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 song of love and death, loss and renewal. Opera was born from the ambition of Renaissance humanists to recreate the oratorical and cathartic power of Greek tragedy, so it is no surprise that Greek myths have captivated composers of opera, past and present, offering as they do an opportunity to engage with the essential human questions in contexts removed from both the sacred and the mundane.
The story of Phaedra’s tragic incestuous desire for her stepson, Hippolytus, as told by Euripides (Hippolytus), Seneca ( Phaedra) and Racine's (Phèdre), has attracted composers as diverse as Rameau and Britten, Paisiello and Massenet, Schubert and Honegger. It was the myth that the then 81-year-old Hans Werner Henze’s turned to for his fourteenth opera, Phaedra, in 2007, five years before the composer’s death.
The freedom with which Henze and his librettist, Christian Lehnert engaged with the Greek myth might be thought to resemble Stravinsky’s and Cocteau’s ‘re-composition’ of Sophocles in Oedipus rex. But, instead of the neoclassical distancing of Stravinsky’s ‘opera-oratorio after Sophocles’, with its Latin libretto (translated from Cocteau’s French by Abbé Jean Daniélou) and cool static quality - the narrator, in contemporary dress, stands apart from the soloists who barely seem to interact with one another - Henze’s and Lehnert’s ‘concert opera’ presents a visceral variation on Euripides et al which embraces both violence and surrealism. And, this terror and strangeness is embraced with engrossing intensity by director Noa Naamat in this production, performed by five Jette Parker Young Artists, in the ROH’s Linbury Theatre.
Hongni Wu (Phaedra), Filipe Manu (Hippolyt), Jacquelyn Stucker (Aphrodite). Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
Part One of the opera follows the classical tale - more or less- in which Phaedra, rejected by Hippolytus and driven by all-consuming lust and self-loathing, lies to her husband, telling him that Hippolytus has raped her. Theseus curses his son, and Hippolytus is dragged to his death under a chariot when his horses are frightened by the Minotaur which as been resurrected by the sea-god Poseidon. Phaedra hangs herself.
Hongni Wu as Phaedra. Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
Part Two takes off into disorientating realms. Drawing on Euripides, and incorporating symbolic allusions to the composer’s own life, Henze and Lehnert make Phaedra and Hippolytus victims in a battle between Aphrodite and Artemis. The latter, to whom Hippolytus has sworn chaste devotion ( rejecting the cult of Aphrodite), resurrects the young man, renames him Virbius and brings him to Nemi in Italy. Phaedra and Aphrodite attempt to drag Virbius back to the Underworld, imprisoning him in a cage. Artemis rescues him and hides him in a cave, but Hippolytus’ identity and consciousness become ever more fragmented and kaleidoscopic, until he is subsumed into nature itself.
Lehnert’s abstractions and poetic elaborations render the strange stranger still, and can be alienating. But, Naamat tells the story with startling directness. The set (by takis) is simple, the characterisation strongly defined and powerfully sustained. A double staircase rises boldly centre-stage, carving slicing curves as it ascends to a platform from which the Minotaur - resurrected in the opening moments with jolts of electric light, horned and armoured like a walking armadillo, skulking with Dionysian dynamism - looks down upon Hippolytus’s suffering. A ribbon-curtain drapes from floor to ceiling, merging with the walls of the Linbury, glistening, twitching, swishing, as the characters appear and retreat. Part One’s bold aquamarine gives way to passionate orange after Hippolytus’s rebirth. Lee Curran’s lighting isolates the characters with starkness; a circular lighting-rig descends chillingly, like a giant iron manacle, to imprison Hippolytus in a cage.
Michael Mofidian as Minotaur. Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
Henze does make use of some Greek oratorical devices, and at times his characters address the audience directly, but Naamat emphasises their interaction with each other, and the cast did battle with fierce, terrifying intensity. Chinese mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu’s Phaedra prowled with seductive menace, her voice darkening and searching for ever more opulent colours as her decline deepened. Wu and Jacquelyn Stucker, as Aphrodite, excelled in the episodes of climactic Bergian lyricism. Stucker’s stage presence was thrillingly intense, emphasising the palpable danger posed by the angry, vengeful goddess.
Patrick Terry as Artemis. Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
The first countertenor to participate in the JPYA scheme, Patrick Terry relished the demands of the role of Artemis, which forced his voice high and low, down to a speaking baritone. His confident performance skilfully captured Artemis’s complexity. As Hippolytus, tenor Filipe Manu, who joins the JPYA scheme in September this year, displayed both nobility and vulnerability, his lyrical outbursts ringing with emotion. Michael Mofidian, silent until the closing moments, sang with a warmth which drew some sympathy for the Minotaur.
The timbral inventiveness of Henze’s orchestral score surprises and scintillates, and the Southbank Sinfonia (supplemented by pre-recorded sounds), conducted by Edmund Whitehead, relished its lyricism and discordances equally. The percussive energy and distortions of the score were tempered by moments of unexpected, haunting beauty, luring one into the misty, dreamlike narrative. For all its storms, earthquakes and destructive dialectics, this Phaedra throbbed with a strange, almost hypnotising energy and life.
Claire Seymour
Henze: Phaedra
Phaedra - Hongni Wu, Aphrodite - Jacquelyn Stucker, Artemis - Patrick Terry, Hippolyt - Filipe Manu, Minotaur - Michael Mofidian; Director - Noa Naamat, Conductor - Edmund Whitehead, Designer - takis, Lighting Designer - Lee Curran, Movement Director - Mandy Demetriou, Southbank Sinfonia.
Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Thursday 16th May 2019.