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."
For his farewell production as director of opera at the Royal Opera House, Kasper Holten has chosen Wagner’s only ‘comedy’, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: an opera about the very medium in which it is written.
It is also an opera that performs, rather than theorises, Wagner’s claim that his operas will fulfil his revolutionary concept of a teleological art: an art that would save the future world from the philistinism and barbarism of the present. So, Wagner might have said that Meistersinger is an opera about ‘me, authority and tradition’.
Holten’s new production is ‘revolutionary’ in its own way, turning the opera inside out, back to front and even (literally) upside down in one climactic vignette of cultural anarchy. Wagner’s own words, ‘Kinder, schafft Neues!’ (Children, create new things!) preface the programme-book synopsis that Holten has penned - and, later, reappear as graffiti on a toppling wall - so, is Holten telling us that he is taking up Wagner’s cause?
Wagner transports the audience back to the guild culture of 16th-century Nuremberg, opening Act 1 inside St. Catherine's Church where a service is just ending. Holten and his designer Mia Stensgaard shun historical and geographical authenticity and create a single set - albeit one which revolves to destroy its own theatrical illusion of veracity - which is well-suited to the opera’s scenes of pomp and ceremony but less apt for the more intimate episodes which probe into the hearts, minds, homes and streets of the citizens of Nuremberg.
We find ourselves in a grand, panelled room - a gentlemen’s club or Masonic hall - in the early decades of the 20th century. Glamorous and sophisticated, this stately chamber is a homage to art deco geometric angularity, with its polished parquet floor, decorative plinths topped with lyres, birds and statuettes, and ornamental indoor trees. It’s certainly handsome to look at and, as the ROH Chorus launched into their lusty rendition of a Lutheran pastiche, the flashes of chrome and nickel momentarily suggested vast organ pipes - which helped to push aside the question of what a church choir was doing in a private members’ club. The centrepiece is a huge raised ‘throne’ of burnished copper, which put me in mind of, alternately, an outsized beer tankard and the F.A. Cup.
Photo credit: Clive Barda.
When a team of waiters arrives to set up, under the supervision of Major Domo David and Stewardess Magdalene, dinner tables for the arriving club members, we slip back a decade or two into the Edwardian opulence of Downton Abbey. The tables are laden with flickering candles, glittering goblets and red floral decorations. Indeed, everyone seems more interested in what’s for dinner - Beckmesser picks at melon and serrano ham - than the essential aesthetic dilemma which troubles Wagner’s guildsmen, ‘what is beautiful?’
And, herein lies a problem with Holten’s conception. The real 16 th-century Meistersingers, having created an idealised lineage stretching back to the twelve great masters who represented the first flowering of German culture in the 13th century, were now concerned that their traditions were falling into disrepair. Sachs and Beckmesser tussle how these traditions might be saved and maintained; Veit Pogner addresses the decaying state of art in his presentation to the Guild Meeting, offering his daughter as a prize that can inject new life into a dying art form.
In Holten’s theatrical world, however, the prize-song competition seems irrelevant, even incongruous: when Pogner ‘sells’ his daughter, Eva is more a trophy Eve than a muse of Parnassus. When a greasy looking Walther arrives, his rock-band t-shirt, out-sized coat and cool shades are an eyesore amid the formal regalia of the club, as Holten reverses the class-relationship between Wagner’s courtly knight and the guildsmen.
Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Act 2 does not take us out into the streets and among the people: Sachs seems to have set up shop in the club dining-room, and the ornamental planters have to do service for fragrant lime trees and verdant meadows. Given the incompatibility between set and action, stronger stagecraft is needed if we are to appreciate the Nurembergers’ lives and minds. Moreover, the end-of-act fracas between David and Beckmesser mushrooms into a vision of apocalypse worthy of Hieronymus Bosch: a riot of beasts and devils swarms the stage - Signe Fabricius’ movement direction is masterly - and the throne, already on a tilt, is ripped from its pedestal and spun aloft, as a tattooed, torch-bearing, cloven-hoofed Pan ineffectually calls the hour.
Bryn Terfel (Sachs), Rachel Willis-Sørensen (Eva), Gywn Hughes Jones (Walther). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Act 3 appears to tell us that what we have just seen is ‘a dream’, of a theatrical kind, as the set swivels back to reveal its own ‘back-stage’. A slow revolve takes us full circle and by the end of the Act we are back in the gentlemen’s club for the Feast of St. John. Costume Designer Anja Vang Kragh indulges in hyperbolic pageantry: while the guildsmen, who perch on raked seating as if watching a dramatic performance, wear modern dress, the ‘mastersingers’ are an explosion of richly coloured finery and frippery, topped with pavement-slab mortar-boards. Again, the attention to detail is notable: Sachs even has a boot atop his golden staff. But, surely the vagrant-like Walther would not get past the doormen?
If there are some question marks over the logic and consistency of Holten’s concept, the cast score full marks all round for stamina. Byrn Terfel took a little while to get into his stride - his is quite a subdued Sachs - but by Act 2 he had the measure of Beckmesser, cobbling with sly insouciance during his serenade. And, though the relationships between Sachs, Walther and Eva at times lack clarity, Terfel skilfully conjured pathos in his scene with Eva. Sachs’ paean to ‘Holy German Art’ can seem like an unsettling volte-face, but Terfel’s imperious explanation of the need to preserve and continue the mastersingers’ art smoothed over the swerve.
Bryn Terfel (Hans Sachs). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen is a creamy-voiced Eva; the richness and radiance of her voice conveys Eva’s surprising feistiness, as does Willis-Sørensen’s nuanced acting - even though she is saddled with a series of ghastly, unflattering costumes including a dress as sturdy as a battleship. If only her diction had been clearer; this was a weakness that was exacerbated by the clarity of Terfel, and that of Gwyn Hughes Jones as Walther von Stolzing.
Rachel Willis Sørensen (Eva). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Hughes Jones’ tenor was characteristically warm and honeyed, and he did not flag once during the long, demanding performance, as he honed his prize song to expressive perfection over four and a half hours. But, while unwaveringly lyrical, Hughes Jones sometimes lacked brightness in the middle register where he was occasionally obscured by the rich brass orchestrations. It was also hard for the Welsh tenor to establish Walther’s nobility, given that he looked like a bristly, boorish rocker.
Johannes Martin Kränzle (Beckmesser). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Johann Martin Kränzle was outstanding as Beckmesser, preening and prim, and oozing smug self-satisfaction. He pulled off the ‘singing badly well’ paradox, and acted superbly with his voice. After his final humiliation, he lurked in the shadows, his peacock robes replaced by a grubby white vest; a troubling figure of pathos.
Allan Clayton (David). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Allan Clayton was confident and exuberant as David; the role was exceptionally well characterised and Clayton was a persuasive presence, even when some of the business around him was not. He struck a good rapport with Hanna Hip’s bright-toned Magdalene. Stephen Milling as Veit Pogner and Sebastian Holeck as Fritz Kothner also stood out for the authoritativeness of their singing.
The ROH Chorus were in hearty voice and chorus master William Spaulding enjoyed his moment in the spotlight, conducting the chorale singers, in Act 1. Antonio Pappano drove the action swiftly on - Meistersinger can run to five hours, this performance was barely four and a half - and the ROH Orchestra got better and better. If the overture lacked the full quota of both gravity and gleam, then the Act 3 prelude was particularly beautiful - and may have seemed especially touching given the unalleviated high temperature of the playing preceding.
Holten saves his best trick until last. When the club members arrive for dinner in Act 1, the female guests are banished: they are clearly just arm candy. But, when Eva sees both Sachs and Walther acquiesce to the power of tradition, she’s having none of it. That said, surely Wagner’s message is that ‘true’ art depends as much on tradition as it does innovation.
Claire Seymour
Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Hans Sachs - Bryn Terfel, Sixtus Beckmesser - Johannes Martin Kränzle, Walther von Stolzing - Gwyn Hughes Jones, Eva - Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Veit Pogner - Stephen Milling, David - Allan Clayton, Magdalene - Hanna Hipp, Fritz Kothner - Sebastian Holecek, Kunz Vogelgesang - Andrew Tortise, Balthasar Zorn - Alasdair Elliott, Konrad Nachtigal - Gyula Nagy, Ulrich Eisslinger - Samuel Sakker, Augustin Moser - David Junghoon Kim, Hermann Ortel - John Cunningham, Hans Schwarz - Jeremy White, Hans Foltz - Brian Bannatyne-Scott, Nightwatchman -David Shipley, Apprentices (Jeanette Ager, Maria Brown, Maria Jones, Clare McCaldin, Simon Biazeck, Phillip Brown, Edmond Choo, Freddie De Tommaso, Andrew Friedhoff, James Geer, James Scarlett, David Woodward,
Director - Kasper Holten, Conductor - Antonio Pappano, Set designer - Mia Stensgaard, Costume designer - Anja Vang Kragh, Lighting designer - Jesper Kongshaug, Choreography and movement - Signe Fabricius, Fight director - Kate Waters, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Saturday 11th March 2017.