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.
On July 31, 2016, against the ethereal beauty of the main hall in the Scottish Rite Center, soprano Angela Meade and pianist Joe Illick gave a recital offering both opera and art songs ranging in origin from early nineteenth century Europe to mid twentieth century America. Many in the audience probably remembered Meade’s recent excellent portrayal of Norma at Los Angeles Opera.
Performance Santa Fe presents recitals by artists in town to perform at Santa Fe Opera. The Scottish Rite Center is a Masonic temple built in 1912 containing an intimate theater. It houses a fully outfitted stage with a painted back drop and scrims created with the kind of fine workmanship seldom seen in today’s theatrical settings. On July 31, 2016, against the ethereal beauty of this setting, soprano Angela Meade and pianist Joe Illick gave a recital offering both opera and art songs ranging in origin from early nineteenth century Europe to mid twentieth century America. Many in the audience probably remembered Meade’s recent excellent portrayal of Norma at Los Angeles Opera.
Wearing a dress with a black top and a red and black printed skirt, Meade and the black-clad Illick began their program with an emotion-filled rendition of the aria “Io son l’umile ancella” (“I am the humble servant”) from Francesco Cilea’s infrequently performed opera Adriana Lecouvreur. It showed Meade’s ability to immediately grasp the psyche of her audience in her capable hands.
They continued with three of the five songs Franz Liszt composed in the early eighteen forties to texts by Victor Hugo: Enfant, si j’étais roi (Child, if I were King), Oh, Quand je dors (Oh! When I sleep), and Comment, disaient ils (How, they asked). In the first song Meade sang a magnificent messa di voce, swelling to a fortissimo and diminishing to the finest thread of sound. A quick look at the text of Quand je dors tells the reader that it’s about dreaming of a lover. Meade and Illick’s opulent tones soon made the meaning clear. In Comment disaient ils Meade and Illick again showed the smoothness of their combined, well-nurtured lyricism. The soprano also demonstrated a full range of dynamics and the perfect trill we heard in Norma.
Angela Meade. Photo Credit: Dario Acosta.Vincenzo Bellini, the composer of Norma, wrote songs such as the familiar, melodic Vaga Luna and the less well-known but equally interesting Ma rendi pur contento. Neither song is “Casta Diva”, but Meade sang both with gorgeous tone and saved her golden age operatic ability for the next aria: “Pace, pace mio dio” from Giuseppe Verdi’s La Forza del Destino. Forza is no longer in the usual repertoire because big juicy voices like that of Zinka Milanov are hard to come by. A major opera company needs to revive Forza for Meade because she sings that aria magnificently and international audiences should be able to hear her perform it with orchestra. If there had been an intermission, I think it would have been placed at this juncture. Unfortunately, at this recital there was no chance to mingle and get acquainted with other Santa Fe concertgoers.
Meade’s singing of Marietta’s bittersweet “Glück das mir verblieb” (“Joy that remains with me”) from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1920 opera Die Tote Stadt left listeners contemplating the lost loves of their own lives as the artists left the stage. Illick and Meade returned to render thoughtful interpretations of three well-known songs by Richard Strauss: Zueignung and Allerseelen from Op 10, and Cäcilie from Op. 27.
For their finale, the artists performed “Ebben? Ne andro lontana” (“Well, then? I’ll go father away”) from Alfredo Catalani’s 1892 Alpine opera that ends in an avalanche, La Wally. Actually, Catalani had written the aria as a separate work but added it to the opera before its premiere. Maria Callas made the aria famous with her recording, but Meade’s rendition showed what a more voluminous voice could do for this piece. At its end she was greeted with a huge wave of applause. When we listen to Meade, we begin to know the sound of golden age singing.
Maria Nockin
Program:
Cilea: Adriana Lecouvreur, “Io son l’umile ancella.” Liszt: Enfant, Si j’étais roi, Oh! Quand je dors, Comment disaient ils Bellini: Vaga Luna, Ma rendi pur contento Verdi: La forza del destino, “Pace, pace mio Dio.” Korngold: Die tote Stadt, "Mariettas Lied" . R. Strauss: Zueignung, Allerseelen, Cäcilie Catalani: La Wally, “Ebben? Ne andro lontana.”
Scottish Rite Center, Sante Fe; July 31, 2016.