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.
![Lenneke Ruiten as Gretel and Kate Lindsey as Hänsel [Photo by Marco Borggreve]](http://www.operatoday.com/H_G_NL_1.png)
A fairy tale that looks like clay animation come to life, terrifies and enchants, and rakes up heaps of middle class guilt—this is Dutch National Opera’s new production of Hänsel und Gretel, set on the most attractive rubbish tip you will ever come across.
Engelbert Humperdinck’s librettist and sister, Adelheid Wette, dethorned the story of Hansel and Gretel as much as she could, making the murderous parents fallible but caring, and dispatching fairy creatures to watch over the lost siblings. The witch is still a cannibal, but she is the single embodiment of danger. Even the hunger beast is tamed early on, when the father comes home laden with groceries after some lucrative broom-selling. Director Lotte de Beer puts the scariness back in by turning the tale into the escapist fantasy of a group of street children who scurry around a refuse dump like vermin, sniffing glue. Instead of angels, they dream of parents tucking them into soft, clean beds. They are terrified, not by the subconscious fear of abandonment and parental infanticide, but by real dangers—neglect, indifference and abuse. Ms De Beer’s concept indicts the world for failing to protect so many of its young while celebrating children’s imagination and resilience.
Kate Lindsey as Hänsel and Lenneke Ruiten as Gretel
To escape their harsh existence, the street children turn cardboard boxes into doll’s houses and fashion figurines out of earth and litter. Stage-wide video projections zoom in on their busy hands. The figurines become the singers, starting with Hansel and Gretel in a giant corn flakes box. It takes a while to get used to the singers’ latex masks and lumpy costumes. However, with regular reminders of the child puppeteers, the Hansel and Gretel “dolls” grow more affectingly human in each consecutive scene. Sets and costumes, fabulously lit by David Finn, combine the magical with the sinister. The midden in Act I provides the plastic debris for a colourful streamer forest. It is then transformed into a glistening mound of candy wrappers in lieu of the gingerbread house. The closer the children get to the Witch’s cottage, the prettier their surroundings become, and the more ominous. The Sandman’s dream dust is a crushed Valium pill. As the feathered Dew Fairy, he puts on a menacing, skeletal bird’s head. His motive for drugging the children is revealed when he turns up at the Witch’s cottage as her accomplice. Conductor Marc Albrecht ratcheted up the horror with a dungeon-dark take on the score. He consistently gave dusky orchestral colours the upper hand, with ravishing results, and expanded the symphonic breadth of the music as far as it can go. The Witch’s Ride was so ferocious, it sounded like a full-blown Witches’ Sabbath. He also created moments of hushed, spacious lyricism, most notably during the Evening Prayer. The Netherlands Philharmonic was in wonderful form, alternating full-force mettle with glowing transparency.
Charlotte Margiono as Mutter Gertrud, Thomas Oliemans as Vater Peter, Kate Lindsey as Hänsel, Lenneke Ruiten as Gretel with Kathedrale Koorschool Utrecht
The singing was equally gratifying, although the sets, with no backdrop or flats, did not favour the lighter voices. Both Lenneke Ruiten as Gretel and Kate Lindsey as Hansel were at times upstaged by the orchestra. Ms Ruiten was pitch-secure and vocally spry. Moving with splay-kneed bravado and singing with unfailingly beautiful tone, Ms Lindsey made a delightful Hansel. Charlotte Margiono’s Mother sounded steadiest and roundest in the lower range. Perhaps restrained by the concealing costume and blank-faced mask, Ms Margiono’s performance was less animated than her previous roles. As her husband, Thomas Oliemans was vocally impressive, full of zing and swagger, and with pin-sharp enunciation. A few phrases in the role require a bigger baritone, but Mr Oliemans wrapped his voice around them intelligently. Hendrickje van Kerckhove sang the Sandman and Dew Fairy with dream-like clarity and the children’s chorus was very well-rehearsed. Peter Hoare’s meaty tenor served the Witch well, but was challenged at the upper and lower limits. Although sung conventionally in comic character tenor vein, this Witch was truly unnerving, not for preteens and teens perhaps (this production is not suitable for young children), but for adults aware of “what’s out there”. The Witch was not a clay doll, but a real person, a bare-chested man in a Goldilocks wig and a frilly vaudeville costume; initially a ridiculous creature, but soon emerging as a sexual predator with a basement full of traumatized children. At this moment, it becomes clear what the elaborate construction of cardboard edifices, fantasy scripts and puppetry were all about—the exorcism of this evil by burning the Witch and unlocking the basement. The festive happy ending is all the more touching for having been imagined in such wretchedness.
Jenny Camilleri
Cast and production information:
Peter — Thomas Oliemans, Gertrud — Charlotte Margiono, Hänsel — Kate Lindsey, Gretel— Lenneke Ruiten, Die Knusperhexe— Peter Hoare, Sandmännchen/Taumännchen — Hendrickje van Kerckhove, Conductor — Marc Albrecht, Director — Lotte de Beer, Set Designer — Michael Levine, Costume Designers — Clement & Sanôu, Lighting Designer — David Finn, Video — Finn Ross, Dramaturgy — Peter te Nuyl, Klaus Bertisch, Utrecht Cathedral Choir School Children’s Choir, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. Seen at Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam, Thursday, 3rd December 2015.