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.
Opera’s triple crown, Donizetti’s tragic queens — Anna Bolena who was beheaded by her husband Henry VIII, their daughter Elizabeth I who beheaded her rival Mary, Queen of Scots and who executed her lover Roberto Devereux.
Donizetti traversed these sordid histories in 8 years (from 1830-1838). It took San Francisco Opera 13 years (Joan Sutherland as Maria Stuarda in 1971, Monserrat Caballé as Elizabeth I in 1978, and Joan Sutherland as Anna Bolena in 1984). Of course a couple of years ago the mighty Met managed to mount the whole bloody history in a few mere months.
This is opera history and Donizetti’s queens are opera history, rather history according to opera. There is no question which history is more real and true — crumbling parchment documents and a few words etched in stone from long ago or the delicate intimacies and huge tantrums that flew off the War Memorial stage last night at the final (of six) performances of Roberto Devereux. Donizetti’s bel canto miraculously achieved the Apollonian ideal — raw emotion absorbed into high art.
Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky portrayed history’s most terrifying queen in terrifying intricacies of voice, high d’s surreally emerging from nowhere to cap thrilling ascents of tortured lines, then other moments of descending lines, stepwise and sorrowfully slow. La Radvanovsky’s Elizabeth is terrifying, a persona of monumental presence, of absolute authority terrorised by love, a persona that is fully aware of her regal power, exuding the pleasure of executing astonishingly difficult vocalism, and surely of holding the 3000 spectators in the War Memorial in her thrall.
And a persona willing to fully suffer the torment of losing those she most loves, Roberto Devereux whom she blindly loves and the woman Devereux loves, her confident Sara.
Russell Thomas as Devereux, Jamie Barton as Sara
Elizabeth is hardly the only one to suffer. Sara’s husband, the Duke of Nottingham is Devereux’s best friend who must reconcile his love for and trust of his wife with his love and respect for his friend. Sara must reconcile her love for the queen with being her rival for Devereux’s love, and Devereux must reconcile his political and blatant personal betrayals of absolutely everyone with himself. So there is a lot to sing about.
And sing and suffer they do. After three hours of trying no one reconciled much of anything, to our very great pleasure. It was indeed an evening of bel canto! Italian conductor Riccardo Frizza established an unwavering dramatic pace that drove the betrayals and at the same time offered the protagonists all freedom to expand each moment of elation or despair and all gradations of joy and suffering in between. It was an all-too-rare conductorial achievement in parsing the emotional machinations of this difficult repertoire.
The voices of the protagonists were carefully matched. The all American cast was in prime vocal condition, and musical preparation was stylistically consistent. All voices were indeed beautiful, befitting the essence of bel canto. If the Radvanovsky sound is magisterial, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as Sara added the freshness of voice of a young woman in love. Tenor Russel Thomas as Roberto Devereux produces a limpid yet lush tenor sound throughout his full register, including its stratospheric tenorino reaches. In such company Adler Fellow Andrew Manea as the Duke of Nottingham strangely was not over parted. If his youth was obvious, his authority of presence, his command of style and use of his quite beautiful voice were formidable.
Sondra Radvanovsky as Elisabetta in final scene
The well traveled production by British director Stephen Lawless belongs to Canadian Opera. Mr. Lawless took his cue from Donizetti’s quote of “God Save the Queen” in the overture to attempt to create levity, if not caricature of opera history. The surround was the galleries an Elizabethan theater indicating, I suppose, that we need not assume what we saw happen on the center stage acting platform was true or real, that it was, after all, only opera. There was a multitude of cute staging tricks that tried to keep us distanced from the distraught, often overwrought protagonists. They did not. We suffered.
That the production is not distinguished was of little importance to this evening. Mme. Radvanovsky grounded the production in high bel canto style that easily overcame all directorial conceits. This unique artist had the support of a well qualified cast. With Maestro Frizza we, right along with this distinguished cast, enjoyed a splendid evening of opera history.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Elisabetta: Sondra Radvanovsky; Roberto Devereux: Russell Thomas; Lord Cecil: Amitai Pati; Sir Walter Raleigh: Christian Pursell; Sara: Damie Barton; A page: Ben Brady; Duke of Nottingham: Andrew Manea; Nottingham’s servant: Igor Vieira. Chorus and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera. Conductor: Riccardo Frizza; Director: Stephen Laless; Set Designer: Benoit Dugardyn; Costume Designer: Ingeborg Bernerth; Lighting Designer: Christopher Akerlind. War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, September 27, 2018