11 Mar 2018
Hamlet abridged and enriched in Amsterdam
French grand opera and small opera companies are an unlikely combination. Yet OPERA2DAY, a company of modest means, is currently touring the Netherlands with Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas.
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.
French grand opera and small opera companies are an unlikely combination. Yet OPERA2DAY, a company of modest means, is currently touring the Netherlands with Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas.
This production, enhanced with cinematography, is a triumph of the imagination over limited resources. Even the chronic coughing of a rather restless Amsterdam audience could not diminish its visual impact and raw emotion. So how does a small opera outfit successfully adapt a five-act grand opera?
First, by cutting a good chunk of the score. This version is not for purists, although it is for everyone who appreciates take-no-prisoners theatre. Gone are the ballets, marches and spring festivals. With the focus on the dysfunctional royal family and Ophelia, secondary characters like Ophelia’s father Polonius fade into the periphery. Since Thomas diverges at several plot points from Shakespeare, these reductions bring the opera closer to the play. Voice-over fragments from Hamlet’s Shakespearean monologues in French translation upgrade Carré and Barbier’s effective but conventional libretto. There is no chorus. The soloists, supplemented by three highly competent female singers as courtiers, sing the choral parts. This approach passed the acid test of the opera’s most dramatic moment, when, aided by Hernán Schvartzman’s driven conducting, the singers rose to the challenge of the Act 2 finale. The spine-tingling ensemble after Hamlet publicly accuses his stepfather of murdering his father was satisfyingly grand of gesture. Later on, the women’s singing at Ophelia’s funeral was both tonally glowing and incredibly touching. In the same way, the New European Ensemble, a chamber-sized orchestra, played with a keen sense of drama. Schvartzman led them in an unflaggingly expressive and suspenseful performance. Technically they were challenged by the rapidly ascending and descending figures that mark moments of psychological crisis. The exquisite solo intros, however, were of a different caliber altogether. The onstage brass band, who later doubled as pallbearers, also acquitted themselves commendably. Although not always polished, the orchestral playing never lost sight of the emotional heart of the score.
The visual trump card onstage is the projection of filmed sequences both on a backdrop and on a scrim at the front, creating a striking three-dimensional effect. Quivering images in mossy shades reveal Hamlet’s mind’s eye while the elegantly costumed singers act out the plot. Director Serge van Veggel deliberately smudges the line between real events and the prince’s imagination, keeping the viewer continuously engaged. This juxtaposition of reality and fantasy yields unforgettable images, none more so than Ophelia’s harrowing suicide in front of an idealized image of her floating corpse. But all this sophistication of form would mean little without the fine cast of singing actors. In the title role Quirijn de Lang looks like an English Romantic poet, John Keats at Elsinore as it were. His plangent, slightly nasal baritone fits the character and the language. De Lang produces his voice skillfully across all registers and is a gifted, instinctive actor. His Hamlet hurts so intensely and behaves so insufferably that, like his mother, you want to protect him, but you also feel like slapping him, like his stepfather. The signs of vocal tiredness towards the end were a small trade-off for the fierceness of his interpretation.
Soprano Lucie Chartin’s Ophelia starts out with a charming twinkle in her eye, then gradually collapses into the frangible victim of Hamlet’s bullying and abandonment. After taking a few phrases to settle vocally, Chartin sang very naturally, as if she were speaking, which rendered her portrayal intimate and immediate. In her mad scene she dispensed with pretty warbling and mined deep pathos from Ophelia’s folk song. Accurate and tortured, her high-flying cadenzas sliced the air like stiletto knives. The other singers all delivered the goods. Martijn Sanders and Martina Prins were vocally commanding as the royal couple, Sanders an unempathic and stiff Claudius and Prins a regal and soft-hearted Gertrude. Gertrude is written for a mezzo-soprano and Prins, being a dramatic soprano, had easy, ringing high notes as well as a formidable middle range. Jan-Willem Schaafsma’s willowy tenor left a very favorable impression as Laertes, Ophelia’s brother. The quality bass of Yavuz Arman İşleker was on double duty, most memorably as the ghost of Hamlet Senior. Bass-baritone Patrick Pranger and tenor Georgi Sztojanov completed the estimable roster of soloists as Hamlet’s friends Horatio and Marcellus. They also added a touch of gruesome humor as a pair of skull-tossing gravediggers.
This distilled Hamlet, adapted with informed respect and performed with passion, is a gripping music drama. It continues to tour until April. The last two dates are at the company’s home base, the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague. Performances are subtitled in Dutch and English.
Jenny Camilleri
Cast and production information:
Hamlet: Quirijn de Lang; Ophélie: Lucie Chartin; Claudius: Martijn Sanders; Gertrude: Martina Prins; Laërte /Player Queen: Jan Willem Schaafsma; Horatio/First Gravedigger: Patrick Pranger; Marcellus/Second Gravedigger: Georgi Sztojanov; Polonius/Ghost (Voice)/ Player New King: Yavuz Arman İşleker; Ghost (Actor)/ Player Old King: Joop Keesmaat; Courtiers: Judith Pranger, Sonja Volten and Adélaïde Rouyer; Hamlet Voice-Over: Jonathan Rouah. Director: Serge van Veggel; Play Director: Femke Luyckx; Set Design: Herbert Janse; Costume Design: Mirjam Pater; Lighting Design: Uri Rapaport; Film: Margo Onnes; Sound Design: Arne Bock. Conductor: Hernán Schvartzman. New European Ensemble. Seen at the Royal Carré Theatre, Amsterdam, on Saturday, 10th of March, 2018.