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."
A great performance of Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared can be, allowing for the casting of a superb tenor, an experience on a par with Schoenberg’s Erwartung. That Shadwell Opera’s minimalist, but powerful, staging in the intimate setting of Studio 2 of the Arcola Theatre was a triumph was in no small measure to the magnificent singing of the tenor, Sam Furness.
Janáček wrote this 35-minute work during the final years of the First World War, and its over-riding theme of cross-cultural love, displaced family values and separation are emotionally symbolic of the political and historical times in which they are set. This was a period of constrained social mobility, of racial and class prejudice, of political turmoil and largely because of this the cycle is quite easy to take out of its historical roots and place in a contemporary time and setting. Janáček himself seems to have been undecided by the presentation of this work - should it be completely staged, or simply presented without any kind of dramatization. Deborah Warner’s production for the National Theatre many years ago didn’t make a convincing job of this, and it should be said that Jack Furness’s production recalls that one in many details (down to the use of video projection and simulated sex). But by placing it in a modern-day asylum centre Shadwell Opera and Jack Furness could be saying this is anywhere and everywhere - identity and indecision of themselves cross borders and nationalities, time and space, love is welded to bureaucracy to be rubber stamped at will. Where Warner had over-indulged the setting, Furness has kept it to a bare minimum without interference from the direction placing the composer’s libretto in a social petri dish.
For such a short work, it has surprising psychological depth though the desolation of Janáček’s piano writing lays much of the foundation for this too: more than half of the stated tempi for the score indicates music which is played slowly, although that is not to say there isn’t angularity or impressionistic weight to phrasing elsewhere. Much of the writing recalls Janáček’s 1905 Sonata in its rumbling bass lines, the massive chords that sound stricken with terror, the phrases that erupt elliptically and the sounds of tolling bells. The bleakness of the score is undeniable, but set against the meltingly tender phrasing of Sam Furness the contrast between hope and despair was beguiling. The mezzo-soprano Angharad Lyddon also sang her role powerfully, and hers is a very rich voice. She was entirely convincing.
I’ve never been absolutely convinced by Seamus Heaney’s translation of Janáček’s cycle - it never lacks poetry, and it’s rhythmically well written, but the language can be earthy sometimes, though perhaps this is because Heaney is trying a little too hard to replicate the Czech folktale narrative that inspired Janáček in the first place. Nevertheless, Sam Furness sang his part with magnificently clear diction (this was one of those rare examples when literally every word was crystal clear) and one was often spellbound by his ability to float phrases. His is a powerful, yet fully emotive voice, and the stamina was formidable. Janáček doesn’t make Heldentenor demands in this cycle but he expects his tenor to sing at sotto voce (which Furness did) and he had no difficulty whatsoever reaching his two high notes at the close of the cycle. Matthew Fletcher played the score with effortless brilliance.
This may well have a been very short evening but it was hugely impressive.
Marc Bridle
Sam Furness (tenor), Angharad Lyddon (mezzo-soprano), Matthew Fletcher (piano), Jack Furness (direction)
Shadwell Opera, Arcola Theatre, Studio 2, London E8; 4th August 2017.