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.
![Elektra (Evelyn Herlitzius) and Orest (Michael Volle) [Photo by Monika Rittershaus]](http://www.operatoday.com/Elektra_01.png)
As the German language describes so beautifully, a “Schrei aus tiefstem Herzen” was felt as Evelyn Herlitzius channelled an Elektra from the depths of her soul.
She electrified the audience for Patrice Chéreau's production, debuting in Berlin. In 2013, she starred in the world premiere of Chéreau's staging in Aix-en-Provence. His In an exhilarating experience, Daniel Barenboim and his Staatskapelle Berlin illuminated with thunderous brilliance the psychological tempest in Richard Strauss’ Elektra. The high quality ingredients of this evening led to an experience that was more than the sum of its monumental parts.
In front of the entrance to Theater Unter den Linden, an unusual amount of people searched for tickets. In the last minute queue, folks bickered about their place in line. Just picking up a ticket required enduring an intense stare from determined fanatics. With Herlitzius singing and Barenboim at the helm, Strauss’s late-Romantic blockbuster turned into the hottest ticket in town.
Surrounded by columns and arches in grey blue hues, the actors filled the stage with tension. The set was not meant to impress the eye; instead, the staging allows the psychological drama to fill in the void. As a force of nature, Herlitzius vocally and dramatically demanded attention. Barenboim’s Strauss saturated Chéreau's space with a silvery aura.
Herlitzius enthralled the audience with her flexible voice. Her sound fueled Elektra’s grand desire for revenge. She conveyed Elektra’s vulnerability in nostalgia, wreaked vocal havoc with scorching distrust, and let, above all, her maddening lust for revenge prevail. In her expressive mannerisms, Herlitzius added a visual component to her character’s mythological agita. She scratched her skin feverishly, like a heroine addict. And yet she was never ridiculous in her frenziness. Chéreau directs this lust into Elektra’s behavior: in each familial interaction, Herlitzius charged her character with a suggestively incestuous sexuality.... truly out of control.
Herlitzius served up a dramatic climax at the end: when hearing Klytaemnestra scream as Orestes kills her, a fiery flicker of gratification flashes in Elektra’s eyes. After all her anger and despair, that brief moment of satisfaction on Herlitzius’s face demonstrated how sharp an actress she is.
When Chrysothemis’s argued with Elektra, Adrianne Pieczonka formed a precious contrast to Herlitzius’ darker voice. Her character’s naivety and relentless optimism flourished in Pieczonka’s intonation. Very light and very bright. Her voice offered the audience a brief respite from Elektra’s hellbent revenge. As well as in her own shrieking, she became a vital element in all the Straussian hysteria.
Singing persuasively, Waltraud Meier cloaked Klytaemnestra in an air of indifference. Supported by brass and percussion, Elektra’s stepmother had a showstopper with her spectacular entrance. Her sins were hidden in a shroud of mystery. Did she really kill Agamemnon? I was baffled to hear boos amongst the cheers for her. Stephan Rügamer fleshed out Aegisth’s eerie and foolish qualities. With his chilling, determined diction foreshadowing his kill, Michael Volle’s Orest proved formidable in his duet with Elektra.
Dense, thick, loud, but never overbearing. Barenboim balanced the powerful music in extraordinary detail. At the false news of Orest’s death, the strings mourned with somber brilliance. Without interruption, Barenboim’s thrilling momentum captured all the frenzy and suspense in Strauss’s music. He created interesting psychological atmospheres out of Strauss’s wicked tonality. It was wonderful to be swept away in the madness of this horror opera.
David Pinedo