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.
Despite the flaming torches of the plebeian plotters which, in the Prologue, etched chiaroscuro omens within the Palladian porticos of Michael Yeargan’s imposing and impressive set, this was a rather slow-burn revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s 1991 production of Simon Boccanegra.
But, once the incipient flickers got a sure grip on the dramatic wick, some terrific individual performances, which were both strong and subtle, brought Verdi’s tense, urgent drama vividly alight.
Although Boito later worked his magic on the Piave/Montanelli libretto of the first, failed 1857 Simon Boccanegra, even Verdi’s revised 1881 version has its dramatic short-comings and inconsistencies. Moshinksy’s production, now nearly thirty-years old and oft-revived, at Covent Garden and overseas, may be ‘traditional’ - the chorus blocking is rather uninspired, making both mob and ministers a rather faceless mass - but it brings clarity to the inherent improbabilities and coherence to the contradictions, despite the time-shift of twenty-five years between the Prologue and Scene 1.
It’s also a handsome production. The nefarious machinations of Paolo and Pietro, as they seek to overthrow the aristocracy and elect the former Corsair, Boccanegra, as Doge, are preceded by a vision of the rolling spume of the Ligurian sea, lending the scene a romantic detachment to add to the historical ‘distance’ of Renaissance setting. The colonnades and piazzas are imposing in expanse and weight, but simple in design, and beautifully lit by John Harrison. After the shadow-cloaked intrigues of the Prologue, the terrace upon which Amelia sits waiting for her beloved Adorno to arrive shines with a gentle sky-blue shimmer: with its vista of a calm, dawn-drenched ocean, it seems a spot where one might come upon Othello regaling Desdemona with a ‘travailous history’ she devours with greedy ear.
Hrachuhi Bassenz as Amelia Grimaldi. Photo credit: Clive Barda/ROH.
There is much to beguile, but on the first night of this revival run, which has been overseen by Moshinsky, initially things didn’t seem to gel. The singers are often set to the rear of the deep set and their voices occasionally seemed detached from the orchestral fabric, not exactly ‘all at sea’ but somehow floating along without ever really riding the waves. The Council Chamber scene was a visually arresting canvas of golden sceptres, silver swords and fiery red - the crimson robes and regalia of office, the heated blood of the baying plebeians - but, despite the intensity of the scene, which tightened like a sprung coil, the drama didn’t quite seem ‘real’.
The five male roles were vocally individualised, but the principals also need to work together, something that they struggled to achieve in Act 1. And, Hrachuhi Bassenz seemed uncomfortable in this Act, her voice sliding up to, or just under the note, and floating thereabouts but never quite settling into a true lyrical line - of the kind that would fulfil the dramatic requirements of the role. Though Bassenz’s tone was not harsh, it lacked a soft shimmer and was occasionally a little murky. The Armenian soprano was stronger in the ensembles, attacking the words and investing her interventions in the Council Chamber with both anxiety and anger.
Francesco Meli as Gabriele Adorno. Photo credit: Clive Barda/ROH.
The move from public domains to private dramas in Act 3, however, seemed to initiate fresh intensity and to inject the singing and playing with a passion which had authenticity and power. Francesco Meli got the ball rolling, his fervent ‘Sento avvampar nell’anima’ fuelling both his own jealous rage and the opera’s emotional thermometer. It also prompted a fairly sedate ROH audience, whose coughing and fidgeting had outweighed their attentiveness up until this point, to offer their first endorsing applause. Meli certainly conveyed Adorno’s hot-headedness, and the crests of his phrases were ardent and aching, but both his vocal volume and characterisation were a little unalleviated, and he didn’t fully convey Adorno’s divided and fluctuating allegiances.
It was left to the two men who are locked in a conflict which is both historical and haunting to reveal the opera’s real, human drama. As the man who comes from low beginnings to rule in Genoa for twenty-five years, Carlos Álvarez was following some ‘big names’ in this production, including Domingo in 2010 and Hampson in 2013 . He impressed immensely, using his warm tone and consistent focus to create a credible portrait of a man whom misfortune and misery, alongside the powers of public office, have made tyrannical, but who learns to forgive, shows magnanimity, and finds redemption.
Mark Rucker as Paolo, Carlos Álvarez as Boccanegra. Photo credit: Clive Barda/ROH.
The long scene in which Boccanegra discovers that Amelia is in fact Maria, his long-lost daughter, was beautifully structured, but it was Boccanegra’s framing confrontations with Ferruccio Furlanetto’s Jacopo Fiesco that struck the most incisive emotional punch. The two men had equal dignity, might and majesty, ensuring that both their conflict and their conciliation were gripping. Furlanetto’s voice may not have the firmness of old, and some passages at the top were not as full-toned as one might wish. But, his diction was superb; and, the trembling depths of his bass in the Prologue’s ‘Il lacerate spirito’, when Fiesco learns that Maria has died, evoked the shuddering grief of a stricken heart with a power that resonated in my own.
Ferruccio Furlanetto as Fiesco, Mark Rucker as Paolo Photo credit: Clive Barda/ROH.
Simon Shibambu sang with confidence and presence as Pietro, but Mark Rucker’s Paolo made less impact vocally. Under conductor Henrik Nánási the ROH Orchestra matched the darkness of the drama on stage, though I’d have liked rather more urgency in the opening scenes.
By the end, though, the chilling horror conjured by Boccanegra’s blood-curdling curse, ‘Sia maledetto’, had been both released with tremendous visceral force and tamed through real human compassion and reconciliation. Those political plotters currently planning coups and crises in another Palace just a bit further up the river might do well to take note.
Claire Seymour
Verdi: Simon Boccanegra
Simon Boccanegra - Carlos Álvarez, Jacopo Fiesco - Ferruccio Furlanetto, Amelia Grimaldi - Hrachuhi Bassenz, Gabriele Adorno - Francesco Meli, Paolo Albiani - Mark Rucker, Pietro - Simon Shibambu, Amelia’s Maidservant - Dervla Ramsay, Captain - Simon Davies; Director - Elijah Moshinsky, Conductor - Henrik Nánási, Set designer - Michael Yeargan, Costume designer - Peter J. Hall, Lighting designer - John Harrison, Fight director - Philip d'Orléans, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Thursday 15th November 2018.