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.
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.
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.
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.’
‘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.’
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."
The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”
The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.
![Elena Stikhina as Médée [All photos copyright Salzburger Festspiele / Thomas Aurin]](http://www.operatoday.com/Medee_Salzburg1.png)
Though Luigi Cherubini long outlived the carnage of the French Revolution his 1797 opéra comique [with spoken dialogue] Médée fell well within the “horror opera” genre that responded to the spirit of its time. These days however Médée is but an esoteric and extremely challenging late addition to the international repertory.
Médée has been greatly admired by following generations of composers especially for its orchestral interludes (and by a particular singer, Maria Callas, as a brilliant showpiece for soprano). With the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit the Salzburg Festival evidently invites us to consider Médée as viable dramatic music for now, not as an interesting relic for period instruments.
The spoken opéra comique origins of Medée built a dramatic context for its several scenes and choruses, its three arias (Dircé, Créon, Néris), the grandiose duet (Jason and Médée) that concludes Act I, and Médée’s famed final scene — the murder of her two children. With spoken dialogues in opera long out of fashion Australian theater director Simon Stone turned to film aka movies, to televised news, to phone calls and to phone messages to absolutely overwhelm us with context.
Stripped of any of the trappings of French classical tragedy Cherubini’s Médée is a very small if a very smart piece of music. The Grosses Festspielhaus is very big. Stage director Stone’s movie (video) told a parallel story to Cherubini’s operatic sketch in huge black and white full stage screen images. The singers became film actors (and very good ones!) and went through the motions of a Salzburg couple’s marriage breaking up. The husband was unfaithful, and the ugly origins of the marriage (Médée's betrayal of her father and murder of her brother) were never mentioned. Stage director Stone's Médée was but an innocent victim.
As well there were huge black outs when all we heard in the total silence were the highly amplified, desperate phone messages left by the abandoned woman.
The bus stop where Janson entrusts the children to Médée
When the stage was not a giant movie screen stage director Stone made his stage set hyper realistic — a bridal shop, a night club with pole dancing, a hotel lobby, a hotel room with a giant TV screen and an a vista shower, a hotel banquet room with its restroom, a shabby internet cafe, an international airport, a bus stop and a gas station. Yes, it was a huge production.
Although at the end Médée shot gasoline all over the stage she failed to ignite it, depriving us of the spectacular conflagration that could have wiped all this excess out. The immolation was but a slight bit of theatrical fog and dim red light inside a shiny silver car, hardly the precise detail of the balance of the production.
There was infinite costuming detail, there was even a reference to cheap Turkish Airlines flights.The production seemed more Eastern European than Eastern Mediterranean. It is a co-production with Polish National Opéra.
Cherubini’s opera Médée was a superfluous addition that all but disappeared in director Stone’s melée. The Salzburg Festival engaged German rare music guru, conductor Thomas Hengelbrock to mastermind our musical initiation into this rare opera. Certainly the extensive overture was beautifully rendered by the Vienna Philharmonic, however the seriousness of its structures and colors disappeared into the turgid divorce emotions occurring on the stage’s giant screen.
From time to time Cherubini’s Médée was able to catch our attention. The orchestral introduction to Créon’s aria was of Wagnerian proportion in its crescendo of power, the Act I duet finale captured a magnificent Médée rage. Médée’s confidant Néris’ splendid aria in duet with a bassoon involved us and of course the famed finale in which Médée rationalizes the murdering of her children was spellbinding, though the immediacy and urgency of the performance did not reach the rear orchestra where I was seated.
The Act 1 duet finale, Médée in a phone both far away, Jason in his hotel room, Néris and children
Russian soprano Elena Stikhina effectively negotiated the role of Médée as required by director Stone. It was securely sung and effectively acted without finding mythic or even theatrical stature. Italian soprano Rosa Feola sang Dircé’s complex air with assurance, her apparent vocal prowess barely tapped. Russian mezzo Alisa Kolosova made her aria of resolve to help Médée one of the evening’s high points. Neither bass Vitalij Kowaljow as Créon nor Czech tenor Pavel Ćernoch as Jason made sufficient effect. Both are estimable artists in the major repertoire on major stages, obviously not at home in early music.
The evident intention was to render Cherubini’s Médée a grand opera of dramaturgical complexity. The attempt was not successful.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Médée: Elena Stikhina; Jason: Pavel Ćernoch; Créon: Vitalij Kowaljow; Dircé: Rosa Feola; Néris: Alisa Kolosova; First attendant: Tamara Bounazow; Second attendant: Marie Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur. Concert chorus of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Philharmonic. Conductor: Thomas Hengelbrock; Stage director: Simon Stone; Sets: Bob Cousins; Costumes: Mel Page; Lighting: Nick Schlieper; Sound design: Stephan Gregory; Dramaturgy: Christian Arseni. Grosse Festspielhaus, Salzburg Festival, August 16, 2019 (fifth of six performances).