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 August 4, 2016, soprano Leah Crocetto and accompanist Tamara Sanikidze gave a recital at the Scottish Rite Center in Santa Fe New Mexico. A winner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Contest, this year Crocetto was singing Donna Anna in Santa Fe Opera’s excellent Don Giovanni.
Since Crocetto had a major success as Anna in Rossini’s Maometto II in 2012, she opened the recital with an aria from that composer's Semiramide, a tour de force for both singer and pianist. Rossini wrote Semiramide for his wife, Isabella Colbran, who was known for her accurate dramatic coloratura. “Bel raggio lusinghier” is the opera’s major aria and in Santa Fe both artists performed it with exquisite articulation.
I wonder if these artists knew that Angela Meade had sung the same three Richard Strauss songs, Zueignung, Morgen, and Cäcilie, in the same hall a few days earlier. In any case, they are wonderful songs and both Crocetto and Meade sang them with exquisite grace. In all probability the Rachmaninov segment that included Zdes khorosho (How fair this place), Ne poy kravitsa pri mne (Don’t sing, my beauty), and Otrivok iz A. Musset (An excerpt from Alfred de Musset), brought many art song lovers to the recital. Here Crocetto proved her ability to put the text over when even the most frequent concertgoers might not know the meaning of the Russian words. Listening to her vocal colors, one could think of being in a majestic natural setting with with a lover. The message of the second song served to remind listener of past homes and the last song invited the audience to empathize with Musset’s hopeless lover.
In 1838, when Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult stayed in Italy they read Petrarch’s works together and the readings inspired the composition of Three Petrarch Sonnets. In Pace non trovo (I can’t find peace) the lyrics are replete with extreme contrasts, so Liszt expressed them with forward-looking harmonies and constant agitation. Crocetto and Sanikidze made the urgency of the poet’s love real to their twenty-first century audience. The second song, Benedetto sia l’giorno (Blessed be the day) was quite appropriate in this uniquely beautiful old hall far from the crowds and commercialism of a less appreciative city. Toward the end of I vidi in terra (On earth revealed), Petrarch wrote a line that describes much of this recital: “So sweet a concert made as ne’er was given mortal ear.” Crocetto’s high notes are extraordinary; her middle range is warm, and her chest tones remind the listener of singers we can now only hear on records.
For their finale, Crocetto and Sanikidze offered an aria from Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah: “Ain’t it a Pretty Night?” Crocetto's phrasing was regal, her diction understandable, and her tones luscious. During this selection and every other work on this program, Sanikidze partnered her with exquisite playing. Since the soprano had sung jazz earlier in her career, her encores included Jerome Kern’s All the Things You Are and “My Heart Is So Full of You” from Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella.
This summer, Performance Santa Fe presented recitals by Daniel Okulitch and Keri Alkema with pianists Glen Roven and Joe Illick; Angela Meade with Illick, Leah Crocetto with Tamara Sanikidze, as well as Joshua Hopkins and Ben Bliss with Illick. We can expect them to have a similarly fine roster next season.
Maria Nockin
Program:
Rossini: Semiramide “Bel raggio lusinghier” R. Strauss: Zueignung, Morgen, Cäcilie Rachmaninov: How Fair this Place, Don’t Sing to Me, my Beauty, Why is my Sick Heart Beating so Frantically? Liszt: Three Petrach Sonnets Floyd: Susannah, “Ain’t it a Pretty Night?”
Encores:
Kern: All the Things You Are; Loesser: The Most Happy Fella, “My Heart Is So Full of You”.
Scottish Rite Center, Santa Fe; August 4, 2016.