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.
![Kate Aldrich is Arden Scott and Michael Mayes is Wendell Swann. [Photo by Karen Almond]](http://www.operatoday.com/KA1_0140A.png)
On May 7, 2016, San Diego Opera presented the West Coast premiere of Great Scott, an opera by Terrence McNally and Jake Heggie. McNally’s original libretto pokes fun at everything from football to bel canto period opera. It includes snippets of nineteenth century tunes as well as Heggie's own bel canto writing.
On May 7, 2016, San Diego Opera presented the West Coast premiere of Great Scott, an opera by Terrence McNally and Jake Heggie. The Dallas Opera had given the piece a star-studded world premiere on October 30 of the previous year. Heggie is best known for Deadman Walking, which premiered in 2000, and Moby-Dick, first seen in 2010. Unlike its predecessors, Great Scott is a comedy, not just an amusing work, either, but a rollicking belly laugh-inspiring comedy.
McNally’s original libretto pokes fun at everything from football to bel canto period opera. It includes snippets of nineteenth century tunes as well as Heggie's own bel canto writing. He writes great faux Rossini. One of the most often quoted passages is the beginning of “Ah, non giunge uman pensiero” (“O, inconceivable thought”), the cabaletta or last section of “Ah, non credea mirarti” (“I didn’t believe I would see you”), the most important soprano aria in Bellini’s La sonambula (The Sleepwalker).
The opera opens on a rehearsal of the bel canto opera-within-an-opera, Rosa Dolorosa, figlia di Pompei, which had been composed in 1835, but never performed. Great diva Arden Scott, sung by Kate Aldrich, will portray the title role in a performance at the diva’s hometown opera company and she tells the company how she discovered the long-lost manuscript. Aldrich sang her long and difficult role with golden bel canto tones when they were called for and with dramatic emphasis when that was appropriate.
(Left to right) Michael Mayes is Wendell Swann, Garrett Sorenson is Anthony Candolino, Joyce El-Khoury is Tatyana Bakst, Anthony Roth Costanzo is Roane Heckle, and Philip Skinner is Eric Gold
Traveling with Arden is a young and brash but tremendously talented Eastern European soprano, Tatyana Bakst. Played to the hilt by Joyce El-Khoury, her “variations” on the National Anthem at the beginning of Act II brought the house down. Later, when Sid Taylor, portrayed by Nathan Gunn, comes in to pick up his son who is in the opera, he and Arden, who has once been lovers, sing of their different life styles.
Arden’s one-time piano teacher, Winnie Flato, sung by Frederica von Stade, is sponsoring the show that local performing company, American Opera, is relying upon to put its finances in the black. She is also concerned about her husband’s football team, The Grizzlies, which hopes to win the Superbowl on the same night the opera opens. The team’s financial position is as perilous as that of American Opera. Thus, football lovers and opera lovers have something in common. A singer many of us remember as Cinderella, Cherubino, and Octavian, von Stade is as charming as ever and still has that special sound in her voice that appeals directly to the listener’s emotions.
Conductor Eric Gold, sung authoritatively by Philip Skinner, is surprised by Stage Director Roane Heckel’s personal interest and here the plot adds a few extra strands that have to be tied up later. Dulcet-voiced counter tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, one of the few cast members who appeared in Dallas and San Diego, sang Roane with bell-like tones while acting the part of a very recognizable stage director. He is a gem and I hope we will soon hear him again in San Diego. Garrett Sorenson as Anthony Candolino and Michael Mayes as Wendell Swann rounded out the cast as a tenor and a baritone who manage to impress Winnie for the future.
A scene from Rosa Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompei the opera within the opera Great Scott
Jack O’Brien’s stage direction was totally realistic and thoroughly amusing. Bob Crowley’s diva costumes were spectacular for both Arden and Tatyana. His outfits for Winnie were amusing and eye-catching and his costuming for the other characters was always appropriate for the time and place. Crowley's scenery and Elaine J. McCarthy’s projections put Tatyana in front of an American flag for the football game and allowed Arden to sing Rosa’s final scene before a monumental version of Vesuvius. Both stage pictures worked amazingly well, but I did wonder why it took so long to lower Rosa’s sacrificial alter ego into the caldera.
Choreographer John de los Santos gave us interesting dances and Chorus Master Charles Prestinari’s singers sang in exquisite harmony while letting us understand the words. Maestro Joseph Mechavich brought out the San Diego Symphony Orchestra’s ability to play the music of both bel canto and twenty-first century opera with consummate skill. This was a wonderful night at San Diego Opera and a most auspicious rendition of a fabulous new opera.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Eric Gold/Ghost of Bazetti, Philip Skinner; Tatyana Bakst, Joyce El-Khoury; Winnie Flato, Frederica von Stade; Anthony Candolino, Garrett Sorenson; Wendell Swann, Michael Mayes; Roane Heckel, Anthony Roth Costanzo; Arden Scott, Kate Aldrich; Sid Taylor, Nathan Gunn; Tommy Taylor, Ezra Dewey; Anonymous Voice, Steve Hoagland; Amor Lawrence Gonzalez; Announcer, Christopher James Stephens; Conductor, Joseph Mechavich; Stage Director, Jack O’Brien; Set and Costume Designer, Bob Crowley; Lighting Designer, Brian MacDevitt; Projections Designer, Elaine J. McCarthy; Choreographer John de los Santos; Chorus Master, Charles Prestinari; Supertitles, Charles Arthur.