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."
The brand new SF Opera Lab opened last month with artist William Kentridge’s staged Schubert Winterreise. Its second production just now, Svadba-Wedding — an a cappella opera for six female voices — unabashedly exposes the space in a different, non-theatrical configuration.
The Atrium Theater is a huge square room with overwhelming neoclassical architectural elements, said to seat 300. It sits atop the Veterans Memorial just next door to the War Memorial Opera House. The theater is a daunting space, posing enormous challenges to producers. Its possibilities are exciting and limitless. May the new management of San Francisco Opera rise to the occasion!
Obviously it is an impossible space for a natural acoustic to exist or to be consistent. Thus the room has been acoustically engineered to the ‘nth degree with all sorts of advanced technologies. Based on this performance of Svadba the sound was entirely satisfactory, if manufactured.
The Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater in theater configuration
Svadba (2013) is a brief (55 minutes) opera by Serbian composer Ana Sokolovic (b. 1968). She lives in Canada. "Svadba" means marriage in Serbian, a slavic language, thus for these performances at the SF Opera Lab the title became Svadba-Wedding.
There are apparently marriage customs that straddle slavic cultures, one of which is the preparation of the bride’s hair for the marriage day, like Konstantin Makovsky’s enormous “The Russian Bride’s Attire” (1889) that hangs in San Francisco’s Palace of the Legion of Honor. This is simply that. That Svadba is an opera is a question in itself. It may be more of a painting as there is little if any dramatic development. Mainly there is exposition of subject, like your eye following the story told in the fixed images — a painting.
The subject matter of Svadba is of far less importance than the delight you find in the way the story is told. Composer Ana Sokolovic created its seven moments with the six female voices, but they are not always a cappella. There were strategic dings of a bell, plus noises the six singers created with the few props as well as stomping, clapping and tongue clicking.
The sound world was enormous using the tones of trained voices that mostly moved in soundscapes of close intervals, though of course there was much rhythmic invention of syllables that were both nonsense and Serbian. To our Western ears the formulated voice sounds were all abstract (the sounds were so involving that we ignored the sparse supertitles). When there were melodic moments they were in the modal scales of slavic folk music, and this alone created a long ago and far away atmosphere.
There were two strategic and quite beautiful moments when the voices collided on the first inversion of a triad chord, and the grandiose final moment when the voices resolutely landed on a perfect fifth! It was good music. The six singers were superb musicians with beautiful voices.
The subject matter is essentially folkloric though its relevance surely has long disappeared. The metteur en scène, perhaps the composer herself chose to update the imagery to contemporary dress and action. I found this disconcerting given my assumption of dated subject matter, though maybe there currently are some strange customs among Serbian women who live in Canada. However all this female maneuvering was a long haul for the guys sitting at my table (we sat on rented banquet chairs, like at a wedding celebration). We will have our male moment next month when we are offered a gang rape by stage director Calixto Bieito (Carmen, Act I).
The SF Opera Lab did not entrust the staging to a sophisticated stage director who might explore contemporary staging theories and conceptual practices, rather it was realized by Winnipeg, Canada stage director Michael Cavanagh (SF Opera productions of Susannah and Lucia di Lammermoor). Mr. Cavanagh’s concept was that we all were at the wedding resulting from the preparation of the bride’s hair.
Preparing the bridal gown and audience at tables
The opera began on a platform in the middle of the room, then the action moved counterclockwise to a corner of the room, then a second corner, then the third, along the back wall, finally the fourth corner and then back to the center for the ending. It was tiresome, plodding organization.
All movement was abstract choreography in imitation of the music, often breaking natural movement into tiny bits of movement, like the fragmentary quality of the music. The lighting was sometimes fragmentary as well in flashes of pastel color. This music does not need, want or tolerate illustration, it merely requires focus and this we sorely lacked.
The magic of this splendid score was largely lost in this staging attempt. Note that the concept included champagne and wedding cake for everyone.
Michael Milenski