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."
Bampton Classical Opera’s 2016 double-bill ‘touched down’ at St John’s Smith Square last night, following performances in The Deanery Garden at Bampton and The Orangery of Westonbirt School earlier this summer.
With characteristic ingenuity and wit, the company presented two little-known but musically rewarding operas, each under an hour in length, in which meetings between mortals and deities give rise to conflict and confusion but conclude, inevitably, with Love triumphant. Bampton director Jeremy Gray has treated these classical allegories with a healthy dose of insouciance. And, with so much to-ing and fro-ing between earthly and celestial realms, where better to set the action than a terrestrial portal - an airport arrivals lounge - and an airplane in transit to the heavens. At Bampton in July, RAF Brize Norton had contributed some all too realistic supplementary sound effects, but we were safe from unscheduled flypasts inside St John’s and the Corinthian columns of the nave provided an appropriately classical ambience.
Gluck composed Philémon e Baucis in 1769 for the extended festivities which accompanied the marriage of his long-term Hapsburg employer Ferdinand, Duke of Parma (who was the grandson of Louis XV of France) and Maria Amalia, Archduchess of Austria, the sister of Marie Antoinette. The myth tells of two young lovers, the eponymous shepherd and shepherdess, who show great respect and care for the god Jupiter when he appears before them disguised as a pilgrim. In return, the rustic couple are blessed by Jupiter with everlasting life and elevated to the status of demigods. At the same time, he curses their fellow Phrygians who had refused to help him.
Catherine Backhouse (Philemon) and Barbara Cole Walton (Baucis). Photo Credit: Jeremy Gray.
In Gray’s neat and natty production, Philemon (mezzo Catherine Backhouse) and Baucis (soprano Barbara Cole Walton) have cast aside their shepherds’ smocks and crooks for an immigration officer’s uniform and cleaner’s mop respectively. Last through customs is a scruffy, irascible Jupiter (tenor Christopher Turner) who wastes no time in making clear his displeasure at having to travel in economy, and his disgruntlement with the failure of Arne Airways (‘the low-cost airline - no frills, plenty of trills!’) to offer him some complementary champagne.
Fortunately, the musical musings of the two lovers are sufficiently dulcet to sweeten the tetchy deity’s mood - he is even inspired by Philemon’s melodious strain to take up his guitar and strum a gentle accompaniment - and tea and biscuits prove an effective substitute for Dom Perignon.
Backhouse’s mezzo was rich and vibrant, full of character and expressively phrased. It’s a lovely clean sound and blended perfectly with Cole Walton’s crystalline soprano in the roulades of thirds and sixths which spun deliciously in their duets. Both singers acted well: their joyful smiles and affectionate teasing conveyed an innocent wonder that they had been so lucky in love. And, Cole Walton wowed in her florid coloratura aria, ‘You are my shepherd and lover’, by climbing to heights which I had thought were beyond the reach of human voice (top G?). She leapt and glided into dog whistle territory without the slightest hint of strain, as if propelled ever higher by infinite ardour and delight; the intonation was spot on and the tone pleasing as she slithered and curled back down again. Stunning!
Christopher Turner as Jupiter. Photo Credit: Jeremy Gray.
Christopher Turner was fittingly snappish and petulant as the peeved god, but puffed up proudly with gilded self-importance when revealing his true identity to the lesser mortals. Turner’s tenor is a versatile instrument and his diction was excellent (though we were, helpfully, given a copy of Gilly French’s pithy translation).
Bampton’s trademark visual gags and irony were present in abundance. An air-traffic controller in high-vis vest semaphored the plane across the runway to the overture’s perky rhythms. A sign warned against sleeping in the multi-faith chapel before the latter was transformed by Jupiter into a ‘Templvm’; giant Toblerones grabbed from the duty-free shop by the returning travellers’ chorus (soprano Aoife O’Sullivan, tenor Robert Anthony Gardiner and baritone Robert Gildon) formed a perfect nuptial arch to frame the married couple. Turner’s impressively authoritative aria di furia prompted a clamorous storm sequence and both raging god and thunder were calmed only after extensive, robust fanning, umbrella twirling and a cooling spray from a fire-extinguisher. There was some minor ‘funny business’ and mime during the instrumental episodes which did not feel entirely natural or necessary, but I suppose there was a need to invent ‘activity’ to keep the visual drama running.
Christopher Turner (Jupiter) and Aoife O’Sullivan (Chorus soprano). Photo Credit: Jeremy Gray.
Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris, which Bampton first performed during the 2010-11 season was first performed in London on 12 March 1742, and it has been suggested that it may have been intended to upstage Sammartini, the protégé of Frederick the Prince of Wales, for the Italian’s own The Judgment of Paris had been performed at Cliveden in 1740 alongside Arne’s masque, Alfred.
William Congreve’s droll libretto relates the episode in which Paris, a shepherd, is obliged to choose the fairest among the three goddesses, Juno, Pallas and Venus. During the competition, Paris finds himself the subject of various enticements as the goddesses attempt to persuade him in turn to award them the symbol of victory, a golden apple. Far from displaying bucolic gaucheness, Paris demonstrates unanticipated wile in delaying his judgement for long enough to incite the impatient goddess into singing several arias and engaging in a degree of disrobing. Just how is a director to treat Paris’s line, ‘When each is undrest, I’ll judge of the best’?
Demoted from omniscience to mortality, Turner again impressed as the vacillating protagonist who - clearly a flying-phobic - was escorted through security by a smooth-voiced Mercury (Robert Anthony Gardiner), an Arne Air pilot, and charged with the task of deciding which of the three air hostesses deserved the prize - a golden i-Apple. The cast relished the easy melodiousness of Arne’s vocal lines and at St John’s I was able to appreciate even more than in the open-air acoustic at Bampton the instrumental invention evident in the accompaniments, which are often quite light in texture and make beguiling use of obliggato instruments. There was some fine playing by the members of CHROMA, by turns animated and expressive, always lucid. Paul Wingfield conducted with alertness and sensitivity - all the more impressive given that he couldn’t actually see his singers.
Catherine Backhouse (Pallas), Barbara Cole Walton (Juno) and Aoife O’Sullivan (Venus). Photo Credit: Jeremy Gray.
Soprano Aoife O’Sullivan was excellent as the lewd and lustful Venus. The fact that O’Sullivan is seven-months pregnant added a further dash of drollery; and it perhaps wasn’t fanciful to imagine that the hormones also furnished her wonderfully glossy soprano with even more shine. O’Sullivan produced an easy, full tone, and the high-lying lines were attractive of tone and purposefully shaped. When Venus’s charming aria, ‘Stay, lovely Youth’, enticed the bewildered Paris into the passenger toilet, the rival hostesses knew all was lost.
Movement director Triona Adams and Gray have crafted some waggish and witty routines. Who knew that aircraft safety paraphernalia - seat-belts, whistles, life jackets and the like - had such erotic potential? Paris’s air-sickness during the storm whipped up by Pallas’s musical call-to-arms suggested that perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a hero after all.
Staging opera at St John’s Smith Square is a tricky business: audience sight-lines are not good, the acoustic can be unhelpful, and where does one put the orchestra and conductor? (Behind the set, in this case.) This duo of divine comedies was not disadvantaged by the limitations of space and dimension, though; after the charming open-air of the Bampton Deanery Garden, it seemed to me that the more compact stage area actually helped to intensify the focus, particularly of the Gluck which is dramatically rather slight, sharpen the pacing and make for slicker comic capers. The clashing complementaries of the pink/green lighting scheme were also more vivid, set against the sombre, darker interior.
Catherine Backhouse (Pallas), Robert Anthony Gardiner (Mercury), Barbara Cole Walton (Juno) and Robert Gildon (Chorus baritone). Photo Credit: Jeremy Gray.
The Judgement of Paris ends with the proclamation of Victory: ‘The Queen of Love, is Queen of Beauty crown’d.’ Bampton Classical Opera certainly deserved a laurel crown of their own for this impudent duo of ‘divine comedies’.
Claire Seymour
Gluck: Philemon and Baucis
Baucis - Barbara Cole Walton, Philemon - Catherine Backhouse, Jupiter - Christopher Turner, Chorus soprano (shepherdess) - Aoife O’Sullivan, Chorus tenor - Robert Anthony Gardiner, Chorus baritone - Robert Gildon
Arne: The Judgment of Paris
Juno - Barbara Cole Walton, Pallas - Catherine Backhouse, Paris - Christopher Turner, Venus - Aoife O’Sullivan, Mercury - Robert Anthony Gardiner, Chorus baritone - Robert Gildon
Director/designer - Jeremy Gray, Conductor - Paul Wingfield, Movement director: Triona Adams -
Costume designer - Vikki Medhurst.
St John’s Smith Square, London; Tuesday 13th September 2016.