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."
Is Umberto’s Giordano’s Andrea Chenier a verismo opera? Certainly, he is often grouped with Mascagni, Cilea, Leoncavallo and Puccini as a representative of this ‘school’. And, the composer described his 1876 opera as a dramma de ambiente storico.
There are indeed some elements of historical realism. On 17th July 1794, the poet André Chenier was taken by tumbrel from his cell in the Prison Saint-Lazare in the 10th arrondissement, in which he had been incarcerated since 7th March, to what is now the Place de la Nation (known as the Place du Trône-Renversé during the Revolution). Earlier that July day, he had been convicted of being an ennemi du people. He was one of the last people to be executed by Maximilien Robespierre, who was himself guillotined just three days later, during a period of chaotic violence which saw, in one 46-day period alone, nearly 1300 succumb to the guillotine’s slicing finality.
But, the verismo operatic ‘school’ does not equate with realism. Yes, Andrea Chénier gives us some anthems and songs - the ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘Ça ira’ among them. And, Luigi Illica’s libretto, inspired by the life of the French poet André Chénier (1762-94) does draw upon historical and fictional documents such as the 1819 notebooks of Henri de Latouche, Chénier’s first editor; Jules Barbier’s 1849 drama about the eponymous poet-philosopher’s tragedy; and the Goncourt brothers’ History of French Society during the Revolution of 1854. Some of the numbers, such as the eponymous protagonist’s ‘Un di all’azzurro spazio’, which fuses revolutionary anger with poetical euphoria are derived from Chénier’s works (in that particular case, the 1787 Hymn to Justice). And, Giordano’s opera was a success in its day, perhaps because the battle-cries of the risorgimenti were still ringing in the air, and many a European monarch of the day was a victim of, or anxious about, an assassination attempt.
But the political context, which is so present in Massenet’s Thérèse or Poulenc’s Dialogue des Carmelites is blanched from Giordano’s ‘revolutionary’ opera. This is no surprise: the ‘verismists’ customarily modified history, particularly as their focus shifted from low-life suffering to exotic glamour.
So, it is neither surprising nor inapt that David McVicar’s ROH production for the ROH, revived here for the first time, is more a BBC Sunday-night television period-piece than republican bloodbath, for all the splashes of verisimilitude - one drop-cloth proclaims Robespierre’s damnation of Chénier: ‘Even Plato banned poets from his Republic’.
Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.
Though many have denigrated its shortcomings, Giordano’s opera has its merits, not least an economical and swift libretto by Illica, that conjures a dramatic sweep across varied locale and confines its protagonists to ever more oppressive and limiting domains: from ancien régime pleasures to the austere deprivations of prison; from public tribunal to the scaffold.
Revived for the first time, McVicar’s 2015 production tells its tale straight and plumps for designer-realism: even the san culottes look designer-attired. Low-hanging chandeliers glisten; gavottes are danced with an ironic lack of class-crossing awareness. Perhaps there are some political points being made here, but if so they make a weak impression. Robert Jones’s sets impress with their sumptuousness and adaptability, not for their subversion.
Dimitri Platanias as Carlo Gérard. Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.
In 2015 , Jonas Kaufmann picked up the quill and defied the interrogation of Robespierre’s terrorists. On this occasion it was the turn of Roberto Alagna, marking his 100th performance at Covent Garden. Despite the present-day dearth of tenors equipped for the challenge, the three arias for Chénier -among the finest written for a ringing Italian tenor - have contributed to the opera’s ‘survival’ in the ‘canon’. And Alagna certainly has the necessary heft and volume. If that was all he delivered, then who are we to complain. The role lies low, yet Alagna had no problem finding the required declamatory pressure and projection in his baritonal range, and the high notes were true, sustained and sure. This Chénier may have been missing a bit of musical ‘poetry’ but there’s a lot to be said for security - even if it isn’t particularly ‘revolutionary’. Alagna’s self-defence at the Terror tribunal, ‘Sì fui soldato’, was a compellingly proud confrontation with death.
Dimitri Platanias communicated all of the footman (and rival of Chénier) Carlo Gérard’s complexity and inner struggles with conflicting loyalties and motives. His manner was a little rugged, but that’s probably true to the role. Platanias had the rawness of an Iago in the more declamatory episodes, while in ‘Nemico della patria’ the baritone wrung every drop from every note.
As Maddalena di Coigny, American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky exhibited a bit of a ‘wobble’ at the climactic highpoints but was wonderfully expressive when singing quietly - which she was not, fortunately, disinclined to do. Her narration of her mother’s tragic death, ‘La mamma morta’, was beautifully executed: compelling, replete with pathos and sincerity. Her duets with Alagna, particularly that at the close of Act 2, were gripping - there was some chemistry here - and dramatically and musically uplifting, as they should be.
Rosalind Plowright as Countess di Coigny. Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore.
The choral scenes had great energy, and lyrical fervour; and those in the minor roles - Rosalind Plowright as Countess di Coigney (on the eve of her 70th birthday!), Christine Rice as Bersi, Stephen Gadd (as Pietro Fléville) and Aled Hall (as The Abbé) made a strong impression. Conductor Daniel Oren didn’t tap the suavity of the score - the overall effect was as rough and ready as Gérard’s complaints - but he kept things moving along.
In comparison with the political (and social) meltdown that is imminent as our the lower House attempts to negotiate its own ‘revolutionary’ path, this production may seem more reactionary than revolutionary; but, Alagna et al deliver the goods and there’s a sumptuous sheen that glosses historical grimness and gore.
Claire Seymour
Andrea Chénier - Roberto Alagna, Maddalena di Coigny - Sondra Radvanovsky, Carlo Gérard - Dimitri Platanias, Bersi - Christine Rice, Countess di Coigny - Rosalind Plowright, Major-Domo - John Cunningham, Pietro Fléville - Stephen Gadd, Abbé - Aled Hall, Mathieu - Adrian Clarke, The Incredibile - Carlo Bosi, Roucher - David Stout, Madelon - Elena Zilio, Dumas - Germán E. Alcántara, Schmidt - Jeremy White; Director - David McVicar, Conductor - Daniel Oren, Set designer - Robert Jones, Costume designer - Jenny Tiramani, Lighting designer - Adam Silverman, Movement director - Andrew George, Revival Director - Marie Lambert, Revival Choreographer - Colm Seery, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Monday 20th May 2019.