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.
![Marcy Stonikas [Photo courtesy of Fletcher Artist Management]](http://www.operatoday.com/Marcy-Stonikas-head-shot1.png)
On November 12, 2017, Arizona Opera presented Giacomo Puccini’s verismo opera, Tosca, in a dramatic production directed by Tara Faircloth. Her production utilized realistic scenery from Seattle Opera and detailed costumes from the New York City Opera. Gregory Allen Hirsch’s lighting made the set look like the church of St. Andrea as some of us may have remembered it from time gone by.
Strong voiced Zachary Owen opened the performance as the escaping political prisoner Angelotti. Director Fairloth made sure we understood the fine points of her story as the escapee found the key to his family’s side altar and the woman’s clothes that his sister had left for him to use as a disguise. Inadvertently, the painter, Cavaradossi, let the police know that Angelotti’s sister, the Marquesa has been in the church because he painted her portrait there. As Cavaradossi, Marco Cammarota, sang is his picture aria with gorgeous high notes that should point his way to many more renditions of this role. Scarpia, the Chief of Police, used the same picture to rouse Tosca’s jealousy and to make her his “buon falco” or hunting bird.
Costume Designers Andrew Marlay and Heidi Ganser dressed Cavaradossi in simple working clothes for the first act, while Tosca had a gown of soft fabric that said little about her prestigious place in society. The conservative-minded Sacristan, too, was clad in neutral colors as he dialogued with the left-leaning painter. Visually, The red-clad choir singers showed the importance of the Church in that era as their presence contrasted with that of black-garbed Scarpia for the first act’s final Te Deum.
As Scarpia, Aleksey Bogdanov sang with resounding tones that carried through the Te Deum’s heavy orchestration. Conductor Stephen White included a canon sound as part of the orchestral bass and it served to contrast religious ritual with governmental action. The finale of Act One played out with exquisite taste as Scarpia’s henchmen, Sciarrone and Spoletta, underscored his evil.
Act two, Scarpia’s dinner hour, shows us more of his preference for violent conquests. He tortured Tosca’s lover so that she could hear his screams, after which he made her betrayal known. Cammarota’s “Victoria” gave us some fine examples of his sturdy and beauteous high notes. The Tosca, Marcy Stonikas, clad in jewels and blood-red velvet, pulled at the audience’s heart strings when she sang her aria asking God why he rewards her prayers and sacrifices with torture.
All three principals were outstanding in this act. Stonikas, Cammarota, and Bogdanov are three young singers from whom a great deal more can be expected in the future. Having bargained for her lover’s life, Tosca picked up a sharp knife and held it within the folds of her gown so she could to stab her oppressor when he tried to embrace her. Director Faircloth ended the act in the traditional manner. Tosca placed candles on either side of and a crucifix on top of the body.
Soprano Katrina Galka sang sweetly as the Shepherd Boy addressing the cool Roman night. Cammarota’s “É lucevan le stelle” made us all think about the value of life when only a few hours remain. Stonikas showed her dramatic ability, her resilience, and her easy high notes before declaring her intent to meet Scarpia before God.
Conductor Steven White drew dramatic, veristic playing from the Arizona Opera Orchestra. His interpretation gave the singers the melodic accompaniment as well as the space needed to perform at their best. The opera was both a sing fest for fine young voices and a dramatic thriller. It was the best Tosca I had seen in quite a few years.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Conductor, Stephen White; Director, Tara Faircloth; Set Designer, Ercole Somani; Costume Designers, Andrew Marlay and Heidi Ganser; Fight Director Andrea Robertson; Lighting Designer, Gregory Allen Hirsch; Chorus Master, Henri Venanzi; Floria Tosca, Marcy Stonikas; Mario Cavardossi, Marco Cammarota; Baron Scarpia, Aleksey Bogdanov; Angelotti and Jailer, Zachary Owen; Sacristan, Ricardo Lugo; Spoletta, Anthony Ciaramitaro; Sciarrone, Jarett Porter; Shepherd, Katrina Galka; Roberti, Gil Berry.
Alternate Cast: Tosca, Kara Shay Thompson; Cavardossi, Rafael Davila; Scarpia, Gordon Hawkins.