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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
We normally think of operas as being serious or comical. But a number of operas-some familiar, others forgotten-are neither of these. Instead, they are fantastical, dealing with such things as the fairy world and sorcerers, or with the world of dreams.
I recently reviewed for OperaToday.com two recordings of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (which might be freely translated as "The Boy Who Meets Objects and Creatures that Magically Begin to Speak and Dance"). (Click here and here.) I have also reviewed a very engaging Czech opera by Otakar Ostrčil, based on a quasi-folktale by Tolstoy, in which the Devil seeks to seduce three brothers into serving his own destructive ends.
Here is another such tall-tale opera, by a composer whose own life story was full of all-too-real drama. Laci Boldemann (1921-69) was born in Helsinki to a distinguished family that was half-Swedish, half-German. His grandfather Arvid Järnefelt was a well-known Swedish author whose sister Aino was married to the composer Sibelius. Boldemann studied in Germany, then in England and Sweden, but, because of his German father, was conscripted into the Nazi army. He became gravely ill on the eastern front. Later, in Italy, he deserted and was brought to the United States and put in a prison camp. After war's end, he settled in Sweden, where his maternal grandparents lived. He succeeded in having a number of his works performed by major orchestras and opera companies in Germany and Sweden. But he died suddenly from complications after a gallstone surgery in Munich when he was only 48.
Black Is White, Said the Emperor (Svart är vitt, sa kejsaren) is the first of his two full-length operas. The present recording was made at the world-premiere performance, on January 1, 1965, at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. (It can be heard, broken into numerous segments, on YouTube.) The scenario was drafted by Laci's wife Karin. It was fleshed out into a libretto by Lennart Hellsing, a noted author of children's books and nonsense literature. The informative notes are by Marcus Boldemann, presumably Laci and Karin's son.
Boldemann's musical style is very traditional and straightforward, generally shying away from modernist asperity. In Sweden, Boldemann is still known today for some endearing choral songs. Lovers of solo vocal music may know his fourteen-minute song cycle with orchestra: Four Epitaphs , Op. 10, using four poems from Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. (YouTube offers it, sung with rich tone and pointed meaning by Anne Sofie von Otter, conducted by Kent Nagano.)
I will not try to summarize the eventful plot, which takes place in an unnamed "Oriental" walled city, apparently somewhere along the Silk Road. The storybook quality is already apparent in the list (above) of the various characters, all of whom are "types" rather than individuals-somewhat like the characters in Prokofiev's jaundiced fairy-tale opera The Love for Three Oranges. Similarly, the nameless Doctor who examines The Boy, while uttering meaningless pseudo-medical chatter, seems like a less menacing version of the crazed and likewise nameless physician in Wozzeck. But nobody and nothing in this family-friendly opera stays menacing for long.
The work is built out of numerous short scenes, most of which involve quick exchanges between several characters. There are few extended separable numbers that could help advertise the opera, which is perhaps one reason that it has sunk from view. Still, The Boy gets a number of short songs that are quite appealing: often diatonic or folkish-modal and built of easily grasped foursquare phrases. There is also an immensely appealing tune that recurs several times (e.g., CD 1, tracks 8 and 10) and that sounds like something out of a Lehár operetta. The link just given comprises CD 1, track 8, which begins with the Princess singing the tune; her words refer to the handsome Prince who, riding by her window on a white horse, stole her heart. When the Prince and Princess try to sing it together, the hot-headed emperor cuts them short. (They get to sing the whole tune at the end of the opera, and then walk off slowly into a happy future.)
The duet-interruption is typical: the opera is marked by much purposeful discontinuity, and the discontinuity is sometimes emphasized by an unexpected shift to a new harmonic area. The net result of all these tuneful moments and sudden, disorienting surprises is refreshing to the ear. Certain passages reminded me of works as varied as the Mephisto Waltz, Carmen, and Carmina Burana, and Bernstein's Candide. None of these resemblances seem to have been intended as recognizable allusions; rather, I suspect that they are the result of Boldemann's open-mindedness and wide-ranging stylistic curiosity. Similarly, some choral passages made me think-for whatever this is worth-of certain ensembles in Puccini's Turandot, such as the Act 2 trio for Ping, Pang, and Pong. At various points, the music briefly sounds pseudo-Asian (or maybe Middle Eastern), then quickly veers back.
In short, there is always something interesting going on. Three ensembles are particularly effective. The quintet near the end of Act 1 (track 20) seems inspired, to good effect, by the Te Deum finale of Act 1 of Tosca. A rhythmically intriguing trio in Act 2 (CD 2, track 7) is sung largely in unison-sometimes unaccompanied, other times with alert orchestral punctuation. And a trio toward the end (CD 2, track 9), during which the Runner and the Fool prepare to eject the Boy from the city, has the quality of a distorted, possibly sardonic, Viennese waltz. Many sections of the score are strongly continuous (quasi-developmental). In some of these, an orchestral instrument or section of the orchestra expands on a phrase that a character has just sung or gives it a new twist.
Typical for Sweden in the 1960s, there is a "techno" element: the brief appearance of electronic sounds near the end of the opera, when an auspicious star is seen in the sky. ( Click here and forward to 2'35"-orchestra then yielding to electronic tape. ) The implication is that the emperor has seen the astonishing, noisy Star announcing Jesus's birth. He removes his crown, places it on the Boy's head, and marches off in the direction of the Star, thus apparently becoming one of the famous Three Kings who, bearing gifts, visit the Christ child.
Electronically derived sounds, a high-modern resource, had been used six years earlier in a Swedish opera whose recording was widely reviewed at the time: Karl-Birger Blomdahl's outer-space fantasy Aniara. Blomdahl's opera got a second recording in 1985 (on Caprice, conducted by Stig Westerberg). I suspect that Black Is White is at least as worthy of a modern recording and of some staged performances. Christmastime might be an apt season, given the appearance of the Star near the work's end. Perhaps the brief but rather crude electronic track (which the composer did not create; the realization here is credited to Karl-Otto Valentin) could be replaced by something more sophisticated, in order to prevent the work from being forever anchored to the era of Sputnik and the Univac computer.
The current recording has fine presence, despite having been made during a stage performance more than fifty years ago. The singers are all vivid exponents of their roles, with sharply differentiated voices: for example, the Runner is a character tenor, quite different from the Prince, a lyric tenor. Gunilla Slättegård is a constant pleasure as The Boy: her sound is as clear and sweet as a mountain stream. She made her debut at the Royal Swedish Opera in this role and, under the name Gunilla Wallin, went on to sing major roles by Mozart and others there until 1989. The veteran bass Sven Nilsson brings to the role of the Emperor great authority, honed over the years in operas and spoken plays. (His Daland is preserved on Naxos's release of a 1950 Flying Dutchman performance at the Met conducted by Fritz Reiner and starring Hans Hotter and Astrid Varnay.) The mikes occasionally pick up light laughter from the audience. A modern recording would give the orchestra (which seems of chamber proportions) more roundness and richness, but I wouldn't want that to happen at the expense of the wonderfully precise characterizations that we hear here, in voices and orchestra alike.
There are two extensive booklets. One contains the libretto, with translations into English and German that are frankly announced as "raw" (meaning: rough)! The English translation is comprehensible but full of misspellings (inamoured, turikey) and confusing usages: it uses "port" to mean a palace gate, and "rideau or veil," in the stage directions, to mean "curtain or scrim." And what, I wonder, does the Emperor have in mind when he threatens to turn the Boy and members of the court into "ghaith birds"?
The other booklet contains Marcus Boldemann's essay, a first-rate synopsis (with track numbers), and bios of the composer, librettists, and performers. Four lively sketches by the opera's original set designer, Hermann Sichter, plus a photo of the Emperor in costume, help us visualize our way into this remarkably fresh-sounding opera from 1965.
I recommend the recording to anybody-child or adult-who is curious about what an opera can be like when it is not so much serious or comical as . . . wild (and tuneful and colorful and entertaining)!
Ralph P. Locke
The above review is a lightly revised version of one that first appeared in American Record Guide and appears here by kind permission.
Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. Six of his articles have won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press). Both are now available in paperback, and the second is also available as an e-book.