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.
With her irresistible cocktail of spontaneity and virtuosity, Cecilia Bartoli is a beloved favourite of Amsterdam audiences. In triple celebratory mode, the Italian mezzo-soprano chose Rossini’s La Cenerentola, whose bicentenary is this year, to mark twenty years of performing at the Concertgebouw, and her twenty-fifth performance at its Main Hall.
Bartoli has intimated in interviews that this European tour of a semi-staged La Cenerentola could be the last time she sings Cinderella, real name Angelina, one of her signature roles. Her bravura performance attested that she is still a vocally great Angelina. Physically she was completely credible as the mistreated stepdaughter whose unbridled optimism is rewarded with a spectacular change of fortune. Perhaps Bartoli should not hang up her glass slippers yet, though Rossini’s heroine loses none. Instead, Angelina gives the prince one of two matching bracelets, inviting him to find out who she is. La Cenerentola was composed for the 1817 Roman carnival and librettist Jacopo Ferretti made sure the papal censor would not be offended by women baring their feet. Neither is there a fairy godmother. The entirely nonmagical task of bringing Angelina and Prince Ramiro together is entrusted to the prince’s tutor, Alidoro. Instead of a cruel stepmother there is a self-regarding stepfather, the impoverished aristocrat Don Magnifico. Angelina falls in love with the prince while he is disguised as his valet, Dandini, which twists the plot and underlines her goodness — she refuses Dandini’s marriage proposal when he makes it disguised as the prince.
Happily, Rossini and Ferretti kept the viperish stepsisters. Sen Guo’s Clorinda needled with her incisive soprano and Irène Friedli lent the ungainly Tisbe her hooty mezzo. They shuffled to the ball as Fish and Fowl, hideously got up as a squamous mermaid and a fuzzy peacock. The costumes, from a 1992 production for Zurich by Cesare Lievi, were all over the place in terms of fashion eras. Claudia Blersh directed the singers around a squat sofa with minimal intervention. She scored a couple of comedic goals, but baritones Alessandro Corbelli and Carlos Chausson as Dandini and Don Magnifico provided the real humour. Corbelli’s voice is now dry and just a husk of its former self. His comedic inflection and phrasing, however, are impeccable. His Dandini was stylistically exemplary and hugely entertaining. Chausson, rich and sonorous, savoured every word of Don Magnifico’s splenetic recitatives and raced through his rat-a-tat patter with facility. In the hands of two such ace Rossini comedians, the duet “Un segreto d’importanza”, in which Dandini reveals his true identity to Magnifico, was a standout number. The chorus of the Monte-Carlo opera gave the third outstanding male performance, displaying great dynamic finesse and tonal shine.
Sounding constricted at first, bass Ugo Guagliardo as Alidoro took some time to find his vocal footing before revealing an attractive bass with limpid legato. Edgardo Rocha has an exquisite light lyric tenor and a flair for the Rossini idiom. It is a shame that his Prince Ramiro seemed restrained throughout most of the evening, both in volume and animation. Maybe he needed more theatrical direction than was available. He certainly can light up the stage, as he did during his showpiece aria "Sì, ritrovarla io giuro", singing ardently and hitting one silvery high C after another. Conductor Gianluca Capuano kept up a constant rhythmic momentum, building up the ensembles like a master patissier stacking a multitiered cake. Les Musiciens du Prince, of which Bartoli is artistic director, played with loads of pep, whipping up a robust storm in the Temporale, under flashing house lights. Even allowing for the wildness of period brass, there were several skidded entrances, but the beautiful woodwinds were a great asset and the orchestra as a whole kept the music fizzing.
Then there was Bartoli herself, whose task as the primadonna was to outshine all others, just like Cinderella at the ball. This she did. Bartoli’s voice has lost a little of the gleam of her younger years, but none of its distinctive colours or its stupefying agility. Her lower notes have deepened and her top A’s and B’s are as pinging as ever. Cinderella’s first words at the royal palace, a series of intricate runs spanning two octaves, were executed with breathtaking fluency. The glittering technique and infectious elation of the final rondo, “Nacqui all’affanno e al pianto” worked the audience up to a joyous roar. People cheered Bartoli in her ivory wedding dress as they would a real bride. The way she throws off her head-spinning runs is mightily impressive, but Bartoli also puts her heart and soul into every word. Her Angelina, far from being a dull goody two shoes, is disarmingly determined. In the end, one cheers her on not because she is a paragon of integrity, but because she is a real, suffering, hoping, rejoicing human being.
Jenny Camilleri
Cast and production information:
Angelina: Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano; Prince Ramiro: Edgardo Rocha, tenor; Dandini: Alessandro Corbelli, baritone; Don Magnifico: Carlos Chausson, baritone; Alidoro: Ugo Guagliardo, bass; Clorinda: Sen Guo, soprano; Tisbe: Irène Friedli, mezzo-soprano; Mise en scène: Claudia Blersh. Costume Design: Luigi Perego. Chœur de l’Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Les Musiciens du Prince. Conductor: Gianluca Capuano. Heard at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Wednesday, 15th February, 2017.