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.
![Alexia Voulgaridou as Tosca and Gwyn Hughes Jones as Cavaradossi [Photo by Cory Weaver]](http://www.operatoday.com/_B5A0682.png)
Together with fellow playwrights Émile Augier and Alexandre Dumas fils, Victorien Sardou dominated the French stage in the late nineteenth century. Although Sardou was an excellent craftsman who was elected to the Académie Francaise in 1877, his reliance on theatrical devices caused his plays to go out of style after the turn of the twentieth century.
He wrote La Tosca for Sarah Bernhardt who was fond of historical melodrama. It was an outstanding success at its 1887 premiere and for several years afterwards she toured major European cities with it.
Puccini saw the play in both Milan and Turin during its 1889 Italian run and he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, asking him to secure Sardou's permission to use the work as the basis for an opera. Puccini wrote, "In this Tosca I see the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music." Sardou preferred to have a French composer set his play to music but he eventually allowed librettist Luigi Illica to write a scenario.
Illica did not think the work suitable for an opera and Sardou let it be known that he was not a fan of Puccini’s music. Puccini prickled at the insult and withdrew from the scene, so Ricordi assigned the work to composer Alberto Franchetti. Franchetti, however, was not at home with the play and in May 1895 it reverted to Puccini. Illica and poet Giuseppe Giacosa wrote the libretto and Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca was premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on January 14, 1900.
Greer Grimsley as Scarpia and Alexia Voulgaridou as Tosca
On February 13, 2016, San Diego Opera presented Puccini’s Tosca directed realistically by Leslie Koenig who paid a great deal of attention to detail regarding both the major and minor characters. Andrew Horn designed the scenery and Andrew Marley did the costumes. The sets for Act I, the church of St. Andrea della Valle, and Act II, the Farnese Palace, were absolutely magnificent in their ability to capture time and place. The Angel of the Castel in Act III, however, seemed a bit on the heavy side.
Alexia Voulgaridou was tragic and intense Tosca. Her diva was ravaged by anguish at her lover’s torture and she readily communicated her hatred of his torturers. She gave every word of her role a value. In the broader lyric passages she used a huge palette of vocal colors and, although she reserved her strongest notes for Tosca’s passionate outbursts, her tones were always replete with dramatic eloquence. She sang her aria, "Vissi d'arte," with creamy, lyrical tones. Behind the Castel’s angel, the brightening sky showed a glowing stroke of dawn as Tosca jumped toward her meeting with Scarpia before God.
Tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones has a large voice with a smooth, bright, resonant sound. His Cavaradossi was volatile and exciting, so it was an excellent fit with Voulgaridou’s Tosca and Grimsley’s Scarpia. Hughes Jones sang the romantic “Recondita Armonia” with a joyful sound and “E lucevan le stelle” with the pathos of a man who knows how much of life he will lose.
A master of stagecraft, Greer Grimsley’s Scarpia disguised his evil passions and cynicism with a veneer of aristocratic elegance. In the first act, his voice easily surmounted the orchestra and full chorus of the Te Deum as he proclaimed that Tosca made him forget God. In Act II, he made the audience believe he was a connoisseur of fine art while he enjoyed torturing both Cavaradossi and Tosca.
Scott Sikon’s well-crafted Sacristan was outwardly pious but secretly selfish. Kristopher Irmiter's Angelotti evoked a great deal of sympathy but later he became a frightening Sciarrone. Joel Sorensen was an obedient Spoletta and Bridget Hogan sounded like a young Shepherd boy.
Tosca is one of the most Italianate of operas and Italian conductor Massimo Zanetti brought verismo passion and a wide range of dynamics to the podium. He drew a delightfully nuanced performance from the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. On Saturday night the opera audience showed its appreciation for this rendition of the beloved Puccini favorite with a long standing ovation.
Maria Nockin
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Cast and Production Information:
Angelotti and Sciarrone, Kristopher Irmiter; Sacristan, Scott Sikon; Cavaradossi, Gwyn Hughes Jones; Tosca, Alexia Voulgaridou; Scarpia, Greer Grimsley; Spoletta, Joel Sorensen; Shepherd Boy, Bridget Hogan; Jailer, Johnny Bankens; Conductor, Massimo Zanetti; Director, Leslie Koenig; Scenic Designer, Andrew Horn; Costume Designer, Andrew Marley; Lighting, Gary Marder; Chorus Master, Charles Prestinari.
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