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."
In her 200th anniversary year, in the county of her birth and in which she spent much of her life, and two days after she became the first female writer to feature on a banknote - the new polymer £10 note - Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park made a timely appearance, in operatic form, at The Grange in Hampshire.
I’m not sure how many of the audience at The Grange for the first of two performances of Jonathan Dove’s opera were Austen aficionados but the foot-stamping reception that the full house gave the composer’s newly orchestrated opera suggested that they thought he’d told a good tale. Indeed, Dove and his librettist Alasdair Middleton, did provide us with a charming entertainment which was stylishly and slickly staged by director Martin Lloyd-Evans and designer Dick Bird, and I was undoubtedly in a minority, though not wholly alone, in finding the opera more divertissement than drama.
Alasdair Middleton has drawn his libretto, largely, from Austen’s text but the necessary omission of characters and incidents transforms what is often seen by literary critics as a ‘problem novel’ into a comedy of manners whose satire has been diluted. Little of the ‘darkness’ of the novel is retained in the opera, and even when the protagonists undergo trials and tribulations in the second act, the superficial characterisation of the opening act prevents them acquiring a convincing tragic dimension.
There is little sense, for example, of the fear or passivity that Sir Thomas Bertram’s autocracy inspires, and while Lady Bertram is appropriately obsessed with her pug, unlike Austen’s original she is not sluggish and distracted, rather as garrulous and assertive as Emma’s Miss Bates, and she joins in the family theatricals and dancing with sprightly spryness.
We have none of the preparative ‘back story’, which explains how Fanny Price came to live in her uncle’s house, along with Aunt Norris, and other than a brief allusion to Edward Bertram’s kindness to his young cousin, there is little to establish the nature of Fanny’s ‘role’ in the household - that is, to elevate her cousins by mere fact of her own lowly presence as an ‘interesting object’. Thus, the aristocrats’ ‘benevolent plan’ is deprived of its underlying self-serving motivations and Austen’s jibe that aristocratic compassion is designed to benefit the benefactors is weakened.
In particular, there is none of Austen’s bittersweet irony; and, none of what one critic describes as the novel’s ‘defiant potential’, reflecting the debate between those who see Austen as a defender of the moral status quo and those who see her as a satirical critic of the hypocritical social mores of her day.
In the opera, Maria’s delight at the prospect of wedlock - “I’m going to marry a country seat” - is not dented, nor the audience’s laughter diminished, by her brother Edmund’s observation that, “If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow”. And, when - declining the opportunity offered by her father to extricate herself from a lamented engagement - she admits that she has traded personal desire and fulfilment for a Wimpole Street abode and £20,000 a year because marriage to the weak-willed Rushworth will afford her “independence”, Austen’s irony, even anger, at the insincerity of the notion that such social contracts are ‘democratic’ is wholly absent.
Angharad Lyddon (Julia Bertram), Emily Vine (Maria Bertram), Martha Jones (Fanny Price). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
The omission of the Portsmouth episode deprives us of the symbolic opposition of town and country, of artifice and nature. Moreover, Fanny’s passivity, physical frailty and moral stasis - Kingsley Amis condemned her as a ‘monster of complacency and pride’ - are not subject to scrutiny; as a result, her unwillingness to cross the ha-ha at Sotherton lacks figurative weight. Edmund’s explanation to the rebellious Mary Crawford that, “Every sort of exercise fatigues [Fanny] so soon, except riding” is retained but, deprived of context, we do not infer Austen’s criticism of Fanny’s unwillingness to act or change. Given the largest vocal role, Fanny assumes a centrality and ‘moral rightness’ which she does not possess in the novel, and this is exacerbated when Henry Crawford reprises her words at the end of the opera: “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
There are some effective comic gestures and witty ensembles - the dining room scene, ‘Landscape Gardening’, in which the Bertrams evince an unnaturally vigorous enthusiasm to visit Sotherton to help the hapless Mr Rushworth get his natural vegetation under control was deftly done, for example. The amateur dramatics are made foolishly melodramatic by the emotive rendition of the vivid ensemble, ‘Lovers’ Vows’. But, I found many of the episodes more twee than Albert Herring - which, ironically, was the opera which Britten composed when he’d abandoned his own plan to compose an opera on Mansfield Park, and which does subsume some of the probing satire of Maupassant’s original short story from which it is derived.
Shelley Jackson (Mary Crawford), Henry Neill (Edmund Bertram), Jeni Bern (Aunt Norris), Martha Jones (Fanny Price), Nick Pritchard (Henry Crawford), Sarah Pring (Lady Bertram), Grant Doyle (Sir Thomas Bertram). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
Perhaps I would have been less troubled by such matters had Dove’s score held my attention more persuasively. Mansfield Park was commissioned by Heritage Opera in 2011 and was originally scored for piano four-hands (this version was reviewed by Opera Today when it was revived by Hampstead Garden Opera in 2013). At The Grange, it was performed in a newly orchestrated version for a chamber ensemble of 13 players (commissioned by The Grange Festival).
There is no doubting the composer’s ability to set text in naturalistic vocal rhythms, and to create the sort of spare orchestral textures - often just a single bassoon or piano line - which allow the words to be readily discerned. The result is fluent theatre but also a certain predictability: the vocal melodies run a predictable course; the instrumental patterns and ostinatos recur and persist. Growing tension is sign-posted by increasingly deafening timpani pounding accompanied by large vocal leaps. There are passages that sound like Britten, others that resemble Sondheim.
I heard ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’ on the lips of more than one audience member, and while there may be nothing wrong with being mentioned alongside the master of music theatre, I sensed that the comments reflected a perceived lack of harmonic and structural sophistication, with which I would concur. The waltzes of the ballroom scene spun over a descending ground bass which put me in mind of Pachelbel’s Canon. Perhaps the neoclassicism was an apt idiom for both the narrative and our performance venue, but the endless arpeggiations and dance forms became tiresome.
As we swept through the narrative - each ‘chapter’ introduced by a choric, or occasionally solo, summary pronouncement - I longed for some spaciousness in which character and emotion could develop: the equivalent of Austen’s penetrating focalisation. The characters exchanged bon mots with rapidity and the first act contained scarcely a single ‘aria moment’, although Fanny, disappointingly deprived of the opportunity to express her inner life more fully in the ‘Wilderness’ scene, was given a moment of exposition in Act Two. A ‘letter scene’ briskly dashes through the latter events of the novel, effectively suggesting simultaneity of action but glossing over the sort of discerning character motivation which might make the happy ending more probable and persuasive. In the final scene, the characters collectively declaim the opening of Austen’s final chapter: “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.” The dismissal of ‘disorder’ did indeed feel rather hasty.
'The Wilderness'. Photo credit: Robert Workman.
However, as I said at the start of this review, my misgivings about the opera itself were apparently not shared by the majority of the audience, and their pleasure was in no small part occasioned by Lloyd-Evans’ astute, efficient direction and Bird’s charming design. Two imposing Classical pillars (a nod to The Grange’s imitation Greek Temple façade) positioned at the edge of a revolving set, contained their own revolving exterior/interior, allowing for fluent, often beguiling, transitions from lounge to lawn, and from sunshine to starlight. Sotherton’s ‘wilderness’, with its back-cloth vista à la Gainsborough, was especially elegant.
The cast, too, acquitted themselves very well. Emily Vine sparkled as the ever more impetuous Maria; as her sister, Julia, Angharad Lyddon’s lyrical mezzo almost burst with excitement at the pleasure inspired by the thought of owning a barouche. Shelley Jackson’s big, forceful soprano was the perfect conduit for Mary Crawford’s self-confidence and thrill-seeking, while Martha Jones effectively projected Fanny Price’s combination of righteousness and reluctance.
Henry Neill acted superbly as the caring but unknowing Edmund Bertram; his strong baritone imbued the ‘younger son’ with moral maturity. Nick Pritchard, too, made as much as he could of the caddish Henry Crawford, while Oliver Johnston convinced in his sometimes poignant portrayal of the ineffectual and foolish Mr Rushworth who nevertheless does all he can to please his ungrateful, and unaffectionate, wife.
Grant Doyle exuded imperious authority as Sir Thomas Bertram - who, Austen tells us, ‘had never seemed the friend of [his children’s] pleasures - thundering one-word commands and declarations: “Antigua. Sugar. Bristol. Plantation. Profit. Freight. Profit. Pride. Position. Posterity. Estate.” I did not care for Sarah Pring’s interpretation of Lady Bertram, but she relished her one-liners - “pug is getting peaky” - and her full mezzo assisted her ‘larger than life’ portrayal. Jeni Bern didn’t seem anywhere near snide enough as Mrs Norris, but she slipped neatly into the ensembles.
Claire Seymour
Jonathan Dove: Mansfield Park
Fanny Price - Martha Jones, Mary Crawford - Shelley Jackson, Henry Crawford - Nick Pritchard, Edmund Bertram - Henry Neill, Maria Bertram - Emily Vine, Mr Rushworth - Oliver Johnston, Julia Bertram - Angharad Lyddon, Sir Thomas Bertram - Grant Doyle, Lady Bertram - Sarah Pring, Aunt Norris - Jeni Bern; Director - Martin Lloyd-Evans, Conductor - David Parry, Set Designer - Dick Bird, Lighting Designer - Howard Hudson, Choreography - Mandy Demetriou, Orchestra (members of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and students of Trinity Laban).
Grange Festival Opera at The Grange, Hampshire; Saturday 16th September 2017.