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."
Katie Hawks makes quite a claim for Handel’s Acis and Galatea when, in her programme article, she describes it as the composer’s ‘most perfect work’. Surely, one might feel, this is a somewhat hyperbolic evaluation of a 90-minute pastoral masque, or serenade, based on an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which has its origins in a private entertainment?
However, in the light of this accomplished performance at St John’s Smith Square, one of first events of this year’s London Handel Festival, perhaps such enthusiasm can be indulged. After all, Winton Dean described the final aria, which expresses the transfiguring effect of Galatea’s love and loss, as ‘one of the most sublime things Handel ever wrote’ ( Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios). The work was popular in Handel’s day, and remains so, judging by the capacious and appreciative audience at St John’s.
This year’s festival is titled Handel in London. Since Handel, who settled in the capital in 1712 and became a naturalised citizen fifteen years later, spent most of his working-life in London there are plentiful works from which to choose. But, the Festival also aims to explore the wider social context of Georgian London, and Acis and Galatea is a good place to start. For, it not only represents the young Handel’s attempts to enchant native audiences suspicious of foreign art forms and styles, but also, through the comic satire of John Gay’s libretto which abounds with contemporary references, throws light on the cultural politics of the period.
Commissioned by James Brydges, Earl of Carnavon and later Duke of Chandos, Acis and Galatea had its first performance sometime between 1718-20 at Cannons, the stately home on the grand Middlesex estate where Brydges maintained a group of musicians for his chapel and private entertainments. Gay adapted Dryden’s translation of Ovid and threw in a sprinkle of quotations from and allusions to John Hughes and Alexander Pope.
Ignoring the advice of the pragmatic Damon, two besotted lovers - shepherd Acis and sea nymph Galatea - relish their pastoral seclusion. Their bucolic happiness is, sadly, but brief, brusquely disturbed by the smitten cyclops, Polyphemus, whose raging jealousy and rampant passion have tragic consequences. Fortunately, Galatea’s love effects a divine metamorphosis: the murdered Acis, whom Polymethus has crushed with a rock, is transformed into a crystal stream which fountains from the rock.
Under Laurence Cummings’ elegant direction, the London Handel Orchestra and the nineteen singers of Pegasus complemented the vocal solos stylishly. The orchestral colourings were shrewdly highlighted by Cummings, with David Miller’s theorbo contributions providing particularly well-judged rhetorical enhancement. Tempos were swift enough to conjure lightness of spirit, but never too fast for the emotional import to be lost.
Cummings was willing to let the music speak for itself, nowhere more so than in the final hushed chorus, ‘Mourn all ye muses’, the graded diminuendo of which evoked a tender but profound Purcellian pathos, equal to the close of Dido and Aeneas upon which Handel draws. Similarly, the interlacing of the stricken Galatea’s pained questions - ‘Must I my Acis still bemoan/ Inglorious, crush’d beneath that Stone … Must the lovely charming Youth/ Die for his Constancy and truth?’ - the oboe’s plaintive melodic echoes, and the consoling choral responses - ‘Cease, cease, Galatea, cease to grieve’ - was beautifully shaped. And, the orchestral dotted rhythms that represent Acis’ ‘resurrection’ and continuing presence in the burbling stream were intimated with delicacy. Handel certainly doesn’t come much better than this.
As Galatea, Lucy Page sang with a fresh, clean soprano, sweeping sweetly across the registers though not always projecting strongly. Nick Pritchard’s tenor is rich and refined; Acis displayed both romantic ardour and, in his martial aria in Act 2, heroic potential.
Edward Grint made an impressive entrance through the red curtains behind the instrumentalists, bristling with fury. But, even in Polymethus’ first recitative, ‘I rage, I rage, I rage, I melt, I burn’, Grint’s bass balanced ballast and beauty - ‘I melt’ was beguilingly languorous: it was clear why the Cyclops fancied his chances with the nubile nymph. With paradoxical elegance, Grint negotiated the ungainly vocal contours and stuttering breathless which so often characterises the giant’s melodies, Polymethus’ unrest being sweetly countered by the obbligato ‘flauto’ (Catherine Latham, recorder) in the well-known ‘O ruddier than the cherry’. Similarly, the leaping octaves - ‘Torture, fury, rage, despair’ - with which the cyclops interrupts the lovers’ mournful duet were cleanly articulated and prickled with frustration.
Tenor Jorge Navarro Colorado, whom I have not previously heard, displayed a pleasingly mellow tenor and relaxed stage presence. Damon’s second aria, ‘Consider fond shepherd’, was beautifully sung, the top light but true.
This was a staged performance and as, upon entering St John’s, I wheezed through the eddying dry-ice smoke in a haze of lurid pink and green, I had slight misgivings about what might be in store. In the event, the pastoral partying was of a tame, traditional nature. Though Miles Fisher’s lighting provided a rainbow of hues from satanic crimson to elysian gold, the design was quaint rather than quirky. A criss-cross canopy of silken scarves foreshadowed the concluding watery transfiguration and green helium balloons bobbed over the orchestral players (obscuring the singers when they were positioned at the rear), whose music-stands were festooned with Arcadian foliage. Alongside conventional pastoral apparel, Galatea’s dress was a briny green; Polymethus’ fur conveyed his brutishness.
St John’s is no easy venue in which to present staged works. The lovely acoustic is tempered by poor sightlines and intrusive pillars. Director Martin Parr sought to overcome the limitations by employing varied entrance points, shifting soloists from left to right and moving the chorus around the venue, including the gallery. Unfortunately, Parr repeatedly instructed his soloists to deliver their arias from a sitting or prone position, thus rendering the protagonists invisible to all but those seated in the first few front-rows.
The result was that this was less of ‘staging’ of Acis and Galatea than a performance with gimmicks. Laurence Cummings was drawn into the fun. First evicted from the harpsichord by Damon, his score tossed into the air, then required to provide the gallant Acis with his sword, Cummings also turned to the nave to give the chorus their cue to release a shower of balloons from the gallery during the end-of-Act 1 chorus, ‘O happy we’ (some in the audience seemed more interested in batting the balloons back and forth than in listening to the musical accompaniment to the air-borne ballet). As the two-Act serenade was performed without a break, there was no opportunity for a balloon-gathering foray; the result was repeated explosive bursting throughout Act 2, painfully disrupting moments of emotional weight, not least Damon’s Act 2 aria and Galatea’s final aria of transformation.
My reservations had begun when it seemed that the sopranino recorders had not been not trusted to evoke the ‘warbling quire’ which Galatea dispatches to fetch her beloved Acis, and during the nymph’s plea, the chorus dangled and waggled paper ducks from fishing rods. As I recalled childhood visits to fairgrounds and endeavours to ‘hook the duck’, the mannered order of Arcadia seemed far away.
I’m probably guilty of humourlessness and many undoubtedly enjoyed the antics. Admittedly, there is much irony in Gay’s text, with its parodic echoes of nonsensical Arcadian conceits and interplay of ‘high’ and ‘low’. But, to me, Handel’s music is sincere, and the challenge is to distinguish between, and marry, textual levity and musical earnestness. Interestingly, when Handel presented a London performance of Acis and Galatea in 1732 it was announced that ‘There will be no action on the stage’. As Hawks observes, the serenade is ‘no shallow soap opera, but a deep exploration of emotions and psychology’. Fortunately the musicians and singers concurred.
The London Handel Festival continues until 17th April 2018.
Claire Seymour
London Handel Festival 2018
Handel: Acis and Galatea HWV49
Acis - Nick Pritchard, Galatea - Lucy Page, Polyphemus - Edward Grint, Damon - Jorge Navarro Colorado; Director - Martin Parr, Conductor - Laurence Cummings, Costume designer - Charlotte Epsiner, Lighting designer - Jack Weir, London Handel Orchestra, Pegasus Choir.
St John’s Smith Square, London; Monday 19th March 2018.