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."
‘It will be a dream, a fairy tale that will warm your heart’: so promised a preview article in Moravské noviny designed to whet the appetite of the Brno public before the first performance of Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at the town’s Na hradbách Theatre on 6th November 1924.
However, while Janáček’s opera is based upon a comic strip - its libretto being drawn from the narrative which Rudolf Tĕsnohlídek wrote to accompany illustrations by Stanislav Lolek which were published in the Brno newspaper, Lidové noviny - as we follow the story of the life and adventures of the eponymous vixen, it’s no child’s play for a director to balance the elements of pure fantasy with the opera’s underlying realism.
In this production for Royal Academy Opera, director Ashley Dean has decided that simplicity is a virtue: and, with considerable assistance from Kevin Treacy’s terrific lighting design and Laura Jane Stanfield’s panoply of fabulous costumes, he’s proved right.
Helen May (Woodpecker). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
Stanfield’s set comprises just a carpet of wood-chippings which creep a little way up a backdrop swathed in gradated washes of deep hues - indigo, ultramarine, emerald - the floods of colour powerfully evoking the forest milieu. A few props are carried in now and then, to indicate a change of locale: the hens roost on wooden chairs, the Schoolmaster and Priest grumble around tables in the inn. Treacy’s lighting makes the forest world by turns vivid and alive, nostalgic and restful, the colour drawing us into the animals’ world. In this way, the animals are not simply ‘symbols’, reflecting human flaws and frailties; rather, nature is truly present and real. A recollection by Janáček himself, of the process of composition, seems apposite: ‘It was odd how red fur continually gleamed before my eyes.’ Dean and movement director Christina Fulcher create a strong sense of ‘communities’: of a human society and an animal milieu. Most importantly, the interaction between them is persuasive.
In this regard, Stanfield’s incredibly detailed costumes also play large part. The above-mentioned Brno preview article tempted its readers with a description of the ‘seventy costumes’ designed by artist Eduard Milén which they would enjoy: grasshoppers and crickets would hop about in ‘yellow-green tailcoats and magnificent little wings’; nocturnal glow-worms would be equipped with reflectors ‘to light up their bottoms’; the ‘melancholy beauty’ of an iridescent dragonfly would be enhanced by the glittering gold of its fragile underwings.
Thomas Bennett (Badger). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
Stanfield’s attention to detail is no less comprehensive or imaginative, and the results are beguiling as she brilliantly anthropomorphises the animal world. Hats, turbans, scarfs, shawls, feathers, fur, brocade: textures and colours dance before one’s eyes. The Cockerel struts like a Persian prince in golden boots and towering turban-crest; Badger is cloaked in a glorious grey fur coat, topped with a bandana-cum-bedcap; the hens shake their white petticoats and stamp about in marigold-stockings. The Vixen’s layers of red, orange and brown are both down-to-earth and feminine; the Fox strides confidently in his tall leather boots, but his shabby corduroy waistcoat speaks of a warm heart behind the pride. Cleverly, Stanfield manages to suggest both a rustic earthiness and a Victorian primness - adding piquancy, for example, to the scene where the animals peer into the Vixen’s underground den, spitting out their disapproval and outrage at her amorous activities with the Fox.
Samuel Kibble (Cock). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
As the action unfolds, the immediacy and realism of the drama is wonderfully blended with fantasy and fable. There is a winning directness in scenes such as the henhouse, where the Machiavellian Cock forces the hens to lay ever-bigger eggs to feed his capitalist greed, while they remain blind to their own subjugation. When he meets a swift end, a dupe of the Vixen’s ‘playing dead’, we are both shocked and satisfied. The Act 1 dance between the Frog and the drunken Mosquito (he’s bitten the inebriated Forester), and the dawn games and chatter of the animals in Act 2, are enchanting.
Peter Harris (Mosquito). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
Having excelled in RAO’s recent productions of Semele and L’enfant et les sortilèges , here Lina Dambrauskaitė was a vivacious and tremendously engaging Vixen. Her soprano has a lovely freshness, but she also captured the Vixen’s strength and passion, as when she attacks the poacher Harašta or in her flirtation with the Fox, when she brags about her thievery and courage. Dambrauskaitė was well-partnered by Hazel Neighbour’s Fox, whose slightly heavier soprano shone richly against Dambrauskaitė’s brightness. Their love duet was a highpoint, but the revealed the gentle humour of their relationship too: there was a wicked glint in Fox’s eye as he glanced towards their den, wryly asking his Vixen, ‘How many children do we have? How many shall we have?’ (The opera was sung in Norman Tucker’s English translation.)
Lina Dambrauskaitė (Vixen) and Hazel Neighbour (Fox). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
As the Forester, James Geidt revealed a strong, true baritone which conveyed the gamekeeper’s inner emotions with conviction. Initially evincing a morose world-weariness, his growing feeling for the Vixen - evidenced in a vulnerable hesitancy with his gun, allowing her to escape - flourished into a compassion which was both touching and credible.
James Geidt (Forester). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
The characterisation was consistently good. Peter Harris’s narration conveyed every ounce of the Schoolmaster’s pessimism, concluding with a laconic shrug of indifference. Thomas Bennett was an eloquent Priest; Niall Anderson displayed a powerful baritone as Harašta. Robert Forrest and Yuki Akimoto formed an effective pair as the Innkeeper and his wife. One can see why Vixen is attractive repertoire for the conservatoires. The cast is large thus allowing many students to take solo roles. Here they did so with aplomb, with Gabrielė Kupšytė’s Dog and Lorna McLean’s Chief Hen particularly noteworthy.
Niall Anderson (Poacher). Photo credit: Robert Workman.
The death of the Vixen was truly shocking, in its suddenness, lack of mawkishness and finality. One moment the Vixen danced and taunted Harašta, free and invincible; the next she lay dead on the forest floor. The scenes of Janáček’s opera are rather episodic, and not connected in any linear or causal fashion, yet they seemed to have led inescapably to this moment. Subsequently, though, Dean struggled to maintain dramatic shape and momentum, and the final scenes drifted somewhat towards Geidt’s concluding reflections on the death of the Vixen and on his own mortality. This pantheistic creed was, however, beautifully sung, with warmth and flexibility: reconciled to life’s transience, the Forester was embraced by the beauty of forest.
Philip Sunderland conducted the Royal Academy Sinfonia in a crisp and rhythmically tight reading of the chamber arrangement of Janáček’s score made by Jonathan Dove. The dance episodes had real verve and lightness. But, while I can appreciate why this reduced scoring was used, with just five string players in the 18-strong ensemble the wind were overly dominant - at times it sounded more like Stravinsky - and while Sunderland maintained a clarity of texture which ensured that we could appreciate the details of harp, percussion and suchlike, I missed the surges of Romanticism in the orchestral episodes in which the lyricism communicates an emotional sensuousness to complement the leanness and realism elsewhere.
That said, if this production lacked a certain wistfulness, then the absence of sentimentality was welcome. Human weaknesses were exposed by their interaction with the animal world: such frailties were understood, accepted and forgiven. The Cunning Little Vixen meant so much to Janáček that he requested that the conclusion be played at his own funeral. This performance at the Royal Academy was both heart-warming and life-affirming.
Claire Seymour
Janáček (arr. Jonathan Dove): The Cunning Little Vixen
Vixen Sharp Ears - Lina Dambrauskaitė, Fox - Hazel Neighbour, Forester - James Geidt, Priest/Badger - Thomas Bennett, Schoolmaster/Mosquito - Peter Harris, Forester’s Wife - Clare Tunney, Pásek, the Innkeeper - Robert Forrest, Harašta, the poacher - Niall Anderson, The Innkeeper’s Wife - Yuki Akimoto, Dog - Gabrielė Kupšytė, Owl - Samantha Quillish, Cock Samuel Kibble, Chief Hen/Vixen Mother - Lorna McLean, Jay - Hope Lavelle, Woodpecker - Helen May, Pepík, the Forester’s son - Aimée Fisk, Frantík, the Forester’s son - Maya Colwell, Vixen Cub - Anna Mengel, Frog - Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada, Grasshopper - Ashleigh Charlton, Cricket - Jack Lee, Hens and Fox Cubs (Caroline Blair, Margaret Mitchell, Clara Lobo, Maria Ejderos Sveinungsen, Avital Green, Leah McCabe); Director - Ashley Dean, Conductor - Philip Sunderland, Designer - Laura Jane Stanfield, Lighting Designer - Kevin Treacy, Movement Director - Christina Fulcher, Royal Academy Sinfonia.
Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music, London; Friday 24 th May 2019.