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."
This lunchtime Prom at Cadogan Hall celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Venetian singer, composer and poet, Barbara Strozzi, but it might equally have been announced as a tribute to the musical form which underpinned so much of the exquisite invention and rhetoric during Strozzi’s era - the circular bass pattern of the ground, chaconne and passacaglia.
And, it was with a ground bass - a descending four-note chaconne - that we started, the delicate whispers of Monica Pustilnik’s archlute and Quito Gato’s theorbo articulating the opening bars of Strozzi’s, ‘L’amante segreto’, as the musicians of Cappella Mediterranea processed slowly onto the Cadogan Hall stage. The texture gently expanded, rustling chords and soft ornament filling out the hypnotic revolving circles of the bass line, in anticipation of the singer’s lament. With the accompaniment still a pianissimo elaboration, Mariana Flores entered from the opposite side of the Hall, slowly, with gravity, taking her place at the centre of the ensemble, her figure poised but her head bowed, seemingly physically burdened by the pain of unrequited love.
“Voglio morire”: I want to die. The opening line, derived from the bass and recurring throughout the madrigal, was a wisp of sound, clear but gossamer, a melancholic fall. Later Flores would reiterate this intent in more florid fashion, her yearning deepened by the dissonant pungency of clashing semitones and the darkness of director Leonardo García Alarcón’s weighty organ. The journey to such expressive peaks was a masterpiece of vocal and textual expression - from both Flores and Strozzi. The melody is intensely rhetorical, its curves and twists now fluid, then halting, and the Argentinian soprano controlled the contour of the line with exquisite subtlety. The long melismas quivered with feeling, then flowed in creative outpourings of emotion in a quasi-improvisatory fashion; and this improvisatory quality became more prominent with recorder player Roderigo Calveyra’s elaborations which injected pace and passion when the poet-singer finds new strength, rising from her frozen winter into a greener spring. At times, the disturbance created by sudden shifts in tempo and changes of metre gave way to the stillness of a monody which was rapturously communicative.
This mesmerising opening set the tone for the recital which was notable for its sustained intensity, deep sentiment and consummate musicianship. Propelled similarly by a bass ostinato, Strozzi’s ‘Che si può fare’ adds a prominent and dark-coloured viola da gamba to the piquant dissonances of harp (Marie Bournisien), archlute and guitar, and Margaux Blanchard’s low countermelody engaged with the vocal line with fluency and eloquence, matching the flexibility and inventiveness of Flores’ flowing line. Countering the wistfulness of hopeless reflections - “Che si può fare?”, “Che si può dire?” (What can anyone do?, What can anyone say?) - were Calveyra’s inter-verse cornett songs, played with a wonderful fullness and warmth that got inside one’s skin in the best possible way. But, despair turned to rebelliousness and resolve at the close. Flores imbued her voice with strength and a hint of flamboyance: the final cadence came suddenly, with a parting flourish like a vocal stamp of the foot.
‘Sino all morte’ is a longer, free-flowing cantata from Strozzi’s Diporte di Euterpe (The Pleasures of Euterpe). Published in 1659, its dedication to the future Doge Nicolo Sagredo described the contents as ‘lingue dell’ Anima ed istrumente del core ... come Sirene entro mari di Gratie’ (language of the soul and instruments of the heart ... like Sirens among a sea of Graces). Operatic in scale and passion, ‘Sino alla morte’ reflects on love consummated, unrequited, denied and destroyed, and Flores negotiated the sudden changes of mood and style, from impassioned elaboration to controlled declamation as superbly as she delivered the ever more complex fioritura, relishing its unpredictability. Similarly, in ‘Lagrime mie’ she exploited every melodic angularity, piquant chromaticism and fragmentation of the text to communicate the distress of the poet-speaker whose beloved Lidia has been imprisoned by her father. The sequences built a compelling dynamism, voice and bass intertwined beautifully, and every ounce of the lament’s meaning and feeling was brought forth with exquisite delicacy.
We also heard works by Strozzi’s younger Venetian compatriot, Antonia Bembo, who left Italy for France. There she gained the patronage of King Louis XIV who rewarded her with a pension which allowed her to stay in the community of Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle before moving to what she called a ‘holy refuge’ - the community of the Petite Union Chrétienne des Dames de Saint Chaumond. A dedicatory letter to her royal patron introduces Bembo’s collection of vocal pieces, Produzioni armoniche, a varied set of pieces which were intended for both sacred and secular performance. At the start of the aria ‘M’ingannasti in verità’, the harpsichord was restless and agitated, burning with betrayal, and Flores’ vocal line seemed to turn around and around on itself in bitterness. An elaborate, spirited recorder interlude whipped up the fury of the second stanza, where the rapid virtuosities flashed with fiery anger as the voice climbed ever higher. “Brava!” cried one delighted audience member above the applause. Calveyra displayed equal virtuosity in Bembo’s ‘Volgete altrove il guardo’ in which the vocal line was transcribed for recorder, playing with uneffusive calm but creating diverse colours, infectious energy and sunshine happiness at the close.
Both Strozzi and Bembo were taught by Francesco Cavalli and the latter’s ‘E vuol dunque Ciprigna’ allowed Flores to demonstrate her rhetorical skills, as she flew through the dramatic recitative communicating the rich sounds of the texts with precision and power, accompanied by unpredictable, sometimes almost violent, textures and harmonies.
This was an outstanding demonstration of the expressive union of words and music achieved by Strozzi and her contemporaries. Might Cappella Mediterranea have occasionally loosened the rhythmic strings a little and found rather more freedom to balance the earnestness? Might Flores have sought some of the irony in Strozzi’s texts, to counter the passion with a little playfulness? Perhaps. But, Flores sang with a boldness that was surely the equal of Strozzi’s own. And, we certainly experienced the ‘language of the soul and instruments of the heart’.
Claire Seymour
Proms at … Cadogan Hall 2: A Celebration of Barbara Strozzi
Mariana Flores (soprano), Leonardo García Alarcón (harpsichord/organ/director), Cappella Mediterranea
Barbara Strozzi - ‘L’amante segreto’, Antonia Bembo - Produzioni armoniche: ‘M’ingannasti in verità’, Strozzi - ‘Che si può fare’, Bembo - Produzioni armoniche: ‘Volgete altrove il guardo’, Strozzi - ‘Sino alla morte’, Francesco Cavalli - Ercole amante: ‘E vuol dunque Ciprigna’, Strozzi - ‘Lagrime mie’
Cadogan Hall, London; Monday 29th July 2019.