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 are never any real surprises with a Richard Jones production and Covent Garden’s Boris Godunov, first seen in 2016, is typical of Jones’s approach: it’s boxy, it’s ascetic, it’s over-bright, with minimalism turned a touch psychedelic in the visuals.
The fact that this production - and its set - is so interior-focused strips away every notion of grandeur and epic scale in this Boris Godunov . This can, in all fairness, be liberating. After all, the opera is set during ‘The Time of Troubles’, a period during the reign of Tsar Boris of austerity and starvation. One only has to look at the ragged ends of Boris’s own imperial robe to notice he doesn’t seem immune to the deprivation that affects those he rules over.
If Jones doesn’t much care about what Russia looks like outside the walls of the set, he most obviously does care about the psychodrama of Boris Godunov. This is a portrait - and for the much of the opera portraits are liberally hung to reflect this - into the deeper recesses of a mind collapsing into madness. The more you watch Jones’s Boris, the less it owes to Pushkin and more to Shakespearian tragedy. The repeated throat-slashing of the murdered child heir, Dmitry, (cleverly masked - kabuki-style - to add authenticity to the usurper’s claims), clearly alludes to Richard III and his murder of the princes in the Tower. But this Boris is King Lear with all the same problems and deficits: a ruler over an unstable kingdom, obsessiveness over an heir, a tragic relationship with a daughter, a mind descending into hallucination and insanity. It shouldn’t go unnoticed, either, that Boris and the Holy Fool provide a similar dramatic function to that of Lear and his Fool - even to the extent that the nobility or wisdom of the latter, whether in the opera or the play, is always greater than that of the ruler.
ROH’s Boris Godunov, Company. Photo credit: Clive Barda.
There is probably never any doubt as to Boris’s guilt, or complicity, in murder in this production. Jones certainly has the most gifted actor-singer of all in Bryn Terfel whose Boris has the most staggering stage presence. Terfel’s eyes - and what he does with them is simply unmatched. For any actor to command a stage with his eyes alone - as Terfel does - is quite remarkable and it begins here even before the Coronation Scene. The gaze, the stare, the madness, the sheer darkness was riveting. It’s worth the price of a ticket alone just to see Terfel look at you - it’s in turn terrifying, and completely compelling. Pimen’s ‘Chronicle of Russian History’, which we see as a series of large portraits, clearly paints a similar picture of Boris. The eyes glower, the face is unbearably ugly in its tortured expressions - a sharp contrast to the angelic, deified Feodor beside him. Even in the crowd scene outside the Kremlin Boris is simply scripted as a ruler who is indifferent, or at best incapable of empathy. Historically, these might not be entirely accurate depictions of Boris, but Jones turns him in to someone - as Pimen suggests - as a Tsar worse than Ivan.
Covent Garden have chosen to use Mussorgsky’s 1869 version (in the Michael Rot revised edition) which has both advantages and drawbacks. There is certainly greater fidelity to Pushkin’s text, and ending with Boris’s death - especially, when in this performance, it was so powerful and so tragic - seems more satisfactory. But it takes a better production than Richard Jones’s to stem the impression we are watching a series of tableaux rather than a single, immutable opera. It is obviously not Jones’s fault that Mussorgsky writes for such large choral forces - but it is a problem when those choruses struggle in such a compressed space. Mimi Jordan Sherin’s lighting - a vast sheet of white light which stretches entirely across the stage - flattens the height, whilst Miriam Beuther’s black set (even if it does have a raised upper platform) stifles everything lower down. There is something Romanov (later, rather than earlier) about Nicky Gillibrand’s costumes; and the tattered rags of the hungry and dispossessed owe much to David Lean’s vision of Dickens’s Oliver Twist.
Bryn Terfel (Boris Godunov). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
The 1869 version is also much more heavily cast for male soloists, perhaps less operatic than the 1872 version, more recitative in style and a little more kuchkist. I think there will always be those who question whether Terfel has the power - or depth of sound - to sing the role of Boris. One will always probably prefer the authenticity of a Russian bass in this part, but what Terfel does bring to Boris is such insight and tragedy to him. The acting is such an extension of what he does with his voice you wonder what comes first. He is that very rare thing, the complete singer-actor. It is certainly the case that he felt underpowered when he sang beside Matthew Rose’s superlative Pimen in the final scene; on the other hand, any one who heard Terfel’s simply stunning death scene will not forget it for a very long time. Where he probably has an advantage over a bass here is that the voice can do so much more at a higher register without straining and his ability to scale down the voice was heart-rending.
Matthew Rose (Pimen). Photo credit: Clive Barda.
Terfel does madness very well. One is reminded in a Terfel performance of a conductor like Karajan in Berg - everything is geared towards total physical and mental exhaustion. Matthew Rose’s Pimen was no less commanding, though less intense in characterisation. The vocal lines are long and steady, his bass rich and deep - in a sense a deeply ‘monkish’ performance, perhaps the closest and most authentically Russian sung from this largely British cast. John Tomlinson, reprising the role of Varlaam, was hugely impressive, giving a most virile and spirited performance of the drunken monk. David Butt Philip’s Grigory was a little understated as the back-pack, knife-wielding usurper for my taste. The smaller roles - one of the notable features of Boris Godunov is that it is dominated by so few singers - were all finely sung, notably Roger Honeywell’s Prince Shuisky and, a particular standout, Sam Furness’s tin-headed Holy Fool.
The chorus of the Royal Opera House had a rather busy night, though one might argue Ben Wright, the movement director, had his work cut out by the lack of space they had to move in. The singing was first rate, as was the playing of the orchestra under the rather swift baton of Marc Albrecht. This was a performance which ran for a more than comfortable two hours.
There is, I think, a good reason why Boris Godunov remains difficult to stage well: it’s just written that way. Richard Jones doesn’t really succeed in doing so, though if we want a study in the madness of Tsar Boris, he has designed one for Bryn Terfel that succeeds on almost every level. Terfel carries this production by his sheer presence alone. I think the question is, would this production remotely work with any other singer in the role? I suspect the answer is a resounding no.
Marc Bridle
Modest Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov
Bryn Terfel (Boris Godunov), Roger Honeywell (Prince Shuisky), Matthew Rose (Pimen), David Butt Philip (Grigory), Boris Pinkhasovich (Schelkalov), John Tomlinson (Varlaam), Harry Nicholl (Missail), Haegee Lee (Xenia), Anne Marie Gibbons (Hostess of Inn), Sam Furness (Holy Fool), Jeremy White (Nikitch), Adrian Clarke (Mityukha), Alan Ewing (Frontier Guard), Christopher Lemming (Boyar); Richard Jones (Director), Marc Albrecht (Conductor), Miriam Buether (Set designer), Nicky Gillibrand (Costume designer), Mimi Jordan Sherin (Lighting designer), Ben Wright (Movement designer), Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London; Wednesday 19th June 2019.