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."
There is no bigger or more prestigious name in avant-garde French theater than Romeo Castellucci (b. 1960), the Italian metteur en scène of this revival of Arthur Honegger’s mystère lyrique, Joan of Arc at the Stake (1938) at the Opéra Nouvel in Lyon.
That Castellucci sought collaboration with Honegger and the dramatic oratorio’s author Paul Claudel to create this theater piece is no surprise. The Honegger work with its book by Paul Claudel was born in a Europe of clashing ideologies — political, artistic, technical, cultural — on the verge of self destruction. In fact the Prologue to the oratorio was added in 1944.
A time somewhat like the current moment in our now far larger world. Castellucci’s theatrical world explores an abyss of possibilities for any moment of tragedy in this or any world. For Castellucci theater is a unique language, well beyond the mere abstraction of musical language. To music Castellucci adds a tangible, physical world — real and simulated. There is the technical world that manipulates and colors the physical world and finally there is an interactive, interpretive world of infinite emotional perspectives.
It is unclear where or how you enter into Castellucci’s world, and it is also uncertain who you are. But you definitely immersed yourself Castellucci’s theater once you found yourself in Lyon’s opera house for Honegger’s mystère. The curtain rose in silence, a class of twenty-four 17 year-old girls studied silently in classroom made of reinforced concrete with period radiators and banks of neon lights. A bell rang, the girls sprang to life, noisily exited the class room and building. Faint ambient noises (dogs barking, cars, maybe sirens) were perceived over the next few minutes. A janitor appeared, swept a bit, began pulling the tables into the adjacent corridor, over time his actions took on urgency, and finally he violently and sonically heaved the last chairs and tables onto the giant pile in the corridor. He bolted the classroom door, isolating himself in the empty space.
It became apparent that the janitor was female, and we knew that soon she would be Jeanne d’Arc. She ripped the linoleum off the floor with its shrieking sound amplified, she tore out the planking and dug into the earth below. This was our 20 minute, maybe longer, maybe much longer journey into the language of Castellucci’s theatrical world.
Conductor Kazushi Ono now began Honegger’s oratorio. Joan of Arc is a speaking role, initially and through most of the piece her voice was electronically manipulated sometimes mixing it with the music, sometimes amplifying it to make clear and forceful words and sentences. Only in the last three scenes did Joan’s voice become her natural voice as she relived her childhood and accepted her martyrdom.
To be expected these final three scenes were riveting — Joan digging into the earth to find her sword, lifted into shining light, Joan dragging her dead horse, a very real horse, onto the stage and to the huge hole she had created, there followed the unforgettable imaged of Joan riding her horse. And then Joan, naked, covering herself with a white floury paste to make herself into the candle of her recalled nursery rhyme, and finally Joan, the stake itself, standing as the erect candle, an offering to the Virgin Mary.
As part of this image of Joan at the stake there then appeared an aged, maybe naked, figure who was (possibly) Joan herself as well as the saints of her visions, Catherine and Marguerite, and perhaps even the Virgin Mary.
Claudel and Honegger’s musical tragedy glories in the huge choruses of oratorio. In turn these choruses offered Castellucci the means to orient the action and to explain and advance the theatrical process. These choruses were indeed the Castellucci’s continuum, and they were persuasive. As well as, to use a Castellucci word, “gaseous.” We did not actually see the chorus until the curtain calls (it was a surprisingly small number of singers considering the size and presence of the chorus role).
The actress Audrey Bonnet from the National Theater de Strasbourg gave the tour de force — physical and emotional — performance of first the janitor then the maid of Orléans. Castelucci’s Joan d’Arc does not attempt to move us, or ask us to sublimate her tragedy into a transcendent experience, as had, for example, Jean-Paul Scarpitta’s 2005 Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher in Montpellier. Instead we participate in her suffering, a theatrical participation that leaves us outside any hope of mystical or emotional release. It is theater, nothing more (and what more should there be) and nothing less (it is very fine, challenging theater).Some of the same things may be said of Honegger’s score (standard orchestra with the addition of three saxophones, an ondes martenot and two pianos). The musical perspective is outside looking in. It is “surface” (to use a Castellucci word) and not essence. Though not closely identified with any of the predominant styles of the early-mid twentieth century Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher is richly twentieth century in musical effect.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Jeanne d’Arc: Audrey Bonnet; Frère Dominique: Denis Podalydès; La Vierge: Ilse Eerens; Marguerite: Valentine Lemercier; Catherine: Marie Karall; Ténor solo (une voix, Porcus, 1er Héraut, Le Clerc): Jean-Noël Briend; Récitant: Didier Laval; Récitant: Louka Petit-Taborelli.
participation de Istvan Zimmermann & Giovanna Amoroso, Plastikart Studio. Chorus, children’s chous and orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon., Chœurs et Maîtrise de l'Opéra de Lyon. Conductor: Kazushi Ono; Mise en scène, décors, costumes et lumières: Romeo Castellucci; Dramaturgie: Piersandra Di Matteo; Collaboratrice artistique Silvia Costa. Opera Nouvel, Lyon, France, January 31, 2017.