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.
This was an engaging concert of madrigals and dramatic pieces from (largely) Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian years, a time during which his quest to find the ‘natural way of imitation’ - musical embodiment of textual form, meaning and affect - took the form not primarily of solo declamation but of varied vocal ensembles of two or more voices with rich instrumental accompaniments.
It gave us a welcome opportunity to hear the zest and zip of Christophe Rousset’s Les Talens Lyriques - Rousset, stood with his back to us, his hands hovering with vivid alertness above the keyboards of the organ and harpsicord, a bundle of bristling energy - and to appreciate the expressive talents of three singers who, though familiar and esteemed presences in the concert halls and opera houses of Europe, are less frequent visitors to these shores.
‘Chiome d’oro’ from the Sixth Book of Madrigals (1619) got things underway, the entwining tenor voices of Swedish haute contre Anders J Dahlin and Norwegian Magnus Staveland spinning ‘tresses of gold’: there was joy and lightness of spirit, and a combination of precision and elasticity in their silkily unfolding phrases and melismas; and, the fluctuation of tempi gave the impression of being both flexible and controlled, as the music conveyed the sweep of varied emotions. The mood was never too earnest and retained its playful bite. Both singers studied in Copenhagen, Dahlin at the Royal Conservatory of Music and Staveland at the Royal Opera Academy. They joined forces again in ‘O sia tranquillo il mare’ (Whether the sea be calm) from the Eighth Book, Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi, and here they exploited every wonderful dissonance, ‘Mai da quest ’onde io non rivolgo il piede’ (I shall never again turn my steps back to this ocean), throbbing with the pain of betrayal. As the strength of their lamentation for the faithlessness of the poet-speaker’s beloved was expressed in a musical shudder, both body and soul grieved. A poignant tierce de Picardie, ‘E spesso ancor t’invio, per messagieri’ (often I send messages to you), seemed to suggest a hope which then proved false, as the tenors swelled through their pain: ‘A ridir la mia pena, e’l mio tormento’ (to tell you repeatedly of my pain and my torment). Coming together in the closing, summative lines, they articulated the moral - he who entrusts his heart to a lady and his prayers to the wind, can hope for no mercy - in dark, low voices. This was a performance that was at once visceral, spontaneous and expressively calculated to make its effect felt.
Between these tenor duets, soprano Eugénie Warnier performed ‘Quel sguardo sdegnosetto’ (That disdainful little face) from the second book of Scherzi musicale (1632). I enjoyed the strong sense of engagement between the voice and Isabelle Saint-Yves’ cello line, and the flashes of joy which propelled the music towards its triple meter, though I found Warnier’s tone a little ‘white’: pure and clean, yes, but full and diverse enough to capture every drop of nuance that Monteverdi squeezes from the text? - I wasn’t so sure. And, the very purity of the sound, here and elsewhere in this performance, made the tuning of some cadential phrases difficult to secure, as the floating soprano hovered rather than skewered the pitched, while the string and continuo issued a grainier hue. Warnier’s sensitive performance of ‘Ohimè ch’io cado, ohimè’ (Alas, I am falling, alas) - the ending was exquisitely still and poised - was preceded by Giovanni Kapsberger’s Sinfonia prima à 4 con due bassi (1615). Here, we enjoyed the balletic violin fingering of Gilone Gaubert and Virginie Descharmes which flirted with Angélique Mauillon’s harp and the ripples of Laura Mónoca Pustilnik’s lute, a silky ribbon against the gravellier organ and cello timbre. Was Kapsberger’s Sinfonia offered as an instrumental complement to Monteverdi’s experiments with vivid declamatory expression? Or as a palette cleanser? Or simply to give the singers a rest? The Sinfonia was not mentioned in Alexandra Coghlan’s programme note, and no other items by Kapsberger, or for instruments alone, were performed.
Scalding dissonances returned in the tenors’ duet, ‘Ardo e scoprir, ahi lasso, io non ardisco’ (I burn and, alas, I do not dare to reveal); there was delicious bittersweet-ness which epitomised the contemporary aesthetic - ‘Per trovar al mio mal pace e diletto’ (to find, in my woe, peace and delight’ - and wonderful gradations of intensity as the rhetorical fragments formed a cogent whole. The first half concluded with the ‘Lamento d’Arianna’ from Arianna. Oh, that more of this contribution to the commemoration of the marriage of Francesco Gonzaga and Marguerita of Savoy was extant! One wonders what the newly-weds made of this ‘celebratory’ expression of such pain and torment … a suffering which, perhaps, expresses a sorrow bound up with Monteverdi’s own dissatisfaction, grief and restlessness in 1608. As early as 1601 he had written to the Mantuan Duke expressing his concern that court intrigues might deprive him of his place, and recording his affliction by illness, poverty and overwork, and a talent overlooked. In September 1607 his wife died; two weeks later Monteverdi was summoned to Mantua to write Arianna for a wedding which would take place by proxy in Turin in February 1608 and be celebrated in Mantua with two weeks of festivities in May 1608. The title role was to have been taken by Catérina Martinelli, pupil of Monteverdi’s wife who had lived with him from 1603, but in March 1608 she died of smallpox and the role was sung by Virginia Ramponi: she was reputed to have learned the part in six days and her emotive performance to have moved many to tears. No wonder that Monteverdi later remarked that Arianna had almost caused his own demise.
Warnier moved with freedom and naturalness through the lyrical arioso - the vocal line is less rhythmically complex that the idiom of Orfeo - and fused music and language to express deep and diverse human emotions. Her soprano was quite withheld at the start, allowing the harp and lute to articulate the sentiments of the text, and the escalation of intensity and rhetoric was admirably controlled, as was the responsiveness of the instrumental lines to the voice. I wondered, though, whether it was wise to position Warnier in the centre of the Wigmore Hall platform behind the instrumentalists: could those seated directly behind Rousset see her at all? So much depends not just on the vocal expression but on the ‘lived’ embodiment of emotion: one thinks of the Three Ladies of Ferrara, famed as much for the luxuriant effusiveness of their manner and presentation as for the beauty of their voices and their ability to execute elaborate ornamentation.
After Warnier’s rendition of ‘Si dolce è’l tormento (So sweet is the pain), the second half of the programme was dominated by Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda - based on Tasso’s mock-chivalric account in Gerusalemme liberate of the duel between Tancredi, the Christian soldier, and Clorinda, the Muslim warrior he loved, which ends with the death of Clorinda - which was composed in 1624, commissioned by Monteverdi’s patron Girolamo Mocenigo.
Interestingly, in comparison to the 1607 Orfeo, the practicalities of the premiere of which we know little, Monteverdi took great care to describe how this work should be performed - details which, for obvious reasons of practicality were not realised here. The two combatants were to be armed, Tancredi arriving ‘on horse’, Clorinda from the other side. There was to be no scenery. The instrumentation was also unusually precise: four viola da gamba. And, Combattimento should follow swiftly from the preceding madrigals in Book Eight, without gesture, with no warning. Clearly Monteverdi was determined it would make the utmost theatrical and expressive effect.
Here, such ‘effect’ was largely due to Staveland’s stunning control of the dominating narrative. His engagement and concentration never wavered; he united the drama; and though the melodic range of the narrator’s part is quite narrow he conjured variety and power, mirroring the passions of the text, and differentiating between direct speech and narration. I was transfixed. Tancredi and Clorinda are not able to express their own emotions until the very end. Dahlin’s high tenor line was both fraught with tension and softened by sentiment: a real human appeal, driven by an insistent and compelling anger. The instrumental playing was precise but never rigid - indeed, even quite ‘fey’ at times: the shivering concitato repetitions had real grace, while pizzicato swords clashed brightly and fanfares ‘trumpeted’ in rich triadic pronouncements.
This was a fairly short concert and so we were treated to an encore - though at over ten minutes, Luigi Rossi’s Serenata a tre voci: Amante ‘Rappresentan gl’orrori di questa notte’ might have been more appropriately positioned within the declared programme, which would have at least given us access to the text. It made for a divertingly light, and however well sung and played, not wholly satisfying close to the intense musico-dramatic expression of love and war which had preceded it.
Claire Seymour
Les Talens Lyriques : Christophe Rousset (harpsichord), Eugénie Warnier (soprano), Anders J Dahlin (tenor), Magnus Staveland (tenor)
Claudio Monteverdi - ‘Chiome d’oro’, ‘Quel sguardo sdegnosetto’, ‘O sia tranquillo il mare’ (Settimo libro de madrigali); Giovanni Kapsberger - Libro primo di sinfonie a quattro voci; Monteverdi - ‘Ohimè ch’io cado, ohimè’, ‘Ardo e scoprir’ ‘Lamento d’Arianna’ fromArianna, ‘Sì dolce è’l tormento’, Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
Wigmore Hall, London; Thursday 21st February 2019.