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.
By the time that he composed Ariodante, which was first performed in January 1735, Handel had more than three decades of opera-composing experience behind him. It’s surely one of his greatest music dramas not least because, adapted from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, it is a very ‘human’ drama, telling of love and lust, betrayal and healing.
The story is set in Scotland, where, Ariosto tells us, 'any woman who engages in union with a man and is not his wife, must be put to death'. In this production, which opened the 2016 London Handel Festival at the Royal College of Music, director James Bonas seemed to travel even further north: there was an Icelandic vibe to the dim hues of cool blue, dull grey and grungy brown of the set and costumes — a monochrome palette and barren ruggedness which reminded me of the violent setting of Orson Welles’ Macbeth. The cast’s distressed combat fatigues and dreadlocks, together with the Scottish King’s pseudo-Arthurian vulnerability, evoked a dystopian hinterland which might be past or future. The bare set enhanced the timelessness: broken branches were suspended aloft, a resolute stump doggedly persisted. In the final act, a purgation by water as effected — not without risk of mishap. Beige curtains swished to and fro across the stage, inferring the passing of time or physical dislocation, but regrettably in noisy fashion. Darkness embraced all — even, at times, the singers, who disappeared into the dim recesses of the subdued stage.
The arias themselves were not encumbered by excessive direction; the singers were encouraged to use the music to communicate rather than indulge in superfluous gesture. The result was directness and a pleasing lack of fussiness.
As the eponymous prince, Kate Coventry worked hard — and with considerable success — to communicate the varied stages of Ariodante’s emotional journey. In the opening act, she conveyed the joy and serenity which springs from our hero’s confidence in Ginevra’s love and his delight at the bestowal of the King’s favour (‘Con l’ali di constanza’) singing with clear, fresh tone and dancing with bright vitality through the intricate melismas. She had staying power too: ‘Scherza infida’ was a bitter explosion of grief, which suggested the destabilising anger which follows his beloved’s perfidy.
As was the case with all the impressive cast, Coventry seemed to have little difficulty with the virtuosic demands of her role: ‘Dopo notte’ was gleefully florid, racing through the three-octave compass and powerfully conveying Ariodante’s almost supra-human ecstasy when he learns that his beloved is irreproachable after all. The part of the hero knight was originally written for Carestini, renowned for his agility and stamina; Coventry suggested that she’d have been more than a match.
Sofia Larsson’s Ginevra was impassioned and full of heart; occasionally the sound was a tad sharp-edged and her intonation took a little time to settle, but when she got into her stride we enjoyed dramatic changes of colour. Her lament of despair, ‘Il mio crudel’, was particularly affecting. Coventry’s and Larsson’s voices blended well in the three duets which Handel provides.
Galina Averina sang and acted well as Dalinda: she was foolishly gullible but her naivety and regret won our forgiveness. Averina has a piercing shine at the top and sleekness throughout the range; her virtuosic cascades were impeccably even and smooth. As the evil Polinesso, Elspeth Marrow exhibited the seductive allure of an Iago; although the part seemed to lie a little too low for her, she sang with a rich warmth and smoothness which, ironically, simultaneously belied and embodied the villainy and lustfulness of the cruel and ambitious reprobate.
Paul Aisher demonstrated an appealing tone and firm line as Lurcanio, although he had a tendency to shout in the more impassioned outbursts. Simphiwe Simon Shibambu was more restrained as an introspective King of unwaveringly regal bearing, but his well-focused, beguiling bass is an instrument of great beauty and Shibambu used it with thoughtful musicality to convey the monarch’s pensive dignity. Tenor Joel Williams sang with rich tone in the role of Odoardo.
Laurence Cummings urged the proceedings onwards at a brisk lick — at times too precipitously, I felt; while dramatic intensity accrued as the recitatives tumbled hastily onwards, the undue hurriedness meant that there was a lack of opportunity to absorb the sentiments of the preceding aria before we fell headlong into the next one. The playing of the London Handel Orchestra was vigorous and strong — perhaps the continuo was a little too present in the recitatives — and there were some well-phrased obbligato contributions from oboe and bassoon. However, I felt that, with greater spaciousness, the cast might have been able to show more sensitivity to the text’s emotional weight. While the performances offered much to admire — not least pinpoint accuracy from some of these young singers in the demanding coloratura — there was at times a certain ‘thrill’ lacking.
Claire Seymour
Handel’s Berenice will be performed on 17 March, in St. George’s Hanover Square; it will be followed by the pasticcio Elpidia , at the same venue, on 31 March. For further details see http://www.london-handel-festival.com/
Ariodante — Kate Coventry, Ginevra — Sofia Larsson, Dalinda — Galina Averina, Polinesso — Elspeth Marrow, Lurcanio — Paul Aisher, King of Scotland — Simphiwe Simon Shibambu, Odoardo — Joel Williams; James Bonas director, Laurence Cummings — conductor, Molly Einchcomb — designer, Rob Casey — lighting designer, London Handel Orchestra
Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, 8th March 2016