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."
A small, formerly great, kingdom, is on the verge of bankruptcy and desperate to prevent its ‘assets’ from slipping into foreign hands. Sexual and political intrigues are bluntly exposed. The princes and patriarchs are under threat from both the ‘paupers’ and the ‘princesses’, and the two dangers merge in the glamorous figure of the irresistibly wealthy Pontevedrin beauty, Hanna Glawari, a working-class girl who’s married up and made good.
In an age of Brexit, Trump and #MeToo, one doesn’t have to work too hard to see how Franz Lehár’s 1905 operetta The Merry Widow - so often seen as a metaphor for the escapist glamour of the Belle Époque - might seem relevant to modern times, as we waltz towards the cliff-edge. And, the new English book and lyrics by April De Angelis and Richard Thomas respectively, which this new ENO production employs, do indeed offer a smattering of topical and pseudo-subversive gestures, at least in the opening Act. The Counsellor to Baron Mirko Zeta, the Pontevidrin Ambassador in Paris, drily notes that their country’s government is one that no other nation will do business with, raising sniggers and sighs among the Brexit-weary Brits in the audience. Our prototype feminist heroine is a Cockney lass (her drawl slightly at odds with the Americanisms in the lyrics), and it’s certainly the women who hold the purse and the power: even the grisettes who perform at Maxim’s grumble as they gyrate, and sport silver boots with attitude.
Nathan Gunn (Danilo). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
However, as Edmond Taylor observed in The Fall of The Dynasties: The Collapse Of The Old Order, 1905-1922 , ‘In retrospect we tend to see the carefree social life of pre-war Europe as a kind of death waltz on the brink of doom, but to those who took part in it, it was not that at all. People did not throw themselves into a rout of pleasures to forget their worries; they simply joined in the dance to express their sense of well-being and to manifest their solidarity.’ And, it’s not really the ‘topicality’ of Max Webster’s production that strikes one, but its ‘theatricality’: this is a stagey and sumptuous broad comedy that will please the crowd rather than challenge the old order.
At Maxim’s, Act 3. Photo credit: Clive Barda.
The show is certainly colourful, glitzy and pacy, lavishly rendered by designers Ben Stones (sets), Bruno Poet (lighting) and Esther Bialas (costumes). The décor at Maxim’s is more Toulouse Lautrec than Art Nouveau and riotous razzamatazz is provided by an ensemble of eleven dancers who can-can with panache (choreography by Lizzi Gee). Moreover, if Maxim’s has morphed into the Moulin Rouge then Hanna has had a ‘Howard Hawks make-over’ and borrows Marilyn Monroe’s iconic pink gown for her staircase entrance, flanked by tuxedoed suitors.
Photo credit: Clive Barda.
The flashy ostentation is complemented by slick farce, which commences in the overture as the clerk Njegus (Gerard Corey) ‘oversees’ preparations for the Embassy banquet with masterly timed slapstick buffoonery worthy of The Play That Goes Wrong. With an outsize beaver gazing down from a wall-mounted pictorial homage to the Pontevdrin national animal, the tone is set for the Act 2 party at Hanna’s, where the celebrations of the country’s historic cultural traditions are supplemented by two dancing, grinning beavers who would do Walt Disney proud. After an assignation in a broom cupboard - we’re in the realm of 1970s sit-com here - the Baron’s wife, Valencienne, carries on her liaison with the French attaché to the Embassy, Count Camille de Rosillon, not in the garden pavilion as expected, but under the banquet table, their not-so-covert amorous activities accompanied by quivering jellies and rattling cutlery. The double entendres fly as thick and fast as the toilet humour: we all know what happens when the proverbial hits the fan. Indeed, the men gather to lament and denounce ‘Women! Women! Women!’ in the urinals, literally ‘spraying’ their insults in all directions.
Men’s septet. Photo credit: Clive Barda.
It’s all jolly fun, if at times rather too flippant. However, the Coliseum is a big barn in which to ensure that the minutiae of the mayhem make their mark, and despite the amplification of the spoken text (which didn’t always fade successfully into the sung numbers) there were times when the voices and the verbal keenness didn’t quite carry. Ironically, the initial froth of the orchestral overture and the flashiness of the cerise front-curtain fade to a cool grey-green when we enter the Embassy, for ‘austerity cutbacks’ mean that the central-heating is off and there’s no food for the feast. Later this summer ENO will reprise last year’s Paul Bunyan at the Alexander Palace Theatre, and it struck me that either this, or Wilton’s Music Hall where that production was first seen, would more readily provide the necessary shabby chic ambience, in a setting of more appropriate dimensions.
Sarah Tynan (Hanna). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
That said, the first and principal prerequisite for a successful Merry Widow is glamour and allure in the title role, and Sarah Tynan provided the necessary flirtatious fascination demanded of her, alongside comic nous and some impressive dance skills. She also provided a much-needed moment of respite from the frantic antics, bravely perching upon a floating crescent moon to sing her ‘Vilja’ and out-gleaming its beams with silvery threads which ebbed and waned with exquisite care and control, and with bitter-sweet beauty. As her somewhat jaded paramour, Count Danilo Danilowitsch, Nathan Gunn mixed a dash of debonair with a dose of dorkiness, but while he projected well in the Coliseum, I lacked a sense of true chemistry between this Danilo and Hanna. The same was true for Rhian Lois’s Valencienne and Robert Murray’s Camille: their duets were well-sung, but it felt as if they were acting rather than feeling the professed emotions. Andrew Shore, as always, judged the Baron’s myopic folly to a tee, never mocking him too cruelly. The Chorus were in fine voice.
Sarah Tynan (Hanna) and Andrew Shore (Baron Mirko Zeta). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
This production may have the girls, the glamour and the grandeur but if The Merry Widow is to truly touch our hearts, then it’s the symbolism of the waltz - an intimate interaction between two interdependent individuals, wordless and private - which must make an impact. After all, it is only through music and dance that Danilo finds a way to ‘speak’ to Hanna of his love. I’m not convinced that Webster communicates this intimacy, though conductor Kristiina Poska certainly drew stylish, sumptuous and lithe playing from the ENO Orchestra.
Robert Murray (Camille) and Rhian Lois (Valencienne). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Franz Lehár had already achieved some success and popularity, with waltzes and operettas, before Die lustige Witwe became the most widely performed operetta ever, acclaimed across Europe and in the US. This ENO production might not be quite such a triumph: the first 1906 London production ran for 778 performance, and followed by extensive tours, in places as distant as Calcutta and Rangoon. But, it will bring much enjoyment to audiences at the Coliseum. Moreover, stage and sheet-music royalties quickly made Lehár a multi-millionaire; let’s hope it has the same effect on ENO’s coffers.
Claire Seymour
Franz Lehár: The Merry Widow
Hanna Glawari - Sarah Tynan, Count Danilo Danilowitsch - Nathan Gunn, Baron Mirko Zeta - Andrew Shore, Camille de Rosillon - Robert Murray, Valencienne - Rhian Lois, Vicomte Cascada - Nicholas Lester, Raoul de St Brioche - Jamie MacDougall, Njegus - Gerard Carey, Bogdanowitsch - Paul Sheehan, Sylviane - Lydia Marchione, Kromow - Adam Sullivan, Olga - Deborah Davison, Pritschitsch - Trevor Eliot Bowes, Praskowia - Natalie Herman’; Director - Max Webster, Conductor - Kristiina Poska, Set designer - Ben Stones, Costume designer - Esther Bialas, Lighting designer - Bruno Poet, Choreographer - Lizzi Gee, Orchestra and Chorus of English National Opera.
English National Opera, Coliseum, London; Friday 1st March 2019.