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."
Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto was the composer’s fifteenth opera, and the ninth to a libretto by Giovanni Faustini (1615-1651). First performed at the Teatro Sant’Apollinaire in Venice on 28th November 1651, the opera by might have been sub-titled ‘Gods Behaving Badly’, so debauched are the deities’ dalliances and deviations, so egotistical their deceptions.
Giove (Jupiter) has wrought destruction upon the Earth, to punish mankind for their challenge to his authority following their receipt of Prometheus’ gift of the sacred fire of creation. Accompanied by his trusted Mercurio (Mercury), the all-powerful god descends to inspect the damage and to build anew the earthly planet, but finds himself enamoured of the nymph Calisto. Discovering his faithlessness, Giove’s enraged wife Giunone (Juno) seeks revenge and transforms Calisto into a small bear, only for her cosmic admirer to effect another metamorphosis which translates the minor nymph to the heavens to take her place, as Ursa Major, beside him in the eternal constellations.
Certainly, takis’ designs for Timothy Nelson’s new English Touring Opera production suggest an astral apocalypse: the chaotic stage presents a mechanical forest of twisted wires, cogs, wheels, out-sized desk-lamps, axles and chutes. But, alongside the whims and wildness of the gods there is scientific order, rationalism and humanity in the form of the shepherd astronomer Endimione, whose star-gazing leads to his devotion to the moon and to its deific embodiment, the goddess Diana.
Callisto, the second-largest moon of the planet Jupiter, after Ganymede, was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. Nelson picks up on contemporary sources which link the real-life Galileo - who bestowed his telescope as a gift to the city of Venice - to the character of Endimione, and extends the parallel further by envisaging his rival for Diane’s love, the goat-god Pane (Pan), as the embodiment of Rome and papal authority towards which Venice had a long-held antipathy and suspicion. Just as theology superseded mythology (‘Pan is dead’), so science has now supplanted theology: a point pressed home by Nelson, by turning Endimione into an Einstein look-a-like, complete with a mad-inventor wig, violin, and penchant for scrawling differential and integral calculus on a blackboard, alongside Galileo’s famous retort to the Inquisition, ‘Eppur si muove’ (And yet it moves). So, the Age of Astral Anarchy gives way to the Age of Enlightenment.
Cavalli had joined Monteverdi’s choir at St Mark’s Venice when he was 14, in 1612, and he was the first composer of opera to win widespread success. Audiences during the Carnival season, attending performances in the Venetian public theatres which had first opened in 1637, were beguiled by the composer’s risky combination of rapture, fury and wit with comedy and burlesque bordering on insanity. In La Calisto the heady mix of high and low passions makes for a challenging whole, and Nelson exacerbated the expressive dichotomy by emphasising the vulgarity of the first two acts so as to sink at times to the level of low-budget Carry-On bawdiness. Any hint of the work’s Platonic debates about the nature of spiritual love was obliterated by sexual innuendo.
Cavalli’s musical language can take a while to get used to, as well, and Nelson, conducting as well as directing, adopted a spacious approach which emphasised the seemingly unvarying nature of the declamatory expression and gently mellifluous accompaniment. Fortunately, after the priapic crudities pre-interval, Act 3 took a decidedly different turn, as Cavalli’s increased use of overlapping voices and ensemble forms, and what Nelson describes as the supplanting of irreverence with pathos and intellectual commentary, effected a shift to more cerebral, ethical and creatively enriching realms. In the latter stages, Nelson pushed the music onwards creating a more captivating muscio-dramatic sweep; there were more flashes of colour from the small instrumental forces, predominantly continuo instruments, adding sensuousness to the vocal lines.
The Prologue features familiar archetypes, Natura (Nature) and Eternità (Eternity), who introduce the work by foretelling the nymph Calisto’s fate: to be elevated to celestial dominions. Tai Oney and Susanna Fairburn had difficulty, though, projecting from their positions at the side and rear of the stage, and this was a recurring problem subsequently as characters manoeuvred around the cluttered set. In the absence of surtitles (only scene-setting titles were projected), the all-important diction and clarity - Cavalli puts a strong emphasis on the text - were hindered by the acoustic of the box-like stage which inhibited textual and musical definition, unless characters were placed well to the fore.
But, the cast’s commitment and accomplishment were winning. George Humphrey’s was a vibrant Giove, dressed in gold-brocaded black, and also strong-voiced in his falsetto, Drag-Queen-Diana transformations. (It’s complicated … but Calisto is the daughter of Lykaon, king of Arcadia and follower of the hunting goddess Diana, to whom she has sworn to remain a virgin for all her life; Giove pretends to be his wife in order to have his wicked way with the object of his desire.)
Nick Pritchard - in a startling pink-purple lamé get-up, with exhibitionist green stockings to rival Malvolio’s yellow hosiery, coped admirably with Mercurio’s high-lying line and relished the lascivious exuberance of the role.
As Diana, Catherine Carby combined a full mezzo of solemn and luxurious momentousness with, by turns, dramatic coolness and fire, to wonderful effect. Tai Oney’s Endimione was, paradoxically, blessed with other-worldly grace; beautifully expressive of phrasing, the colour more contralto than counter-tenor, he blended exquisitely with Carby in duet.
Susanna Fairbairn as Guinone, Paula Sides as Calisto. Photo credit: Jane Hobson.
I was particularly impressed by Susanna Fairbairn’s strong-voiced Giunone; her steel-edged soprano was spot-on for Nelson’s presentation of the wronged goddess as a whip-clutching dominatrix. Paula Sides was a portrait of sensitivity and sweet-toned virtue as the eponymous acolyte, but her soprano was not lacking in agility or rapturous frisson; she incited our genuine sympathy for her human innocence in the face of the gods’ narcissistic tantrums and sexual shenanigans.
I have sometimes had reservations about John-Colyn Gyeantey’s vocal presence and have on occasion found the tenor wanting firmness of line and evenness of colour. Not on this occasion though; Gyeantey was superb as the goat-god Pane, raging with rejection and randy petulance. Adrian Dwyer (as Linfea, Diana’s frustrated warrior nymph), Katie Bray (as a characterful Satirino), and Peter Brathwaite (a sonorous Silvano) breezed raucously through the sub-plots. But, it was the eloquent avowals of the lovesick Endimione which really touched the heart.
The following evening, English Touring Opera turned the clock back a few years and shifted their attention to the work of Cavalli’s teacher, Claudio Monteverdi, whose Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (here, ‘Ulysses’ Homecoming) was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639-1640 Carnival season.
Once again, we are concerned with the interplay between the immortals and mankind, and as in Cavalli’s opera treachery and deception are outdone by constancy and virtue. Following the Trojan wars, Ulysses, King of Ithaca, makes a long journey home to find that a trio of iniquitous suitors are harassing his faithful Queen, Penelope. With the assistance of the Neptune, Jupiter and Minerva, as well as his son Telemaco and friend Eumaeus, Ulysses devises a trick to defeat the villains, slays all three, and is restored by the gods to his throne and his rightful place beside his loving wife.
Despite the familiar dramatic territory, though, in contrast to the layers of allegory and artifice that had characterised the previous evening’s La Calisto, here takis and director James Conway opt for minimalism and directness, stripping back the opera to its essence. Gone are the gimmicks and banished is the burlesque. In their place we have an absorbing focus and stillness. The simple set presents a high, white wall, with doors which open during the Prologue to reveal the gods of Time (Andrew Slater), Fortune (Robert Anthony Gardiner) and Love (Martha Jones); they mock the spirit of Human Frailty (Clint van der Linde) who, weak and wretched, is subject to the deities’ whims. This construction also has the benefit of pushing the performers to the fore, whilst, angled, it offers a distanced perspective to the rear. In Act 2 the walls retreat and retract to form three columns, offering useful hidey-holes for the three suitors.
takis’ colour scheme is gentle and nuanced. The white, mottled walls suggest at once an imposing edifice, a shore-side cliff, and a fragile sea-shell. In Act 2 the prevailing salmon-pinks and apricots are complemented with aquamarines and ultramarines, Penelope’s vibrant orange adding visual depth, drawing the eye and pointing to the permanence and unassailability of her fidelity. The unity of design is enhanced when the wooden ‘hooks’ stage-right - the jetty, the prow of a boat, crabs’ claws? - become Ulysses’ bow, and the red ropes of the ship’s mast, or fishing net, assume the role of the bow’s string.
The cast are unanimously outstanding. Benedict Nelson captures Ulysses’ essential and indomitable strength of body and soul, in a masterful vocal and dramatic characterisation. Though this is a performance of brooding intensity, Nelson still forms strong bonds with Nick Pritchard’s more energised Telemachus. Pritchard exhibits tremendous stamina and focus.
John-Colyn Geantey as Eumaus, Nick Pritchard as Telemachus. Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith.
Initially, I worried that the role of Penelope might lie a little low in Carolyn Dobbin’s voice, particularly in the light of the introspectiveness of her characterisation; but Dobbin proved me wrong, evincing remarkable authority and poise, and thus ensuring that the scene in which she is groped and harassed by the suitors was cruelly troubling and tense. John-Colyn Geantey once more excelled, as an earnest Eumaeus, injecting great vitality and urgency into the numbers in which he informs the doubtful Penelope of first Telemachus’ and then Ulysses’ arrival.
Carolyn Dobbin as Penelope, with the three suitors. Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith.
As the suitors’ parasitic follower, Irus, Adam Player (in a garish purple Tweedle-dum fat-suit!) demonstrated good comic timing, but his preening antics did not overshadow the poignancy of his Act 3 suicide-monologue. Katie Bray repeated her tremendously spirited performance of the previous evening, surmounting the high-lying line with panache as a commanding Minerva whose rulings and instructions must be obeyed. Robert Anthony Gardiner sang beautifully as Eurymachus; no wonder he captivated Martha Jones’ high-spirited Melanto. Jonathan Peter Kenny drew playing of compelling vigour and direction from The Old Street Band.
My only (minor) misgiving came in the final moments when the reunited King and Queen delivered their rapturous duet to celebrate their love. It was strangely subdued and uneasy. The beloveds were seated side-by-side, gazing forwards - not daring to look, not bold enough to believe, fearful of their tested feelings? Conway and takis pared things back still further, illuminating the white-clad protagonists in stark white light. This seemed to convey modernist uncertainty rather than classical consolation?
But, these were mere fleeting hesitations. After last weekend’s fantastic Xerses, English Touring Opera have offered another two terrific evenings of opera. The productions tour to various venues until 26th November (Autumn tour 2016)
Claire Seymour
Cavalli: La Calisto
Calisto - Paula Sides, Giove - George Humphreys, Mercurio - Nick Pritchard, Endimione - Tai Oney Diana - Catherine Carby, Linfea - Adrian Dwyer, Satirino - Katie Bray, Pane - John-Colyn Gyeantey, Silvano - Peter Brathwaite, Juno - Susanna Fairbairn; Conductor and Director - Timothy Nelson, Designer - takis, Lighting Designer - Mark Howland, The Old Street Band.
Friday 14th October 2016, Hackney Empire, London.
Monteverdi: Ulysses’ Homecoming
Ulysses - Benedict Nelson, Penelope - Carolyn Dobbin, Telemachus - Nick Pritchard, Eumaeus - John-Colyn Gyeantey, Antinous/Time/Neptune/Phaecian - Andrew Slater, Eurymachus/Amphinomous/Fortune/Phaecian - Robert Anthony Gardiner, Pisander/Human Frailty/Ericlea/Phaecian - Clint van der Linde, Irus - Adam Player, Melanto/Amore - Martha Jones, Minerva - Katie Bray, Director - James Conway, Conductor - Jonathan Peter Kenny, Designer - takis, Lighting Director - Mark Howland, The Old Street Band.
Saturday 15th October, Hackney Empire, London.