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."
Four years have passed since my last Dialogues des Carmélites, and on that occasion - Robert Carsen’s production for the ROH - heightened dramatic intensity, revolutionary insurrection (enhanced by an oppressed populace formed by a 67-strong Community Ensemble) and, under the baton of Simon Rattle, luxuriant musical rapture, were the order of the day.
This new production which Martin Lloyd-Evans has devised for the postgraduate opera students at the Guildhall School may share some of Carsen’s and his designer Michael Levine’s visual minimalism but it is altogether a calmer, more intimate affair. Lloyd-Evans, conductor Dominic Wheeler and the young cast pay great respect to this challenging work: it is no mean feat to sustain a pretty well unrelievedly intense mood for so long, so effectively.
The production team achieve this through a combination of period-specific detail, simple iconographic statements by designer takis, and Robbie Butler’s striking lighting design, which work collectively to both link the tableaux-like episodes of Poulenc’s narrative and allow space for symbolic gesture. Poulenc’s Stravinkian ostinatos injected momentum into the unfolding rituals. Admittedly, though, spiritual serenity can be achieved at the expense of inflamed passions, and some of the crowd scenes fell a little flat, lacking a palpable sense of menace and terror.
And, though the Guildhall School tackled Poulenc’s opera just seven years ago, it does seem a strange choice for a student production given that there are so few roles for the men - and for those chaps taking those roles that do exist there is not much time to establish credibility of character - and that even the plentiful prioresses are seldom individualised. Moreover, the grandeur of the choral scenes might seem to require more forces and funds than the average music college can muster.
Commissioned in 1953 by La Scala, Dialogues des Carmélites is based on a play by Georges Bernanos which dramatises the experiences of a neurotically anxious young aristocrat, Blanche de la Force, who, in search of spiritual peace and safety, leaves her family home at the beginning of the French Revolution to join the Carmelite order in Compiègne. But, the convent walls cannot keep out Revolutionary convictions. Blanche and her fellow sisters are arrested and while she initially flees from the oath of martyrdom that they have all taken under the guidance of the formidable Mère Marie, as her sisters embrace the ultimate sacrifice, Blanche returns to take her place at the scaffold.
What seems important, and what Lloyd-Evans and takis clearly appreciate, is that this is not an opera about the French Revolution. Indeed, I can’t find, or write myself, a better explanation of what the opera is ‘ about’ than this ‘explanation’ by Donald Spoto’s explanation in Opera News fifteen years ago:
‘It is rather a series of nearly classical dialogue-scenes in which issues and questions of deeply human and religious significance are set forth, explored and clarified. The key to its complex of ideas is to be found in certain matters of the faith that claimed the loyalties of Poulenc and of Georges Bernanos, whose lifelong motto was set forth at the end of his novel Journal d’un Curé de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1936): “Tout est grâce” - everything is grace.’ [1]
This concept is powerfully embodied in one line in the libretto, when the Le Prieure warns the overly fervent, naively self-righteous Blanche, who is seeking to enter the order, ‘Prayer alone justifies our existence .... we are bound to it day and night’. These words may be difficult for a non-believer to understand or empathise with, but they underpin the opera, and Lloyd-Evans’ production. The musical set-pieces of observance - the Qui Lazarum, Ave Verum Corpus and Salve Regine - are architectural linchpins in the unfolding sequence of tableaux through which the spiritual journeys of Blanche and Mère Marie is conveyed. During the performance I was reminded of the words of one of my colleagues, Anne Ozorio, who, writing of the last GSMD production in 2011 observed that, ‘Dialogues des Carmélites … unfolds as a series of disconnected tableaux, like the Stations of the Cross. This structure is significant, for Poulenc is connecting the nun’s journey to the guillotine to Christ’s journey to the cross. The narrative is deliberately stylized to emphasize the spiritual and moral implications of the plot. It’s not simple narrative.’
Various hanging flats - interior walls, marble edifices, grilles that evoke both confessional chambers and prison gates (and when florally decorated, garden trellises) - slide, diverge and re-form, at one point forming an air-borne Crucifix, and ultimately coalesce as a granite headstone memorialising the life of Blanche de la Force. The subtle movement and prevailing stillness expressed an unassailable spiritual nobility.
Claire Lees (Soeur Constance); Jake Muffett (1er Officer); Meriel Cunningham (Mere Gerald); Michael Vickers (Le Marquis); Eva Gheorghiu (Soeur Felicite). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Lucy Anderson’s Blanche was fittingly unbalanced and febrile, and if at first, in the scene with Michael Vicker’s luxuriously costumed Marquis de la Force, her broad vibrato diffused the focus of the tone, then later, when paradoxically attired in humble habit, the rich layers of her soprano blossomed with lyric intensity. I was pleased, too, that the oft-cut spoken scene, which links the final conversation between Marie and Blanche and the assembling of the nuns in their prison cell, was retained. Blanche’s street encounter with citizens who tell her of the arrest of the nuns and are astonished by the emotive response of this ‘servant’ who declares she has never been to Compiègne, is pivotal to her remorseful acceptance of her place beside her sisters at the scaffold.
Chloë Latchmore’s Mère Marie was superbly acted and sung. She movingly conveyed the spiritual misunderstandings that this fervent but sometimes misguided nun must face, and her struggle to truly understand the new prioress’s guidance that, ‘It is not up to us to decide whether our names will later appear in a list of martyrs’ was deeply affecting. Latchmore has a strong middle voice but can also project convincingly at the top, whatever the dynamic; this was an utterly convincing vocal and dramatic performance.
Georgia Mae Bishop threw her all into the Prioress’s all too human fears of death (though the quasi-Gothic blue/black eye-shadow was perhaps a supernatural step too far). Claire Lees captured Sister Constance’s gaiety and unpretentious spiritual vision. The French diction of the entire cast was exemplary.
Dominic Wheeler’s direction of the Guildhall School's instrumentalists reminded me how sympathetic and helpful Poulenc’s orchestral writing is to the voices: at times the orchestral fabric becomes a huge organ-like tapestry, supporting their arioso lines. Elsewhere, the strings in particular conjured an almost Tchaikovskian lyricism and ardency, while finely delineated woodwind playing was complemented by warm and pretty reliable horns.
With the first UK performance of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (at the Barbican Hall last Tuesday) fresh in my mind, the obvious narrative parallels with Poulenc’s opera seemed strong. But, in Dialogues, the spiritual mysteries are in the music itself, something which to me seemed lacking in Heggie’s score, and Wheeler did much to communicate the ambiguities and conflicts.
Much, of course, rests upon the opera’s final scene. Some might have wished for more melodrama than Lloyd-Evans offered, but, for me, this opera is about sacrifice - a journey through fear of death to faith in martyrdom - and this needs no grand gestures. Earlier in the opera, the second prioress confronts the Revolutionary Officer who comes to arrest the nuns, and who taunts their readiness to remove their religious habits: ‘Your uniform does not make you a soldier.’ And, while Lloyd-Evans’ closing gesture pays a nod to the opening image of Carsen’s production - of neatly folded habits decorously arrayed across the ROH stage - as each of the nuns stepped forward and placed her brown habit on the ground, and the shocking swishing of the guillotine sent shudders through the instrumental texture, we understood that this humble ‘offering’ was a sign of spiritual serenity and transcendence.
Claire Seymour
Poulenc: Dialogues de Carmélites
Blanche - Lucy Anderson, Le Chevalier/Premier Commissaire - Daniel Mullaney, L’Aumônier - Eduard Mas Bacardit, Le Marquis - Michael Vickers, Premier Officer - Jake Muffet, Le Prieure/Mère Jeanne - Georgia Mae Bishop, Soeur Constance - Claire Lees, Mère Marie - Chloë Latchmore, La seconde Prieure - Michelle Alexander, Soeur Mathilde - Lucy McAuley, Deuxième Commissaire/Theirry/M.Javelinot/Le Geôlier - Bertie Watson; director - Martin Lloyd-Evans, conductor - Dominic Wheeler, scenography and costume designer - takis, lighting designer - Robbie Butler.
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Silk Street, London; Monday 26 th February 2018.
[1] Donald Spoto, ‘Dialogue on Carmélites II: A Roman Catholic's Perspective’, Opera News, Jan 2003, Vol. 67, Issue 7.