18 Jun 2016
Nabucco, Covent Garden
Most of the attention during this revival of Daniele Abbado’s 2013 production of Nabucco has been directed at Plácido Domingo’s reprise of the title role, with the critical reception somewhat mixed.
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."
Most of the attention during this revival of Daniele Abbado’s 2013 production of Nabucco has been directed at Plácido Domingo’s reprise of the title role, with the critical reception somewhat mixed.
But, Domingo is sharing the role with Greek baritone Dimitri Platanias, and on this occasion the latter proved himself a stylish Verdian, with a voice that can rove from heroic to suave, from ringing to whispered, and a dramatic presence equal to the task of representing a King who is both crazed tyrant and tender father.
Platanias’s blazing baritone is even across the range and beautifully coloured. Its sureness and consistency, and his confident musicianship, offers him dramatic freedom; powerfully built, whether vicious destroyer or vulnerable patriarch, he commands the stage. At his first entry, Platanias’s King is both dismissively imperious and disturbingly unstable: when he snatches the crown and declares himself King and God of the Babylonians, his repeated assertions of his own divinity (‘Non son più re, son dio’) signal his impending insanity. He has both the tragic grandeur of Othello and the paranoid delusion of Lear.
Subsequently, when Nabucco pleads for Fenena’s life (‘Oh di qual onta aggravasi questo mio crin canuto’) he becomes a Rigoletto - the role in which Platanias made his debut at Covent Garden in 2012 - a desperate father suffering the loss of the one thing in the world that he loves with selfless honesty. In the final Act, miraculously restored to health and reason - his prayers to the God of Judah answered - Platanias recovered his regal rectitude, leading the final chorus with stentorian power and persuasiveness.
In the pit, Maurizio Benini is reliable and brings the vigour of the young Verdi’s score to the fore. The details of the orchestral accompaniments are clearly heard, but they support the voices and never out-shine them. Benini exercises a tight grip and - from my view in the Amphitheatre - seemed at times to have more eyes, ears and arms than is humanly possible, cueing and guiding all and sundry almost hyperactively during the Act 1 choral finale, furiously flinging the pages of the score while never once glancing down. This was a solid rather than a stirring performance, though, from the ROH Orchestra. There was some dodgy tuning from the trombones at the start of the overture, which fortunately settled when the chorale was later reprised, and the sheer brassiness of the score didn’t quite make the mark it should.
Verdi’s said of the opera with which his artistic career really took off, ‘though I had many difficulties to fight against, it is certain that Nabucco was born under a lucky star’. He might have added that the star shone brightest over ‘Va Pensiero’: operatic myth has it that at the first rehearsal the La Scala stagehands shouted their approval, reinforcing their endorsement with a drumbeat of feet and tools upon the floor and sets. It’s certainly rousing stuff and the ROH Chorus didn’t disappoint. ‘Fly, my thoughts, on gilded wings; fly to rest on hills and mounts’, cry the Hebrew slaves, and the Chorus really did make their prayer take flight, soft-voiced beginnings swelling to urgent, warm waves of sound, then fading to a magical pianissimo, following which the air seemed to echo with the spirit of the hymn.
Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska was a fiery, feverish Abigaille, as power-hungry as Lady Macbeth and sharing all the latter’s coldness of heart, utterly unmoved as she was by Nabucco’s pleas to spare Fenena’s life. Monastyrska exuded self-confidence and self-conviction in ‘Salgo già del trono aurato’ (I already ascend the seat of the golden throne), unhesitatingly seizing the crown when it fell from Nabucco’s head. But her scorching fury was countered by moments of quiet beauty. Framed by a semi-circle of fire, in ‘Anch’io dischiuso un giorno’ she reflected with bitterness and pathos on her present alienation and happy past, fading to a fragile but expertly controlled pianissimo that hinted at a woman heart’s beneath the mask of magisterial haughtiness.
Monastyrska’s powerful dramatic soprano can hit a note at top or bottom bang on and with astonishing steeliness. But, the sound was sometimes a little raw, there was a tendency to stray sharp-wards, and the coloratura was messy. But, if the characterisation lacked nuance, the vocal diversity was satisfying compensation.
The other roles are inevitable overshadowed by the central father-daughter pair, but American mezzo soprano Jamie Barton, making her debut at Convent Garden, and Italian-American tenor Leonardo Capalbo added a welcome touch of lyricism as the ‘star-crossed’ beloveds, Fenena and Ismaele. Barton in particular used her big voice with considerable expressivity, gliding easily and with sumptuousness through the lyrical phrases.
As the High Priest Zaccaria, Canadian bass John Relyea also phrased expressively but he didn’t quite have the vocal authority to conjure the spiritual gravitas that would be necessary to convince the despairing Israelites to trust in their God, who will destroy Babylon. Relyea’s contemplative solo with wistful cello accompaniment was sensitively sung, and played, though.
Alison Chitty’s designs seek to establish a connection between biblical banishment and 20th-century oppression, specifically the Nazi persecution of the Jews; and, the modern business suits by implication also suggest the miseries of present-day mass exile. The colour scheme is monochrome - unalleviated grey - whether we are in the Judaean temple or the Babylonian gardens. And, while the ROH Chorus gives voice to diverse emotions, from terror and torment to fortitude and faith, it’s not always easy to distinguish Israelite from Babylonian. With a nod to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the sandpit-stage is strewn with statuesque stone plinths representing the Jerusalem Temple; in Alessandro Carletti’s half-light they evoke the eerie strangeness of a de Chirico public square when first viewed, and subsequently they become stumbling blocks to meaningful stage movement. Though there is some attractive and thoughtful blocking of the Chorus, the back-wall video projections of Luca Scarzella are no substitute for genuine dramatic choreography.
A lot of thought has gone into the visual design; but a neat ‘picture’ doesn’t necessarily result in genuine, gripping drama. Whatever its political suggestiveness, Verdi’s opera is essentially about human emotions - love and hatred - of Shakespearean dimension. And Abbado’s production would benefit from a bit more melodrama and a bit less modern-day migrant misery.
Claire Seymour
Nabucco - Dimitri Platanias, Zaccaria - John Relyea, Abigaille - Liudmyla Monastyrska, Ismaele - Leonardo Capalbo, Fenena - Jamie Barton, Anna - Vlada Borovko, Abdallo - Samuel Sakker, High Priest of Baal - David Shipley; Director - Daniele Abbado, Associate director - Boris Stetka, Conductor - Maurizio Benini, Designer - Alison Chitty, Lighting designer - Alessandro Carletti, Video designer - Luca Scarzella, Movement - Simona Bucci, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Royal Opera Chorus.
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Wednesday 15th July 2016.