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 tense, three hour knock-down-drag-out seduction of Beauty by Pleasure consumed our souls in this triumphal evening. Forget Time and Disillusion as destructors, they were the very constructors of the beauty and pleasure found in this miniature oratorio.
The Triumph of Time and Disillusion was composed in 1707 in Rome by the 22 year-old German composer Georg Friedrich Händel. Opera was banned in Rome, the pontifical city firmly in the grips of the artistic terrors of the Counter Reformation, i.e. opera was banned. So Rome, never left wanting for the finer things, was reduced to bootleg opera, called oratorio. Some of its librettos were supplied by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili (quite a few of his librettos not surprisingly are about Mary Magdalene). Note that Alessandro Scarlatti set the Cardinal’s The Triumph of Truth and Grace a few years before Händel tackled that of Time and Disillusion.
Just like opera seria, distraught with the terrors of its heroes and heroines vacillating between inexorable forces (love and duty mostly), Roman oratorio provided polar opposing forces (pleasure versus truth as example) with no possible compromise. In the early 18th century resolution could only be death in opera seria while in oratorio the resolution was eternal life. Once the Counter Reformation dissipated opera seria did begin finding happy endings here on earth.
In the program booklet Polish theater director Krzysztof Warlikowski expresses his outrage at the dogmatism of this libretto (Time and Disillusion [essentially Truth] banish Pleasure while Beauty repents). With the orchestral overture stage director Warlikowski concocted on a full stage video scrim (screen) the sordid world of drugged youth’s indiscriminate sexual appetites. On stage for the next three hours a beautiful young woman struggles to emerge from this world. Bludgeoned by Truth she gives in to repentance. But, like opera seria where there is no eternity we watch her symbolically die. It is spiritual death at the hands of dogmatism.
Beauty (in box), Pleasure (in shadow), Truth and Time (at table)
Watching this were 1500 or so mostly Christian souls seated in Aix's bishops' palace (the Archevêché) facing the stage that was in fact a theater staring directly back at us, i.e. mirroring us. From time to time a bevy of young women in lurid party attire emerged from a transparent box (surely an abstracted disco-tech) to file into these stage seats to watch with us the battle taking place on the stage apron.
Like Warlikowski the young Handel was entranced by this battle and thus gave it the most beautiful music ever composed for the human voice. Time stood still while we reveled in beauty. Truth and pleasure fused into that sublime moment that was only dreamt of on the stage by Beauty. It was the triumph of art.
Director Warlikowski did take a moment to remind us that all of this artistic grandiosity is a bit silly. This was the intermission feature. Once again the full stage scrim fell and we watched a video of a most worldly man in supercilious discussion with a most wide-eyed young woman about ghosts (this video a comment on Pleasure’s just uttered fear that Beauty would believe in the purely imaginary heroes of truth, i.e. ghosts). [No doubt the actors were well known to the largely French audience, I had no clue].
Once again in this summer’s Festival, Aix has triumphed in its casting. Beauty was young French soprano Sabine Devielhe of pristine physical beauty, her face marred by clown face tears. She possesses a voice of riveting purity, platinum colored (i.e. an extravagant silver), a range that extending well above the staff upon occasion. Her final aria of repentance was spellbinding (as were all of her arias) in the splendid bleakness of its despair.
Matching in effect was a sassy Pleasure, sung by Argentine counter tenor soprano Franco Fagioli who as well soared above the staff in his final aria of banishment. Leaning against the transparent box he sank to the floor delivering wrenching tones of tragic loss, descending well below middle “C” into tenor range though never losing counter tenor color. The brash young Handel demanded the ultimate from his opera seria singers, the high Baroque in full force. This Trionfo's arias exploited the extremes of range and demands on technique that are seldom encountered in his London operas.
Sara Mingardo, Sabine Devielhe, Franco Fagioli, Michael Spires
American tenor Michael Spires showed off his resplendent tenorino as Time, bringing throaty authority to his tone, soaring to threatening insistence in his high “D”’s. He was dramatically matched by the powerful voice of Italian contralto Sara Mingardo who brought a blatant irony of false authority to Disinganno (Truth), the attribute that so intrigued stage director Warlikowski.
All four singers converged in the magnificent quartet early in the second act that were it more widely known by the opera public would be known as one of the great monuments of operatic quartets, rivaling, even surpassing the rank and fame of the Rigoletto quartet.
Of equal stardom in this extraordinary evening was the French early music orchestra Le Concert d’Astrée and particularly its founder and leader Emanuelle Haïm whose sculpted conducting forcefully and fully rendered the muscular, quite architectural components of Handel’s Baroque orchestral score. Of deep complicity were the several duets that violinist David Plantier, cellist Felix Knecht and oboist Patrick Beaugiraud effected with the singers. The large, un-conducted continuo offered kaleidoscopic colors to the recitatives and scenes, recalling somewhat the concept of Monteverdian and Gluckian accompanied speech.
See for yourself — Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno on www.culturebox.fr.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Bellezza: Sabine Devieilhe; Piacere: Franco Fagioli; Disinganno: Sara Mingardo; Tempo: Michael Spyres. Orchestra: Le Concert d’Astrée. Conductor: Emmanuelle Haïm;
Mise en scène: Krzysztof Warlikowski; Sets and costumes: Malgorzata Szczesniak;
Lighting: Felice Ross; Chorégraphie: Claude Bardouil; Vidéo: Denis Guéguin. Théâtre d’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, July 6, 2016)