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."
There seems little to connect the aesthetics of French neoclassical theatre of the late-seventeenth century and English oratorio of the early-eighteenth. But, in the early 1730s Handel produced several compositions based on Racine’s plays, chief among them his Israelite-oratorios, Esther (1732) and Athalia (1733).
As Paul Henry Lang points out in his 1966 biography of Handel, both Handel and Racine were both in their element when ‘sketching women’, both admired matriarchs, and they excelled at depicting jealousy: ‘both of them drew an infinite variety of female characterisations, from virginal tenderness to murderous passion’.
Handel’s Athalia, performed at St John’s Smith Square by the London Handel Orchestra and Singers, is a good illustration of Lang’s observations. Similarly, of his argument that ‘what was congenial to Handel in Racine’s work was the purely internal tragedy; suffering, hesitation, love, jealousy, bravery, and renunciation. The action arises from the characters in spite of external events’. And, spicing up the Old Testament story with the dramatic intensity of Greek tragedy, what characters Racine and Handel give us. The eponymous Queen of Judah, daughter of Jezebel, is a ferocious tyrant: a wicked usurper who annihilates her son’s children, save Joas, to clear her own path to the throne and suffers a similarly violent death herself. In contrast, Josabeth, who, with her husband the High Priest Joad, is guardian to Joas - known as Eliakim and brought up ignorant of his origins and of his status as the only survivor of the House of David - epitomises the tenderness and devotion expected of a wife and mother, though she is not without resilience and nerve. Joad himself is a man of both human passion and divine insight. We have the Machiavellian Mathan, Athalia’s henchman and priest of the Baalites, and Abner, the upright Captain of the Jewish forces, who helps Joas regain his rightful throne.
That Handel’s violent monarch retains the overpowering presence of Racine’s queen is in no way thanks to Handel’s librettist, Samuel Humphreys, who had previously provided textual additions to Esther and the libretto for Deborah. Humphreys appears to have found Racine’s tragedy rather too strong: he simplified (Racine’s moral ambiguities did not survive), excised (explanatory detail and backstory was cut, obscuring motivations), watered down (Racine’s Joad had been a terrifying zealot), and weakened the ending: Athalia does not die at all, but is merely deposed, her future fate left unclear. The dramatic balance was also upset by Humphreys’ dispersal of the arias: Josabeth gets the lion’s share, Athalia one three (and only one of them a da capo).
But, if Humphreys’ text lacked a coherent dramatic structure, dynamic action and evident motivation, then that was not going to stop Handel supplying all three. Esther and Athalia, along with Deborah (1733) - another strong woman who rules in her own right, though in that case legitimately - mark Handel’s early experiments with the oratorio form. But, while Esther and Deborah are largely adaptations of earlier music (the 1727 Coronation anthems, theBrockes-Passion and Il Trionfo del Tempo),Athalia (though it reuses a little material from the Brockes-Passion), is essentially a newly composed work, commissioned by the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University where it was performed in the Sheldonian Theatre on 10th July 1733 as part of the ceremonies surrounding the Public Act (the conferring of degrees), an occasion on which Handel himself was probably awarded an honorary degree.
And, Athalia represents a big step forward in Handel’s handling of the oratorio format. In particular, the Chorus are fully integrated into the drama - representing both the Jews and the Baalites as well as priests and young virgins - and the London Handel Singers were in terrific voice, capturing the different tenors and sentiments, expanding ambiently into eight-part textures. The Chorus even interpolate in the arias themselves, and supplement the recitative exchanges, creating exciting momentum. Typical is the moment in Act 1 when Mathan urges Athalia, who is stricken with terror at the vision of a young slayer which has come to her in a nightmare, “Swift to the temple let us fly, to know/What mansion hides this youthful foe”, as Abner declares that he will “haste the pontiff to prepare/For this black storm of wild despair”. The concluding couplet of the Chorus of Attendants, “The traitor, if you there descry,/Oh, let him by the altar die”, here whipped up enormous dramatic energy. The ‘Allelujah’ which closes Act 1, and the Israelites’ declaration of unanimity and faith - “With firm united hearts, we all/Will conquer in his cause, or fall” - had all of the majesty and muscularity of Messiah’s grand choruses.
Anna Devin’s titular tyrant was disdainful from the first, fairly spitting the words of her initial accompanied recitative and matching the restless agitation of the strings’ introduction to her first aria: it was evident that this was a queen on the emotional rack. Thwarted by Joas’ innocence and integrity, in her plan to abduct the young boy whom she fears, this Athalia bristled with vengeful fury, as Devin raced buoyantly through the incessant runs and riles. The Queen’s final aria, “To darkness eternal/And horrors infernal/Undaunted I’ll hasten away”, was as fiery as the hell Athalia imagines. This was a performance in which dramatic and musical values convincingly cohered.
The role of Josabeth finds Handel in somewhat sentimental vein. Grace Davidson delivered Josabeth’s many lyrical outpourings with fitting serenity of manner and loveliness of tone - Act 2’s ‘Through the land so lovely blooming’ was particularly fluid and smooth’ - but her soprano sometimes lacked the colour and nuance which would infer the emotional and dramatic engagement which is somewhat lacking in Humphreys’ text. The duet between Josabeth and Joas which ends Act 2 was, however, one of the highlights of the performance: here Davidson’s fragmented vocal line captured all of Josabeth’s breathless fear, and Joas’s sympathy and understanding were conveyed with care by treble James Thomson, who was sensitively accompanied by the upper strings.
Rupert Enticknap was a confident and commanding Joad; the countertenor’s recitatives at the start of Act 3 were particularly striking and textually pointed. The ironically tender accompaniment and flowing phrasing of Mathan’s appeal for “Gentle airs, melodious strains” to becalm the agitated Queen’s woes were complemented by Anthony Gregory’s mellifluous delivery and sweet tone - he was every bit the oleaginous intriguer. The small role of Abner was well sung by baritone Christian Immler.
Laurence Cummings conducted with ceaseless energy and flexibility: tempi were swift, orchestral rhythms punchy, timbres finely delineated. The arrival of two baroque horns and two baroque trumpets for the closing chorus was the icing on the instrumental cake.
The musico-dramatic persuasiveness of this LHF performance was confirmed by the fact that, though English oratorios came about in response to the failure of his opera company and the public’s disaffection with the opera seria genre, as the closing Chorus of the Israelites rang out - “Give glory to His awful name,/Let ev’ry voice His praise proclaim” - I found myself reflecting on how successful a staged presentation of Athalia would surely be.
Claire Seymour
Handel: Athalia HWV52
Athalia, Queen of Judah - Anna Devin, Josabeth, Wife of Joad - Grace Davidson, Joad, High Priest - Rupert Enticknap, Mathan, Priest of Baal - Anthony Gregory, Abner, Captain of the Jewish Forces - Christian Immler Joas, King of Judah - James Thomson (Treble from Westminster Abbey), Conductor - Laurence Cummings, London Handel Orchestra, London Handel Singers.
St John’s Smith Square, London; Monday 29th April 2019.