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.
'The score … is precisely one of those works that neither the composer nor the public takes seriously. The harmony, melody, rhythmic effects, instrumental and vocal combinations; it’s music, if you wish, but not new music. The orchestra consumes itself in useless noises…'
The vitriolic Berlioz, still smarting from the failure of his own Benvenuto Cellini after just ten performances at the Opéra, may have dismissed Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment as trivia, but the rest of Paris was smitten when the opera premiered at the Opéra-Comique on 11th February 1804. Even the previous dismissive Mendelssohn had to admit Donizetti’s talent: ‘I am afraid I like it … Do you know, I should like to have written it myself.’
Opera della Luna’s Artistic Director certainly takes the Donizetti’s ‘little opera’ seriously: his production, first seen in 2014 and now slightly revised, treats the opera with a light and loving touch as it transfers the action from the nineteenth-century Swiss Tyrol to the desert mountain ranges of California during the 1950s.
The abandoned baby, Marie, is not found by a corps of military muscle but by a gang of leather-clad bikers, The Regiment, who are engaged in non-mortal combat with their rivals, The Wild Cards. Think Donizetti meets West Side Story. Ian Wilson’s lighting fetchingly contrasts the heat-laden cobalt blue sky with the ochres of the sun-cracked scorched earth from which a few prickly catci sprout. When we transfer, in Act 2, to the Berkenfield Mansion, where Marsha plots with Dulcie Crackenthorpe to marry off her reclaimed ‘niece’ to Dulcie’s son, the desert makes a surprisingly effective home for the grand piano.
The cast’s American accents - in both the spoken text of Clarke’s colloquially spicy translation and in the musical numbers - are convincing and consistent, and none more so than the warm drawl of Charles Johnston as Sulpice, the President of The Regiment. Despite the aggressive posturing and knuckle-rings, beneath the beard and bandana this Sulpice is a gentle giant, and Johnston’s warm baritone was one of the pleasures of the evening - equalled by his easy presence of stage and dramatic nous. He leads a Regiment who are full-voiced and proud, but whose bikes are as big as their hearts - despite the rather limiting dimensions of Wilton’s’ stage, they glide their wheels in neatly choreographed formations with just the right blend of elegance and heft - and the stoical, shoulder-sobbing upon the enforced departure of Marie is both touching and side-splitting.
Charles Johnston (Sulpice), Jesus Alvarez (Tonio), Elin Pritchard (Marie). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
Johnston’s wise Sulpice also brings out the best in Katharine Taylor-Jones’ Marsha Berkenfield. Glammed up in primary hues and polka dots, Taylor-Jones steers clear of caricature and uses her beautifully soft and sweet contralto to show us Marsha’s scruples and sincerity.
She and Robert Gilden’s Mr Hortensius make a well-balanced double-act. Gilden’s butler minces gloriously, surreptitiously swigging a generous glug of martini from the ‘survival-flask’ when his mistress is lost in the mountains, and shows suave sycophantic servitude when ensuring the guests at Marsha’s soirée have their champagne cravings satisfied. He has the audience in stitches during the Act 2 overture with his oh-so-precious peeling of the paper which wraps the oranges destined for the silver fruit-bowl atop the Steinway, polishing each with a brisk flick of limp wrist and feather duster. Just how he swallowed the banana that made a surprise appearance in the fruit-box, without apparent moving his mouth, I can’t begin to imagine.
As the titular ‘foundling-with-fathers’, Elin Pritchard wore her denim and biker-boots like a natural, her gleeful grin and terrific pout evincing tomboyish charm. Marie’s manic passion for wheels took a musical turn - who knew that a singer’s rolled ‘r’s could accelerate into a “V-rrr-oom!” “Wow!” Marie screamed in the middle of her singing lesson, when Sulpice distracted her from her middle-class aspirational pastimes with the gleaming illustrations in his copy of Ultimate Road Machines.
In fact, memories of home released pent-up frustrations and repressed energies. Literally hemmed in by gawky hem-line, Pritchard stepped on the gas and threw restraint - and her lesson music - to the wind. She kicked off her cotton socks and turned Sulpice’s motorbike encyclopaedia into a tennis racket: poor Hortensius’ face said it all, as his carefully arranged orange tier was dismantled and hurtled into the audience. Pritchard enjoyed herself immensely: she has a powerful soprano which is full of colour and can hit the highs and make them sing. She moved easily through climbs and peaks and negotiated Donizetti’s curlicues smoothly, but was equally persuasive in Marie’s quiet aria of reflection as she tries to reconcile herself to her fate.
Charles Johnston (Sulpice), Jesus Alvarez (Tonio), Elin Pritchard (Marie). Photo credit: Nathan Cox.
In his clean chinos and white ti-shirt, Jesus Alvarez’ Tonio - a Hispanic immigrant in this production - was certainly out-of-place and an unwanted interloper when he wandered into the bikers’ turf territory. Alvarez played it safe initially, but demonstrated plenty of stamina and courage, nailing each and every one of his high Cs which were well-supported and ringing. The vocal acrobatics turned out to be an initiation rite into the Regiment’s gang and he passed with flying colours, slipping with ease into his black bomber jacket. Alvarez didn’t always persuade me with a legato line, and his English diction was less than ideal, but he blended well in the ensembles and was an endearing Tonio.
Dulcie Crackenthorpe’s ghastly snobbishness was brilliantly captured by Philip Cox, and he was matched for ‘style’ by Jeremy Vinogradov’s self-loving Mrs van der Gelder. As her husband, the Governor of California, Richard Woodall sported a finely sculpted moustache and showed surprisingly balletic grace on the ballroom floor.
Conductor Benedict Kearns had his finger securely on the Donizetti pulse and his tempi were wisely judged, only occasionally leaving the singers rushing a little to catch up. The eleven instrumentalists were not housed in the most comfortable performance space - the percussion and bass were shoved into a cupboard under the balcony - but this didn’t hamper the orchestral performance one iota or dampen their obvious enjoyment of the music.
The overture was confidently played by the small ensemble, kicking off with a ringing horn solo from Kevin Elliott. It took Kearns a while to get the measure of the Hall’s acoustic, and the string ensemble was a little bass heavy at times, but if the orchestra overshadowed Marsha and Hortensius in their opening duet (for reasons of length and logic the opening chorus of Tyrolean citizens praying for safety while a battle between their countrymen and marauding French troops is one of Clarke’s neat excisions) then the players soon dropped down to achieve a more judicious balance. There were expressive solos from oboist Peter Facer and cellist Joanna Twaddle, deepening the pathos of the more sentimental dramatic moments.
Jeff Clarke and the terrific cast gave us a joyful evening of sunny high-spirits. No wonder the bikers let rip with some ritual air-punches and it was smiles all round at the close. Once again, Opera della Luna served up some seriously slick comedy.
Claire Seymour
Donizetti: The Daughter of the Regiment
Marsha Berkenfield - Katharine Taylor-Jones, Mr Hortensius - Robert Gildon, Sulpice - Charles Johnston, Marie - Elin Pritchard, Tonio - Jesus Alvarez, Dulcie Crackenthorpe - Philip Cox, The Governer of California - Richard Woodall, Mrs van der Gelder - Jeremy Vinogradov, The Regiment (Tulip - Richard Belshaw, Beef - Philip Cox, Tiny - Graham Stone, Crispy - Martin George, Rabbit - Jeremy Vinogradov, Lump - Richard Woodall); director - Jeff Clarke, conductor - Benedict Kearns, set designer - Graham Wynne, costume designer - Maria Lancashire, lighting designer (for Wilton’s) - Ian Wilson, Orchestra of Opera della Luna.
Wilton’s Music Hall, London; Tuesday 31st July 2018.