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."
The story was bigger than its actors, the Tosca ritual was ignored. It wasn’t a Tosca for the ages though maybe it was (San Francisco’s previous Tosca production hung around for 95 years). P.S. It was an evening of powerful theater, and incidentally it was really good opera.
Whether by design or accident the pairing of British conductor Leo Hussain with American stage director Shawna Lucey resulted in a synergy of theatrical perspective and musical vision that rarely occurs. Conductor Hussain comes from new music, thus he hears this oft repeated score with new ears, sensing and amplifying subtle atmospheres, stabbing with sudden emphasis an orchestral color that embody a word or phrase uttered the stage, carefully erecting the intimacies of the arias and ariosos, pacing the confrontations with unhurried deliberation, settling on sonic brutality with with cold force. Musically this Tosca was conducted as a new-music score to be laid out in detail, take it or leave it.
Stage director Lucy was in complete sympathy, laying out a detail of staging to embody every action of the libretto in minute precision, then embellishing the libretto and music with additional narrative detail to create a seemingly impromptu context for the action and to make the surroundings seem like a everyday spaces where shit probably does sometimes happen. The richness of narrative context for this Puccini score was of a nineteenth century novel, certainly of a twentieth century romance, and most of all a twenty-first century made-for-television movie.
The Te Deum
British designer Robert Innes Hopkins obliged with a first act set that cannily caught the details of the austere spaces and the coldness of Rome’s St. Andrea della Valle (in spite of the vivid red wall) but focused his space into a corner where the story could begin in its sordid detail. The Palazzo Farnese of the second act took place not in a grand room of state but in a messy, lesser room, once again in a corner perspective for intimacy. The palace’s Renaissance grandeur was marred by the detail of an art nouveau facade of a shadow box side-room (yes, the torture room!). The upward swirl of the Sant-Angelo fortress was topped by its sword-bearing Bernini-esque statue (brutal Renaissance art works were a visual focal point in each act).
The Bernini statue however hid our view of a presumed Tosca leap from the heights of the fortress — the final abnegation of the Tosca ritual that had been enacted 175 times on the War Memorial stage over the past 95 years. Tosca herself of this iconic operatic ritual is a diva, and we’ve seen absolutely every great Tosca of opera’s golden era (except Maria Callas who canceled) leap the thirty feet from the top of the old Agnini/Bosquet set to the War Memorial floor. Until now.
Our current Tosca, Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio is not a diva, rather she is a Roman soprano who has caught the fancy of a lusty Roman policeman, Scarpia, American baritone Scott Hendricks, who made the “hard pulse of his arousal” quite apparent. Cavaradossi, American tenor Brian Jagde, is a good-spirited painter who unfortunately is involved a bit in politics, and has a young friend, Angelotti who was beat up by partisan thugs. These were real people, made real, in fact, because they were excellent singers, and could be, possibly, exactly who they are.
Carmen Giannattasio as Tosca, Brian Jagde as Cavaradossi
Of course it was Puccini’s Tosca and that too was always apparent, and this was the magic of the production. Tenor Jagde delivered his two arias with a delicacy of feeling and a mastery of Italianate technique that I did not know he possessed. Soprano Giannattasio gave her great aria supine on the stage floor, and scaled the many heights of the role with a convincing bel canto lyricism that comfortably rode Puccini’s verismo. Baritone Hendricks exposed his desire in true bel canto (say what you want but say it beautifully) and simultaneously convinced us of its urgency. Bass-baritone Hadleigh Adams’ Angelotti was sonorous, made even more operatic by his operatic limping (not always the same leg).
Further intelligence about the production: the voices of the boy acolytes of the first act were amplified by the voices of their mothers, perhaps present to protect the boys from predators (hardly Dale Travis’ ageless, sweet old sacristan). The first act question we always ask (just who is this Countess Attavanti?) was finally answered — she showed up at the end of Scarpia’s Te Deum, was abducted by Scarpia’s thugs, and reappeared looking a bit used when the second act curtain opened onto Scarpia’s office. Tosca did fortify herself with a gulp of wine after murdering Scarpia, placing but two candles by his lifeless body to the absolutely eery, creepy music rising from the pit. The faraway shepherds music of the third act was enacted by boys atop Sant’Angelo who cutely pretended to be soldiers executing one of their own.
We were gripped by the story, and satisfied by the singing. It was an auspicious debut of the Tosca set that we will see in countless editions, possibly throughout the remainder of this century. Catch it while it’s fresh.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Floria Tosca: Carmen Giannattasio; Mario Cavaradossi: Brian Jagde; Baron Scarpia: Scott Hendricks; Cesare Angelotti: Hadleigh Adams; A sacristan: Dale Travis; Spoletta: Joel Sorensen; Sciarrone: Andrew Manea; A shepherd boy: Miles Kaludzinski. Chorus and Orchestra of the San Francisco Opera. Conductor: Leo Hussain; Stage director: Shawna Lucey; Production designer: Robert Innes Hopkins; Lighting designer: Michael James Clark. War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, October 11, 2018.