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.
Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has been a regular favourite at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam since 1996. Her verastile concerts are always carefully constructed and delivered with irrepressible energy and artistic commitment.
Tenor Rolando Villazón was set to make his Concertgebouw debut in 2009, when he had to cancel the engagement for medical reasons. Reluctant to cancel a second time, in 2013 he sang an all-Verdi concert with a throat infection. Happily, this tandem concert with Ms Bartoli found him in healthier voice. In a rewarding programme with music by Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, the two opera stars proved to be a perfect match, in tempermant if not in vocal finesse. Both are stage savvy and have mastered the art of entertaining an audience down to the merest detail. When she entered in a sparkly, powder blue ballgown, with flowing hair and flashlight smile, Ms Bartoli was an outgoing diva in a diva-worthy creation. But when she sang the elated “Non più mesta” from Rossini’s La Cenerentola, breezily trippling through its devilishly fast runs, the gown became a Cinderella costume for this centrepiece aria. With his comic panache, Mr Villazón had the audience eating out of his hand at the click of a heel or a slant of his famous eyebrows. Which is not the say that the two stars won the public over with artificial jiggery-pokery. Their warm personalities and passion for music are their ultimate charm weapons, and these qualities cannot be faked. Between the arias and duets, the early music ensemble Orchestra La Scintilla kept up the energy with its vibrant, woodsy sound. There was plenty of drama in the vivacious overtures, although not all entrances were tidy and the fine dosing of a Rossini crescendo eluded this choice group of musicians. The scintillating woodwind solos lived up to the ensemble’s name and, in an unusual musical interlude at such events, Pier Luigi Fabretti made the oboe sing effortlessly in Bellini’s Oboe concerto in E flat major.
Both singers started with arias Mozart wrote to be included in operas by other composers, Ms Bartoli with flowing brushwork, Mr Villazón with broad, emphatic phrasing. Throughout the evening, his dynamics varied little below loud and, in view of this, “Una furtive lagrima” from Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love was not an ideal selection. The Don Giovanni-Zerlina duet from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, “Là ci darem la mano”, a puzzling substitute for the originally announced soprano-tenor duet from Così fan tutte, gave Mr Villazón the opportunity to flex his acting muscles. This seemed to free him up vocally, as well as tame his arms, which swished up and down during his solo arias. However, although his voice is darker than it used to be, it did not ring baritonal enough for the inveterate seducer. He hit his stride before the intermission, during the Adina-Nemorino duet from The Elixir of Love, “Una parola, o Adina…”. While Ms Bartoli charmingly brushed him off with her precision-steered vocalism, Mr Villazón wooed her with blood-and-guts Italianate derring-do. After the break, he continued to make up for a lack of access to softer singing by caution-to-the-wind open vowels, notes held as long as possible and maximum feeling in every letter. Such emotional generosity in a singer is hard to resist.
Mr Villazón’s brimming intensity was a determining factor in making the excerpts from Rossini’s Otello the most riveting part of the evening. An armchair and a dagger were enough for him and Ms Bartoli to create the illusion of an opera stage, though her gorgeous ivory gown with willow bough pattern must be given some scenographic credit. Although she is comfortable in soprano roles like Adina, roles with a lower centre such as Desdemona, written for Rossini’s muse and wife, Isabella Colbran, bring out the richest shades in Ms Bartoli’s voice. Her Willow Song, with gently rippling harp, proved yet again that, although she leaves audiences slack-jawed by spooling endless coloratura, she achieves true greatness in plangent tragedy. When Mr Villazón entered, coiled with rage, both singers seemed to live every moment of the confrontation. Rossini effectively sets Desdemona’s murder during a storm and the orchestra rose to the tempestuous dramatic challenge. After this tense finale, the encores could not have been more different in tone. The ebullient duo decided it was time to party. They did so with Rossini’s “La Danza”, with tambourines, a cheek-to-cheek waltz to Lehár’s “Lippen schweigen” and a clap-happy Drinking Song from La Traviata. When Mr Villazón actually drank his bubbly, all bets were off as far as the singing was concerned, but by then the public had been well and truly entertained.
Jenny Camilleri
Performers and programme:
Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano; Rolando Villazón, tenor, Pier Luigi Fabretti, oboe; Orchestra La Scintilla, Ada Pesch, concertmaster.
Mozart: Overture to Così fan tutte (KV 588), “Si mostra la sorte”, KV 209, “Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia”, KV 582, “Quel casinetto è mio... Là ci darem la mano” (from Don Giovanni, KV 527), Rossini: Overture to La Cenerentola , Donizetti: “Una furtiva lagrima” (from L’elisir d’amore), Rossini: “Nacqui all'affano, non più mesta” (from La Cenerentola), Donizetti: “Una parola, o Adina...Chiedi all'aura lusinghiera” (from L’elisir d’amore), Bellini: Oboe concerto in E flat major, “Torna, vezzosa Fillide”, Rossini: Overture to La scala di seta, “Assisa al piè d'un salice” (from Otello), “Deh calma, o ciel, nel sonno” (from Otello), “Eccomi giunto inosservato” (from 'Otello'), “Non arrestare il colpo” (from Otello), “Notte per me funesta” (from 'Otello'), “La Danza”, Lehár: “Lippen schweigen” (arr. P. van Utrecht), Verdi: “Libiamo, ne'lieti calici” (Brindisi) (from La Traviata)
Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Monday, 14thDecember, 2015