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.
![Orestes, Electra and Hermes at the tomb of Agamemnon, lucanian red-figure pelike, c. 380-370 BC, Louvre (K 544) [Source: Wikipedia]](http://www.operatoday.com/Orestes_Elektra_Hermes_Louvre_K544.png)
“There are no gods in heaven!” sings Elektra just before her brother Orest kills their mother. In the Greek plays about the cursed House of Atreus the Olympian gods command the banished Orestes to return home and avenge his father Agamemnon’s murder at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra. He dispatches both her and her lover Aegisthus.
The Furies then take up Clytemnestra’s cause and torment Orestes. In Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra, the first of several collaborations with his beloved librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the gods are deaf or absent. The characters must navigate a psychological quicksand, expressed in the elusive tonality of the score, on their own. Plagued by dark dreams, Klytaemnestra offers up blood sacrifices in vain. Her daughter Chrysothemis hopes to be released from her dysfunctional family by a man who will give her children, while the grieving Elektra effaces her womanhood and waits for Orest to satisfy her need for vengeance. It’s a terrifying world of impossible expectations and crushing loneliness, and the best performances of Elektra reveal this gaping horror. Last Saturday at the Concertgebouw Markus Stenz and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra did just that. Their Elektra was volcanic, seething and spitting from one terrifying eruption to the other. At the center of a vocally strong cast was the marvelous soprano Elena Pankratova in the title role.
The painstaking casting typical of the NTR ZaterdagMatinee series ensured that talented singing actors staffed the royal palace of Mycenae. The performance had a gripping start with a terrific group of maids, led by Alwyn Mellor’s febrile Overseer. Mezzo-soprano Cécile van de Sant as the First Maid and Kirsten Mackinnon as the put-upon Fifth Maid were particularly fine. Laetitia Gerards and Renate Arends were Klytaemnestra’e glamorous attendants. Tenor James Kryshak and bass Charles Dekeyser gave their all as the male servants and baritone Florian Just made a vivid appearance as Orest’s tutor. The Orest of bass-baritone Károly Szemerédy was impassive and reverberant, a deluxe killing machine. With Stenz and his musicians afire, it isn’t any wonder that the whole cast seemed inspired. Propelled by the precise violence of the six percussionists, the orchestra found a middle ground between beauty and brutality. Each crashing dissonant chord held the awful fascination of shattering glass. Bravo to the woodwind soloists who slid through the chromatic figures like glossy cobras.
Although mostly sensitive to the singers, Stenz could not help releasing the floodgates at key moments, and the afternoon was all the more exciting for it. He never overwhelmed either Pankratova or Asmik Grigorian as Chrysothemis, but drowned out Thomas Piffka’s yells for help when his obtuse Aegisth was slaughtered. Dalia Schaechter’s mezzo-soprano also went under at times, but this was a small limitation to her rich interpretation of Klytaemnestra. Schaechter inflected intelligently, fully exploiting her instrument to color every word, every syllable even, with meaning. At times her Klytaemenstra was almost pitiable, in spite of hideous statements like the one comparing Elektra to a nettle sprouting from her body. The monologue about bad dreams was fascinating, delivered inwardly, as if the queen were drifting into a psychotic episode. Stenz provided nightmarish orchestral support, making those cloth-eating moths she talks about fly out as if from some hellish nest.
Elena Pankratova was vocally peerless. No part of this exacting role was beyond her. Her velvety soprano is too beautiful to make Elektra sound like a half-savage. Heartbreak stamped her portrayal. The repeated cries of “Agamemnon!” in the opening monologue were a loving summons and the reunion with Orest achingly tender. You could really hear that she was once a replacement mother to her younger brother. This is not to say that her Elektra lacked fierceness. It was there, a righteous anger expressed in sumptuously swelling lines and spectacular fortes. Singing off book, Pankratova created the illusion of mounting nervousness while moving sparingly, stamping her foot defiantly during her fatal dance. It was a jubilant performance, acclaimed with frenzied applause. Asmik Grigorian was just as enthusiastically received. After her sensational Marie in Wozzeck last year, she returned to the ZaterdagMatinee for her role debut as Chrysothemis. Defying the orchestral decibels, her steely, platinum-clad soprano hurled raw hurt and desire at each corner of the house. The thrills just kept coming as the sisters hit one full, lustrous top note after another. No one who was there is ever likely to forget this duo, Pankratova in a black gown with chiffon wings, like a priestess, and Grigorian a proud, wounded princess in gold. They were the shining towers atop a thundering fortress of a performance.
Jenny Camilleri
Cast and production information:
Elektra – Elena Pankratova, soprano; Chrysothemis – Asmik Grigorian, soprano; Klytaemnestra – Dalia Schaechter, mezzo-soprano; Orest – Károly Szemerédy, bass-baritone; Aegisth – Thomas Piffka, tenor; Orest’s Tutor – Florian Just, baritone; Klytaemnestra’s Confidante – Laetitia Gerards, soprano; Klytaemnestra’s Trainbearer – Renate Arends, soprano; Young Servant – James Kryshak, tenor; Old Servant – Charles Dekeyser, bass; Overseer – Alwyn Mellor, soprano; Maid 1 – Cécile van de Sant, mezzo-soprano; Maid 2 – Iris van Wijnen, mezzo-soprano; Maid 3 – Jelena Kordić, mezzo-soprano; Maid 4 – Lisette Bolle, soprano; Maid 5 – Kirsten Mackinnon, soprano. Conductor – Markus Stenz. Netherlands Radio Choir (Groot Omroepkoor). Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. Heard at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, on Saturday, 2nd of June, 2018.