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 De Profundis, his long epistle to ‘Dear Bosie’, Oscar Wilde speaks literally ‘from the depths’, incarcerated in his prison cell in Reading Gaol. As he challenges the young lover who has betrayed him and excoriates Society for its wrong and unjust laws, Wilde also subjects his own aesthetic ethos to some hard questioning, re-evaluating a life lived in avowal of the amorality of luxury and beauty.
Wilde had also plunged the depths six years earlier, in his play Salomé, originally written in French (to both evade the censors and acknowledge the influence of Flaubert), in which he transferred subversion from page to stage - peeling back the skin of Beauty to reveal lurid degradation and moral decay, even while his text aspired to ‘the decorative conditions that each art requires for its perfection’ (‘The Critic as Artist’).
Though Wilde professed, in De Profundis, that he did not ‘regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure’, he did recognise that alongside an image of ‘Pleasure that liveth for a moment’ one has to make the image of the ‘Sorrow that abideth for ever’, explaining that this was ‘one of the refrains whose recurring motifs make Salomé so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad’.
Richard Strauss’s Salome might similarly be considered an essay in the aesthetics of transgression. Indeed, David McVicar’s ROH staging revived here, for the third time (revival director, Bárbata Lluch), certainly lures us to some dark places. The ‘decorative’ is all too obviously sullied. Es Devlin’s art deco staircase may curve gracefully but it carries Herod and his court from the banqueting room - the split-level set affords just a glimpse of lavish luxury - to the basement, where stained ceramics, ugly latrines and languid naked bodies, all bathed in a green-tinged patina, reek of moral bankruptcy. We’ve slipped down a staircase from ‘civilisation’ and ‘culture’ to chaos.
One thing that struck me about this production, which I didn’t remark last time round, is just how ‘still’ this subterranean dystopia is. Soldiers, Jews, Nazarenes, elegantly pose, the mix of fascination and revulsion with which they evidently regard Salome’s increasing mania and vulgarity mimicking our own voyeuristic bewitchment and absorption. Even Herod and Herodias remain seated through Salome’s degenerate display. With Jokanaan constrained by chains and cell walls, the only figure who emanates a life force is Salome herself. A what a terrible force that is, one which, as it escalates, devours itself - until the cathartic release of Salome’s execution, when Naaman (Duncan Meadows) brutally snaps her neck at Herod’s hysterical command, “Kill that woman!” And, so, with Salome’s death, we have relief but also despair: those that remain are the living dead.
Malin Byström (Salome). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
In the title role, Malin Byström conveyed not only Salome’s appalling moral degeneracy and self-consuming, obsessive desire, but also the grace and beauty which have so entranced Narraboth and Herod. Though pale, in a silver satin gown, she alone gleams in this underground abyss. Byström moves with physical eloquence: a litheness that somehow conveys both child-like unselfconsciousness and burgeoning sexual awareness. Even after her sudden recognition of her sensual and sexual self, this Salome remains a ‘child’ in her utter obliviousness of the moral consequences, to others and herself, of her actions and commands. When she holds the prophet's head aloft and entreats, ‘Why don’t you look at me, Jokanaan?’, we feel anger, frustration, despair and pity: she is utterly lost in her delusion. Byström does not have a weighty dramatic voice, though it is rich and luxurious in the middle, and she paced this performance sensibly. Perhaps in subsequent performances in the run, she might give even more during her confrontations with Jokanaan and Herod. And, if she does lack the power at the top that would capture the irresistible hypnotical assault of sensual indulgence then the relative lightness of her lyric soprano did initially lessen Salome’s vulgarity. She held nothing back in the terrifying final scene though, vocally or dramatically, as her fatal obsession consumed and destroyed her.
Michael Volle (Jokanaan) and Malin Byström (Salome). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
I still don’t understand the ‘message’ that McVicar’s ‘Seven Veils’ dance is supposed to communicate. As Herod followed Salome through a series of doorways and a video backdrop displayed a naked back, an exploding lightbulb and other seemingly disconnected images, I assumed as before that there was some Freudian intent. But, surely the stripping of the seven veils symbolises the shedding of appearances and illusions - Wilde’s ‘decorations’ or poetic ornamentation? That, in dancing Salome reveals for Herod the ‘self’ that she wants Jokanaan - who does not desire to know who she is, will not look at or listen to her - to be forced to acknowledge.
Michael Volle (Jokanaan). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Tenor Michael Volle has a colossal voice and presence, both of which convey a sensuality of which the prophet is himself aware. This Jokanaan imposed his righteousness formidably and fearsomely, but we are aware of his fragilities too. His religious proclamations rang resonantly from his cell, almost as if he offered them as resistance to the desire which Salome had incited.
John Daszak successfully captured the conflicted king’s depravity and dismay, though he didn’t quite sail through the higher lying lines. The full-voiced Michaela Schuster was terrific as Herodias: singing with strength and smoothness, the queen was vulgar but not to excess, her horror at her daughter’s demise skilfully nuanced.
John Daszak (Herod) and Michaela Schuster (Herodias). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
I confess that though they were sung with uniform competence, the minor roles did not make much of an impression. Partly this is a consequence of the lack of movement that I mentioned above. Even David Philip Butt, whom I greatly admired in Glyndebourne’s recent touring production of Hamlet, seemed uncharacteristically muted.
In the pit, Henrik Nánási prioritised lucidity over luxuriousness, initially at least. There was some wonderfully pristine delineation of Strauss’s coloristic poeticism, but it was not until the final thirty minutes or so that the score began to complement, or even drive, the surfeit of sensuality and sickness that erupts on stage. However, McVicar’s production again proved its power to stir up an odour of moral squalor and dissipation that lingers pungently and ineradicably.
Claire Seymour
Richard Strauss: Salome
Salome - Malin Byström, Jokanaan - Michael Volle, Herod - John Daszak, Herodias - Michaela Schuster, Narraboth - David Butt Philip, Page of Herodias - Christina Bock, First Jew - Dietmar Kerschbaum, Second Jew - Paul Curievici, Third Jew - Hubert Francis, Fourth Jew - Konu Kim. Fifth Jew - Jeremy White, First Soldier - Levente Páll. Second Soldier - Alan Ewing, First Nazarene - Kihwan Sim, Second Nazarene - Dominic Sedgwick, Cappadocian - John Cunningham, Naaman - Duncan Meadows; Director - David McVicar, Revival director - Bárbara Lluch, Conductor - Henrik Nánási, Designer - Es Devlin, Lighting designer - Wolfgang Göbbel, Choreography and movement - Andrew George, Revival choreographer - Emily Piercy, Video designer - 59 Productions, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Monday 8th January 2018.