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.
![Carl Tanner as Canio and Elisabeth Caballero as Nedda [Photo by Tim Trumble]](http://www.operatoday.com/Pagliacci-5.png)
The dramatic strength that Stage Director Michael Scarola drew from his Pagliacci cast was absolutely amazing. He gave us a sizzling rendition of the libretto, pointing out every bit of foreshadowing built into the plot.
Although the original story may have been French, the libretto as acted out in Scottsdale was as hot as the Calabrian sun.
Felix Mendelssohn visited Italy on a tour of the continent that lasted from 1829 to 1831 At that time he wrote, “This is Italy! ... and I am loving it.” Later, he wrote his sister Fanny saying, “The Italian symphony is making great progress. It will be the jolliest piece I have ever done, especially the last movement.”
Scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings, Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4, the Italian, has four movements. The opening A Major Allegro Vivace is light, airy and joyful, but it leads into a Bach-like D Minor second movement that reminded me that it was Mendelssohn who had done so much to revive interest in the music of Johan Sebastian Bach. Listening to Robert Moody and the Arizona Musicfest Orchestra play that second movement could bring tears to the coldest eyes. The following Con Moto Moderato is again in A Major but the final movement, marked Presto, is in A Minor and it gives the conductor license to drive his orchestra as fast as possible. With an excellent orchestra containing the first chairs of many other orchestras, Maestro Moody played it Prestissimo and it brought down the house.
Since the Musicfest Orchestra took up most of the stage area, there was only a narrow platform at the back for Stage Director Michael Scarola and his Pagliacci cast to use in staging the opera's action. Composer and librettist Ruggiero Leoncavallo said his story of raw sexuality was based on a case that his father, a judge, handled when the composer was a child. Although that is possible, French author Catulle Mendès thought it resembled his 1887 play La Femme de Tabarin. The French author sued Leoncavallo, only to drop the charges when he, himself, was sued for copying a Spanish play.
The dramatic strength that Scarola drew from his Pagliacci cast was absolutely amazing. He gave us a sizzling rendition of the libretto, pointing out every bit of foreshadowing built into the plot. Although the original story may have been French, the libretto as acted out in Scottsdale was as hot as the Calabrian sun. Although no costumer was credited, the cast wore clothing from the second half of the twentieth century.
Arizona Musicfest’s choristers were raucous townspeople with children who loved being part of the show. Conductor Robert Moody maintained tight control of his players and never let them drown out a singer while he moved the dramatic aspect of the work forward without a nanosecond’s pause. This performance was a thriller.
Gordon Hawkins was a voluminous voiced Tonio who sang the prologue from the middle of the audience. It worked well in that rotund church and he sang “Incominciate” on his way to the stage. Tonio is often played as a hunchback but here he was good-looking bully.
Canio, played by tenor Carl Tanner, was a suave circus owner whose hair trigger temper quickly turned to violence. He considered Nedda his property and he did not intend to share her with anyone. Singing with a huge enveloping voice, he told us the story of the unhappy clown with resonant dramatic tones that flowed like waves over the audience. Jonathan Blalock sang Beppe, Canio’s drinking partner, with easy lyric tenor tones.
Nedda knows she is tied to Canio for life even though she is unhappy as his wife. At the beginning of the opera she reclines on a trunk looking up at the sky and envying the freedom of the birds. Elisabeth Caballero allowed us to be part of Nedda’s dream world as the birds she loved flew into the ether. Her golden middle tones and opulent high notes bloomed above the audience as she sang her lyrical aria. She made listeners sympathize with Nedda but she did not let her her situation control her.
Smooth voiced baritone Alexy Lavrov played Nedda's lover, Silvio, a stable young man with a job in the town. The fact that he was not a member of the touring circus attracted Canio' wife, but she knew she and Silvio could never settle down safely in a town where Canio could find them. Her marriage vows would be not only her death sentence, but his as well. This was one of the most thrilling renditions of Pagliacci I have ever seen.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Robert Moody, Conductor; Carl Tanner, Canio; Elizabeth Caballero, Nedda; Gordon Hawkins, Tonio; Alexey Lavrov, Silvio; Jonathan Blalock, Beppe; Arizona Musicfest Chorus; Michael Lewis, Chorus Master; Members of Phoenix Children's Chorus; Michael Scarola, Stage Director.