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.
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
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.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
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.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
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.’
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
‘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.’
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
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."
Premièred in 1877 at Offenbach’s own Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’Étoile has a libretto, by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo, which stirs the blackly comic, the farcical and the bizarre into a surreal melange, blending contemporary satire with the frankly outlandish.
This staging at Covent Garden, the first production of the work in the house, throws further ingredients into the recipe and the result is less a connoisseur’s G&S than a Dada-esque kaleidoscope which ultimately fails to give the necessary lift to what is ultimately a flimsy narrative, but which entertains nonetheless.
Chabrier was a regular at the Parnassian salon of the Marquise de Ricard where he met and befriended the witty but warped Paul Verlaine. They collaborated on two operettas, Fisch-ton-Kan (1863) and Vaucochard et Fils Ier (1864), and it was Verlaine who provided - by way of the recycling of the ghoulish ‘Couplets de Pal’ (‘Impalement Verses’) from Fischiton-Kan - L’Étoile’s central, and outrageous, idea: a velvet chair equipped with a concealed protractile rod - ‘The stake is of all punishments the main one ... and the one that provides the greatest pleasures’.
To celebrate his birthday, King Ouf (an anagram of fou - the most simple of numerous linguistic games played out in the text) stages an annual impalement ceremony to entertain his people. Fore-warned of his intent to trick them into becoming the next victim by provoking sedition, the common-folk unanimously eulogise their monarch, but the hapless pedlar Lazuli - angry because he has lost his heart to a beautiful married woman - cuffs the King, twice, and seals his own fate. Except that the court astrologer Siroco - whose own destiny has been written into the King’s will (he will be put to death fifteen minutes after the King’s demise, a measure designed to ensure his loyal devotion) - has deduced from the constellations that the monarch and Lazuli have fates that are inextricably entangled: if the hawker dies, Ouf will follow the next day. Lazuli is whisked from death-row to the royal palace in the blinking of an eye.
In the meantime, travelling incognito, a foreign ambassador, Hérisson de Porc-Epic, and his wife, Aloès, arrive in ‘Nowhere-Land’ accompanied by his secretary, Tapioca, and Laoula, a princess who is disguised as Hérisson’s wife and who is unaware of their mission - to marry her to Ouf. Mayhem ensues: Siroco imprisons Laoula’s supposed husband, Hérisson; Lazuli learns Laoula’s real identity and that she returns his affection; the lovers are joined by Aloès and Tapioca, who are also romantically involved. The King sends Lazuli and Laoula off together just as Hérisson returns, enraged. He has discovered the liaison between his wife and his secretary. As Laoula and Lazuli elope by boat, they are shot at by a zealous guard; only Laoula surfaces, to the consternation of the seemingly doomed Ouf and Siroco. The latter comfort themselves in their ‘last hours’ with copious draughts of Chartreuse. But, Lazuli returns unscathed and Ouf, in relief or inebriation, embraces forgiveness and allows the lovers to marry. When the clocks strike five, with no tragic consequences, Ouf realises that his astrologer’s predictions were wrong, and all indulge in a grand chorus of rejoicing.
Not only is the plot wilfully unfathomable and illogical, the libretto also contains a plethora of droll but untranslatable puns. That may explain the decision by Clément to toss into the surreal mix two additional speaking roles - the Englishman, Smith, and French fop Dupont, played by British comedian and actor Chris Addison and French actor Jean-Luc Vincent respectively - who ‘explain’, and become embroiled in, the action as it unfolds. They lounge in their Victorian/Belle Epoque apartment, all Victorian homeliness and avant-garde chinoiserie, during the overture - a frame to frame the worlds-within-worlds. Addison and Vincent add a piquant dash to the prevailing madness: reminded to speak English because ‘we are in London’, they proffer a few ‘in-jokes’ and, to help us fathom out just what is going on, morph into a Sherlock Holmes of distinctly Cumberbatch-like guise and his side-kick Watson. But, after a (short) while, the interlopers are just that; they offer little of substance and it’s almost a relief when, in the final number, they are envelopped inside the outsize Chartreuse bottle.
Designer Julia Hansen matches - no, surpasses - the narrative eclecticism. We are in the world of a child’s puppet theatre, where anything goes: and so Persian miniatures sit alongside postcards alluding to Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, with its ‘shocking’ plein air nudity (appropriate perhaps since Chabrier acquired the painter’s The Bar at the Folies-Bergère), and department stores collide with harems. The set is stalked by a Ku Klux Klan look-a-like, a sort of Grim Reaper who’s actually an in-the-know monk: that is, one of only two Chartreuse monks who know which 130 plants are distilled into this world-famous, green-tinged liqueur. Cardboard cut-outs play a big part in Hansen’s visual designs; but, though materially flimsy, the hot-air balloon in which the ambassadorial party (disguised as shop assistants) descend to Country X (Wonderland, Never-Never-land?) and the Monty Python-esque ‘pointing finger’ have an iconic weight that is more than Chabrier’s elusive whimsy can support.
Reynaldo Hahn - that naturalised Frenchman and esteemed conductor of light opera, many of whose own songs were similarly inspired by Verlaine - called L’Etoile a ‘rare jewel of French operetta where the buffoonery and poetic verve of Offenbach are presented with all the musical charm, elegance and profusion the latter never sought’. Chabrier’s opera may have been composed in the tradition of Offenbachian opéra bouffe, but its score is as delicate as a butterfly wing. Apparently, the orchestra of the Bouffes-Parisiens were unnerved by the subtle of the invention of the score, and the more conservative critics condemned it as ‘Wagnerian’, but its sparkling brilliance is now acknowledged. Sir Mark Elder, who this year celebrates 40 years of appearances at Covent Garden since his house debut in 1976 with Rigoletto, created an air of relaxed urbanity; but, though the ROH orchestra were happy to enjoy its delights - producing sensitive playing in the short orchestral interludes, and engaging in lively banter with Mr ‘Smith’ - Elder didn’t quite release the score’s transparent grace and slenderness.
The nuanced arias readily capture the ‘essence’ of individual characters.
Also, there are several vivacious and charming ensembles: the abduction trio, the parody ‘Chartreuse’ duet for Ouf and Siroco, the ‘kisses’ quartet, the tickle trio. A cast of principally French singers at least ensures an idiomatic delivery, though it was American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey who stole the show in the travesti role of Lazuli. I wasn’t convinced by Clément’s and Hanson’s initial attempt to present Lazuli as a sort of low-key Dulcamara touting cosmetic elixirs for the wrinkles. But, musically and physically Lindsey is a perfect fit for the role, and captures the pedlar’s wide-eyed naivety. Lindsey’s full mezzo tone charmed and Lazulis’s song of grateful praise to his star, ‘Oh ma petite étoile’ (visually adorned with a ‘Caution: sharp right turn’ road sign) was beautifully phrased, a moment of pure poetry amid the gibberish: the stillness at the heart of a wildly spinning world.
Princess Laoula’s lovely air, ‘Tous deux assis dans le bateau’, was charmingly delivered by French-Canadian soprano Hélène Guilmette; Julie Boulianne proved a rich-voiced Aloès. Christophe Mortagne hammed up Ouf’s histrionics, by turns sadistic and sentimental, but as he veered perilously close to slapstick, melodramatics sometimes came at the expense of vocal precision; and Mortagne, exhibiting a relish for cruelty worthy of the Mikado, had a tendency to shout. Simon Bailey, as Siroco, demonstrated a clear dramatic focus and a vocal directness to match. François Piolino’s Hérisson de Porc-épic and Aimery Lefèvre’s Tapioca were competent but outshone by their female counterparts. The ROH Chorus don’t have a huge amount to do, and at times seemed a little disengaged.
L’Étoile has the impeccable refinement of the finest champagne, and if the light-weight bubbles of Clément’s conception don’t make a lasting impression - and the lacklustre Can-Can lacks high kicks - the production still offers much to savour.
Claire Seymour
Cast and production information:
King Ouf - Christophe Mortagne, Siroco - Simon Bailey, Prince Hérisson de Porc-Epic - François Piolino, Tapioca - Aimery Lefèvre, Lazuli - Kate Lindsey, Princesse Laoula - Hélène Guilmette, Aloès - Julie Boulianne, Patacha - Samuel Sakker, Zalzal - Samuel Dale Johnson, Smith - Chris Addison, Dupont - Jean-Luc Vincent; Director - Mariame Clément, Conductor - Mark Elder, Designer - Julia Hansen, Lighting designer - Jon Clark, Choreography - Mathieu Guilhaumon, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.