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 burden of the past, and the duty to ensure its survival in the present and future, exercise a violent grip on the male protagonists in David Alden’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor for English National Opera, with dangerous and disturbing consequences.
Historic conflicts and losses loom in the form of sepia ancestral portraits which glare impenetrably and accusingly from the crumbling walls of Ravenswood Castle, complemented by the prurient faces of the hypocritical observers who peer through the gaping windows at the familial abuse within. Lucia, too, is trapped in the past of her own childhood: a fragile, whimsical doll-woman, she is infantilised by her incestuous and paederastic brother, Enrico, while her own retreats into juvenile fantasy and memory cannot save her from the sadistic, even psychotic, adults who manipulate and manhandle her.
Lester Lynch (Enrico) and ENO Chorus. Photo credit: John Snelling.
Alden has moved the action to the mid-nineteenth century, and designer Charles Edwards’ dilapidated mansion resembles a decaying boarding school worthy of the bleakest Victorian novel: dark, damp and decrepit, with Lucia the lone sleeper in the chilly dormitory at the start of Act 1. Indeed, the opening image brought Jane Eyre’s experiences at Lowood School to mind - Enrico would certainly give Mr Brocklehurst a run for his money in the cruelty stakes - and this wasn’t the only literary comparison that seemed pertinent during the performance. This Lucia is an ‘inmate’, imprisoned in a mental asylum, and the insane are her jailors. When Enrico ties her to her bed with a skipping rope in their Act 2 confrontation, I was put in mind of the “atrocious” former nursery at the top of the house, with its barred windows, nailed down bedstead, iron rings in the walls, and peeling wallpaper - “repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow” - in which the narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper finds herself similarly imprisoned by her oppressive husband.
Lester Lynch (Enrico) and Sarah Tynan (Lucia). Photo credit: John Snelling.
When Lucia, teetering on the edge of mental crisis from the first, succumbs absolutely to insanity, her mad display seems to provide the observing crowd with delectation and delight. Her bloody self-destruction doesn’t seem so much an ‘escape’ through a madness that evades the understanding and structures of her oppressors, but more a submission to an unavoidable destiny. Dressed like a doll, she resembles Carroll’s Alice - an image strengthened when Arturo arrives, posing elegantly in a pristine suit, and looking rather like the White Rabbit. But, her only comfort, a fluffy toy, is brutally torn apart by her brother; and, unlike Alice, Lucia will find no wonderland through Ravenswood’s looking-glasses or wardrobes - just fusty piles of ancestral documents. This child-woman has been assaulted by Enrico, manipulated by Raimondo, rejected by the deceived Edgardo, defiled by Arturo (one presumes); the last drop of her innocence is destroyed when she is forced to watch Edgardo’s demise.
Alden sustains the trope of the gaze which objectifies - Lucia is after all the ultimate commodity, her body the material means by which Enrico will pay off the family debts, her sacrifice designed to ensure the survival of the house and family name - through imagery of the theatre and performance. We first see Lucia seated at the foot of a curtained proscenium and, when the curtain is drawn back, her confrontations - romantic and deadly - will take place upon its stage. At the close, the theatre swivels and we are taken behind the scenes, unavoidably complicit in the gaze of the male chorus who sit in the on-stage audience ranks, alongside the dead Lucia, surrounded by the framed photographs which have now become gravestones.
Eleazar Rodríguez (Edgardo) and Sarah Tynan (Lucia). Photo credit: John Snelling.
The ENO Chorus were in splendid voice, and Alden’s blocking (revival movement director, Maxine Braham) emphasised the rigidity of the social manacles which enchain Lucia. Lined up in dour grey, with sour scowls, their condemnatory weight was crushing. It was hard though to imagine such a joyless crowd engaging in revelry after the wedding of Lucia and Arturo, and, indeed, Alden and lighting designer Adam Silverman (revival lighting director, Andrew Cutbush) keep the party shrouded in shadows which means that Raimondo’s arrival with the news of Arturo’s death and Lucia’s demise doesn’t make such a strong dramatic impact as it would were the entertainments colourfully contrasted with the behind-scenes tragedy.
American tenor Lester Lynch was an imposing Enrico: self-righteous, solipsistic and frighteningly sadistic - a huge presence and a resounding voice, with clear diction. Lynch and Clive Bayley’s malicious, manipulative Raimondo were a deeply disturbing double-act, Bayley emphasising the cruelty of the pastor through his aggressive demeanour and thunderous delivery.
Clive Bayley (Raimondo). Photo credit: John Snelling.
I found Eleazar Rodríguez’s heroic assaults on Edgardo’s soaring phrases in Act 1 a little too hefty, but he found a true bel canto flexibility subsequently, making a gleaming contribution to the Sextet, and convincingly conveying Edgardo’s anger and hurt in the face of Lucia’s supposed betrayal. Michael Colvin’s lighter tenor offered a pleasing contrast, and he displayed lovely colour and vocal grace as Arturo. The role was a better fit for Colvin than his recent essay as Herod in Adena Jacobs’ Salome and it felt a pity that Alden doesn’t foreground Arturo more. Alisa is also often pushed into the shadows, though Sarah Pring gave a fine performance, vocally and dramatically; to extend the Jane Eyre parallel, she reminded me of Grace Poole, a figure of mystery residing in the half-light and hinterland.
Sarah Tynan (Lucia). Photo credit: John Snelling.
Sarah Tynan, making her role debut in the title role, was in a class of her own. Her light soprano conjured a delicate Lucia, fey and vulnerable; her voice stayed relaxed even as it climbed and her coloratura - she omitted the cadenza in the mad scene - was not decorative but truly expressive of Lucia’s battered and suffering soul - beautifully phrased, controlled, spacious, the dreamy wistfulness enhanced by the glass harmonica.
Conductor Stuart Stratford led a superb performance by the ENO Orchestra: stark swipes of instrumental colour never over-powered the singers, the pace was dramatic but not precipitous, the tension sustained.
Alden’s 2008 production , reprised once before in 2010 was ENO’s first staging of Lucia di Lammermoor. It was, and is, a terrific addition to the company’s repertoire, especially when in the hands of such a splendid team of singers and musicians.
Claire Seymour
Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia - Sarah Tynan, Enrico - Lester Lynch, Edgardo - Eleazar Rodríguez, Arturo - Michael Colvin, Raimondo - Clive Bayley, Alisa - Sarah Pring, Normanno - Elgan Llŷr Thomas; Director - David Alden, Conductor - Stuart Stratford, Set designer - Charles Edwards, Costume designer - Brigitte Reiffenstuel, Lighting designer - Adam Silverman, Revival lighting designer - Andrew Cutbush, Movement director - Claire Glaskin, Revival movement director - Maxine Braham, Orchestra and Chorus of English National Opera.
English National Opera, London Coliseum; Thursday 25th October 2018.