitality, his body firm and robust with every sharply executed bit of
choreography. The oscillation between the longing between hope for the success
of her daughters combined with her own secret desires to retain her youth and
sex appeal causes the Step-Mother to become one of the most compelling
characters in the show. The final moment of Rainey strutting across the stage,
staring concernedly into a mirror, with Cinderella dutifully at her side, is
one of the most devastating and moving moments of the show. No longer a
confusingly abusive foster mother for Cinderella as in the classic tale, the
Step-Mother evokes simultaneous sympathy and disgust. Rainey inhabits this
complex interpretation perfectly, bursting with an aggressive sexuality
that’s both titillating and tragic.
Austin McCormick’s choreography is rife with symbolism and teeming with
creativity, with profound commentary on not only the story of
Cinderella but greater issues of heteronormative relationships and
gender as a social construct. Cinderella (Allison Ulrich) spends the first half
of Act I on her hands and knees into total servitude to her step-sisters (who
first appear in a comedic, German cabaret-style entrance, the first of many
brilliant syntheses of historical musical periods and art forms dreamt up by
McCormick.) Ulrich spends most of Act I scurrying around, mouselike, as
Cinderella endures abuse and ridicule by her step-mother and step-sisters, used
by them as a literal footstool as the trio cackles their way through excess and
frivolity. With Cinderella on her hands and knees, her step-sisters (Marcy
Richardson and Brett Umlauf, two opera singers with bright and lovely sounds)
sing joyfully of their enjoyment of the finer things in life, with a version of
Lorde’s pop hit “Royal” so seamlessly rendered into
classical-sounding duet that it took me a moment to register what was
happening.
Allison Ulrich and Katrina Cunningham
Katrina Cunningham (The Fairy Godmother) takes the stage by storm with a
husky-voiced rendition of Lana del Ray’s “Born to Die,” and proves in a
few fluid movements that she’s there not just to sing, but to dance. As a
younger, sexier interpretation of The Fairy Godmother, she embraces Cinderella
in an unforgettable dance duet that fluctuates between a struggle for sexual
power and a sensual display of lovemaking. The duet leaves the atmosphere
uncomfortably erotic right before the first of the “drink breaks” that
broke up the acts of the evening. McCormick, seeming to never forget a thread
in the story he’s weaving, allows The Fairy Godmother one last longing glance
at her protégé, Cinderella, as she winds her body with the Prince in a
display of consummation of their love at the end of Act III.
Ulrich takes the traditionally innocent-minded Cinderella and gives her a
trajectory into truly realized womanhood during Acts II and III, her hair loose
and her body open in acceptance of the Prince’s desires; the Prince, played
smarmily by Steven Trumon Gray, croons beautifully before pulling himself up
for a dance into the suspended ring, just in case the audience thought those
rippling muscles were just for show. Richardson, Umlauf, and Rainey appear and
reappear like mirages throughout the ball and the search for Cinderella, their
antics to ensnare the Prince’s affections culminating in The Jewel Song from
Gounod’s Faust. Sung beautifully by Marcy Richardson, this feat of physical
and musical skill has to be seen to be believed. The ensemble struts across
stage with large black narration cards, when they’re not busy dancing with
finely executed fervor across the stage.
Company XIV’s production of Cinderella is a true modern
Gesamtkunstwerk. No detail is left unforgotten, from the careful
bedazzling of the Louis XIV-style dance shoes to the final spotlight on
Cinderella, a fairytale maiden who learns that all dreams must end.
![Allison Ulrich [Photo by Mark Shelby Perry]](http://www.operatoday.com/Company_XIV_3.png)
