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.
![Nina Stemme as Elektra [Photo © Cory Weaver]](http://www.operatoday.com/Nina%20Stemme_ELEKTRA_Lyric%20Opera%20of%20Chicago_37A9949_c.Cory%20Weaver.jpg)
From the first moments of the recent revival of Sir David McVicar’s production of Elektra by Richard Strauss at Lyric Opera of Chicago the audience is caught in the grip of a rich music-drama, the intensity of which is not resolved, appropriately, until the final, symmetrical chords.
In the title role of Elektra Nina Stemme’s multi-faceted portrayal commands attention, even during moments of silence or merely by an implied presence. Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis is sung with wrenching urgency by Elza Van Den Heever. Their brother Orest, as portrayed by Iain Patterson, is an emotionally committed figure whose heroic stature emerges in response to requisite action. Klytämnestra and Aegisth are performed by Michaela Martens and Robert Brubaker. Donald Runnicles conducts with masterful control the Lyric Opera Orchestra. Mme. Stemme and Messrs. Patterson, Brubaker, and Runnicles make their Lyric Opera of Chicago debuts in these performances.
Despite the protagonist’s absence in the initial scene, her essence pervades the steps of the palace. In answer to the question, “Wo bleibt Elektra?” (“Where is Elektra?”), the orchestra supplies a response: Runnicles elicits a palette of darting colors and fractured chords from the Lyric Opera Orchestra as if to suggest the patterns that have altered any sense of Elektra’s equilibrium. Once she appears and commences her monologue, Stemme’s Elektra wavers between controlled reflection, expressed piano, and flights of hysterical determination delivered with piercing top notes. The horror of her father’s murder and the subsequent transformation of the royal linger here in cries of anger yet also in shudders of repulsion. This trajectory of identification with Elektra’s persona grows only deeper throughout the evolution of Stemme’s performance.
Vital to this production, and in the spirit of Strauss’s conception, is Elektra’s interactions with others – both in and beyond her immediate family. The hesitant notes expressed by Van Den Heever’s entrance prompt Elektra to dwell on the potential malleability of her sister in securing an ally. The voices of both sopranos mingle, at rimes, in lyrical union until the failure of any cooperation becomes clear to the initiator of vengeful plans. Stemme’s subsequent confrontation with Klytämnestra enhances the tensions between two figures neither of whom will yield her ground. Martens does not rely on caricature to define the self-contained cause of Elektra’s anguish. Instead, she faces her daughter with the attempt at composure while inadvertently succumbing to glances of apprehension. Martens’s departure reflects a forced attitude of dignity since he has stared into the eyes of gleaming justice. Elektra’s encounter with Orest and the ultimate realization of her plan shows the complexity of Stemme’s approach reminiscent of the earlier monologue. She is at first cautious, then peals of controlled emotional relief sweep over the Grecian princess. After the moving scene of recognition, there is still work to be done. Patterson is especially effective as Orest: a growing resonance pulses in his voice as he nears the moment of revealing his identity. Once Elektra sends him into the palace, Stemme’s portrayal begins a final transformation. Her frantic search for the forgotten axe sways into the triumphant cry of “Triff noch einmal!” (“Strike once more!”) as Klytämnestra ‘s shrieks resound from within the palace. In a final semblance of control the daughter of Agamemnon leads Aegisth to his punishment when he comes tripping along in a daze of confusion. Stemme’s play of gentility here costs her final shred of stability. When she initiates her dance in this production Stemme appears in an apotheosis of light, so different from the grey and dull tones of the struggles highlighted earlier in this production. As she falls lifeless, the light is extinguished, her task is done, the surviving siblings must persevere in her spirit.
Salvatore Calomino