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.
![Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel [Source: Wikipedia]](http://www.operatoday.com/Elisabeth_Christine_of_Braunschweig_Wolfenbuettel.png)
One trusts the banquet following the world premiere of La concordia de’ pianeti proffered some spicy flavors, because Pietro Pariati’s text is so cloying it causes violent stomach-churning. In contrast, Antonio Caldara’s music sparkles and dances like a blaze of crystal chandeliers.
La concordia de’ pianeti was commissioned to celebrate the name day of Elizabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, mother of Empress Maria Theresa and grandmother of Queen Marie Antoinette of France. In November 1723 she and her husband, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, were returning to Vienna from Prague, where they had been crowned monarchs of Bohemia. During a stop in Znojmo, Moravia, Caldara, who was employed by the emperor, conducted the open-air premiere for the imperial couple. La concordia de’ pianeti is more of a secular cantata than a one-act opera. Its plot, such as it is, consists of the god Mercury persuading six other gods that “Elisa”, the empress, possesses qualities equal, or even superior, to theirs, thus deserving deification. Each of the seven gods and goddesses is associated with a heavenly body: Apollo with the sun, Saturn and Venus with the eponymous planets, and so on. Their final agreement on Elisa’s unsurpassable wonderfulness corresponds to the harmony of the spheres, hence the title. At one point the lunar goddess Diana scoffs that she’d like to see Elisa hunting boar and deer as skillfully as herself. Unfortunately, this tantalizing diversion in the plot never happens. As the gods concede Elizabeth’s supremacy one by one, the obsequious puffery reaches ridiculous proportions. The deities eulogize Elizabeth’s spotlessness, beauty and, most insistently, her fertility, ad nauseam. The empress, who was under immense pressure to produce a male heir, was pregnant with a boy at the time, but later had a miscarriage.
Given the qualitative chasm separating the words and the music, this performance by the Baroque ensemble La Cetra under Andrea Marcon, would have been better off without subtitles. But Caldara’s ornate score certainly deserved to be rescued from obscurity in 2014. Four trumpets and a set of timpani festoon the introduction. The laudatory choruses, plushly sung by the La Cetra chorus, set a celebratory mood. Conducting deftly but unhurriedly, Marcon maintained a festive pace throughout. The arias are eminently hummable, often danceable, the melodies set off with brilliant instrumental colors, and there were plenty of opportunities for the excellent musicians to show off their virtuosity. The two lutenists supplied springy rhythms and the principal trumpet elegantly dueled with Marte (Mars) in one of his arias. At full strength, the orchestra, with its warm and vibrant strings, threatened to swamp the smaller voices.
All seven soloists are to be commended for trying to inject some theatre into the empty, repetitive flattery, and succeeding to an extent by dint of their personalities. Vocally, they offered between them an impressive variety of qualities. Countertenor David Hansen sang Apollo, a role created by the star castrato Carestini, with a gauzy middle voice that opened up into a full, clarion top. Carlos Mena made an assertive Marte (Mars). Mena’s countertenor is idiosyncratic, with surprisingly dark low notes. He glided through the contrasting hues of his registers with agility and appealing swagger. Both Hansen and Mena had enough volume to hold their own against the orchestra, as did bass Luca Tittoto. As Saturno, Tittoto combined power with comely phrasing. Verónica Cangemi was a charmingly combative Diana. All the gods get two arias, except for Venere (Venus), who gets three, and Cangemi’s thin-topped soprano sounded at its best in her second aria, which made full use of its warm, upper middle band. Lovers of smooth, evenly produced voices could sit back and enjoy Emiliano Gonzalez Toro as Mercurio, Christophe Dumaux as Giove (Jupiter) and Delphine Galou as Venere. With modestly sized voices, they each spun out ribbons of unblemished coloratura. Galou’s mellow mezzo-soprano, Dumaux’s patrician countertenor and Gonzalez Toro’s bright tenor differentiated their characters in a way the stilted text never could. Above all, everyone on the podium projected great pleasure in performing this effulgent music, and the audience responded with appreciative enthusiasm.
Jenny Camilleri
Cast and production information:
Venere - Delphine Galou, mezzo-soprano; Diana - Verónica Cangemi, soprano; Giove - Christophe Dumaux, countertenor; Apollo - David Hansen, countertenor; Marte - Carlos Mena, countertenor; Mercurio - Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, tenor; Saturno - Luca Tittoto, bass. Conductor - Andrea Marcon. La Cetra Barockorchester & Vokalensemble Basel. Heard at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, on Saturday, 28th of April, 2018.