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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.’
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.
‘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.’
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.
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."
Famously, controversy is the stuff of Bayreuth, be it artistic, philosophic or political. As well occasionally a Bayreuth production can simply be illuminating, as is the Barrie Kosky production of Wagner’s only comedy, Die Meistersinger.
Though Wagner’s comedy is only comedy in so much as it is the triumph of youth over age unless maybe you find the caricature of the Nürnburg town clerk Beckmesser to be amusing, or maybe you find it a bit amusing that a pretty young German girl is courted by three men, a young man and and old one and a Jew. Fortunately, like all comedy, the situation gets properly resolved — in Bayreuth youth is poised to renew an already perfect world.
Director Barrie Kosky does however take the comedy idea very seriously and creates Meistersinger’s entire first act as schtick. It takes place in Wagner’s Bayreuth home, confusing Wagner with Hans Sachs, Cosima Wagner with Eva, Franz Liszt (Cosima’s father) with Eva’s father Pogner. Wagner and Liszt play a mock piano duet, and later nine medievally dressed men climb out of the piano (how many clowns fit into a VW?). And these gimmicks are just for starters in this deft transposition of St. Catherine’s church into Wagner’s salon.
Volle as Wagner, Günther Groissböck as Liszt, Klaus Florian Voght as Walter with the mastersingers
At the act’s conclusion the Wagner residence dissolves into the apparition of a large, secular, quite empty room (hall), the signal that the fun is over. Thus we have our first suspicion that not only will the first act Wagners-at-home-sitcom become a play superimposed upon a play, but that there will be and even bigger, totally public drama. From hints in the sitcom (Cosima’s Jewish lover, conductor Hermann Levi AKA Beckmesser is humiliated) of course we know what the drama is about.
The Barrie Kosky second act is anti-comedic in that we have no context in which to place the complex Wagner/Hans Sachs story. The Wagner household furniture is piled up on a dark stage and we see little else. The Nürnberg intrigues begin, and things get messed up to the degree that there is a storm (as in Rossini’s Barber) though it is not a bit comedic (funnily enough a clock does run backward). Wagner’s storm is completely musical, an outburst of 56 independent voices! Director Kosky renders the midsummer night riot as a pogram, and indeed for Wagner this ethnic hysteria is not a farfetched musical scenario.
The third act is back to schtick. Director Kosky brings the private and public situations to trial, and we do have a quite specific and certainly witty comedic context — sessions of the Nurnberg Trials. There are personal testimonies that resolve into the Rossini moment when absolutely everything stops, the startled principals are absolutely stunned — thus the glorious private celebration that is Wagner’s sublime quintet.
Emily Magee as Eva, Michael Volle as Hans Sachs
And then there are public testimonies that are distantly reminiscent of the music lesson in Rossini’s Barber. Beckmesser is ruthlessly ridiculed.
Finally it becomes the public resolution that we have been waiting for, everything becomes what it must be. And that is a celebration of a music that will endure within director Barrie Kosky’s world, and in our world, no matter what its content may be. A full symphony orchestra magically slips onto the stage. It is Nurnberg’s beloved Hans Sachs or more precisely it is Wagner himself who conducts the opera’s monumental farewell, its magnificent hymn to German art.
Keep in mind that the on-stage symphony orchestra is in addition to the ninety or so players in the Festspielhaus’ invisible pit — an additional reminder that German art as practiced in Bayreuth is indeed magnificent,
For all its comic magnificence this Bayreuth Die Meistersinger was a subdued affair. Conductor Philippe Jordan’s persuasive orchestral well upheld the glories of the Festspielhaus’ famed acoustic but his reading of the mighty score did not command attention. The great moments were musically flaccid (for example the Act II riot, and in fact the Quintet), possibly rendered such by Mr. Kosky’s shocking staging that often dramatically overpowered or sometimes simply flattened these moments. The musical effect was further dampened by the miscast Eva (British soprano Emily Magee) who brought no vocal or dramatic focus to her pivotal scenes within the larger Kosky dramas (and possibly as well by the controversially light voiced Walter).
With this one Anglo-Saxon exception the balance of the cast was German or Austrian and deeply satisfying. The Hans Sachs of Michael Volle is well known, and shown to perfection in this complicated production, as did the Beckmesser of Johannes Martin Kränzle (who took the second to last bow!). Tenor Klaus Florian Voght is an exceptionally light lyric dramatic tenor (jugendlicher heldontenor), an ethereally voiced singer who is evidently appreciated on some Wagnerian stages as Mr. Voght is legacy casting from the 2017 Bayreuth Meistersinger). His thin, boyish, pure-toned voice did not create a convincing vocal Stolzing presence, though he well upheld Mr. Kosky’s character needs. Günther Groissböck well fulfilled his role as Cosima’s bewigged father Lizst and was exceptionally sympathetic as Eva’s father. Tenor Daniel Behle held powerful sway as Sach’s apprentice David, as did Wiebke Lehmkuhl as Eva’s maid Magdalene, both artists assuming more musical presence in Wagner’s thick score than the Eva or Walter.
For the record, the trepidations one may harbor about the storied lack of comfort of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus may be put to rest. The benches are padded, there are backs and you are not crowded. Normally the thrill of simply being in this august temple of Teutonic art will overcome all climatic discomfort (it can be warm). The one-hour intermissions are appreciated because normally after a Bayreuth act you have a lot to chew on before taking on more. Refreshment is, contextually, reasonably priced.
Michael Milenski
Additional production information:
Chorus and Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival. Sets: Rebecca Ringst; Costumes: Klaus Bruns; Lighting: Franck Evin; Dramaturgy: Ulrich Lenz. Festspielhaus, Bayreuther Festspiele, Bayreuth, August 12, 2018.