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.
![Tannhäuser and Venus in love bus [Photo © Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath]](http://www.operatoday.com/Tannhauser_Bayreuth1.png)
Stage director Tobias Kratzer sorely tempts destruction in his Bayreuth deconstruction of Wagner’s delicate Tannhäuser, though he was soundly thwarted at the third performance by conductor Christian Thielemann pinch hitting for Valery Gergiev.
Elisabeth had killed herself in the back of a sort of wrecked love bus after seducing Wolfram who, a bit stunned, then sang his hymn to the evening star. Tannhäuser found his way back from Rome, and to Wolfram’s horror tore up the script for the tale’s implicit outcome.
Through all of this (and much, much more) conductor Thielemann insisted on the purity of Wagnerian love, and it prevailed perhaps as never before, a triumph of dramaturgical manipulation that needed the sanctity of the Festspielhaus and its magical acoustic to succeed.
In fact director Kratzer pit the artistically fearsome resources of Wagner’s Festspielhaus against the raw art of a vintage love bus crowned by a performance artist Marina Abramović rabbbit inhabited by the famed (infamous) black drag queen Le Gateau Chocolat, a dwarf named Oscar, and a mezzo soprano named Venus dressed in a sort of circus ringmaster leotard. Not to overlook a clown named Tannhäuser.
Director Kratzer moved seamlessly between a huge filmic world and a particular, theatrical, actors’ world, at first the massive proscenium opening of the Festspielhaus filled with the fleeting hills and trees of Bavaria’s Franconia, hurdling over Wartburg castle, Wagner’s resplendent overture majestically completing the awesome travelogue.
There was then the full stage as theater, only to be filled above with video magnification of the stage below – the massive, magical sounds from the Festspielhaus’ hidden pit uniting the images as one.
Director Kratzer’s conceptual world is fluid. We then find ourselves in front of the Festspielhaus where, among other things there is inherently always a sort of singing contest, not to mention the pilgrims that pass by headed to this temple of art.
There is a crisis. Not only is Tannhäuser homesick for Venusberg but Venus, Chocolate Cake and Oscar invade the Festspielhaus and find their way to the contest to rescue him. Stage management (video projection above stage set) calls the Bayreuth cops who arrive at the Festspielhaus (video above stage set), find the ladder up to the famous façade balcony, crash onto the stage and would have squashed the melée if Elizabeth had not got things under control.
The Act II singers’ contest (lower) while Venus enters Festspielhaus (simultaneous video but incomplete image)
You may think this is comedy. It was not. Conductor Thielemann pit the forces of woodwind purity against strident, screaming violins in unimaginable fortissimos. We knew someone had to call the cops. We needed the ensuing hour long break to catch our breath.
Back then to the now wrecked Venusberg, and director Kratzer’s coup de théâtre – the conceptual wreckage of Elizabeth and Wolfram. But finally there was salvation. Not only for the hero and heroine (both for once), but also of stage director Kratzer who squeaked by with the implicit compliance of Wagner (and a very smart dramaturg) and the total commitment of Maestro Thielemann to the extremes of the score and to the production. Left unknown to me, sadly, is how maestro Gergiev can have dealt with all this in the other performances.
With Richard Wagner we confronted the chaos of creation and the struggle to reconcile raw art with refined art, and we attempted to reconcile the boundless urges of the human spirit with the civilizing force of community and the restraints imposed by love. For a moment at the end we may have succeeded, the pope’s staff finding, maybe, a green leaf or two.
The production was brilliantly cast. Larger than life American heldentenor Stephen Gould made a convincing clown and sang in high Wagnerian style, easily winning the singing contest. Larger than life Norwegian dramatic soprano Lise Davidson countered the tenor in vocal prowess, finding convincing and moving delicacy in her scene of deliverance with Oscar the dwarf, and her seduction of Wolfram.
Russian mezzo Elena Zhidkova was the scene stealing Venus, finding beautiful tone and style when called upon to sing and not to simply drive the love bus and disrupt the stage. German baritone Marcus Escher was deprived of portraying the usual sympathetic Wolfram, sacrificing himself to a far more complex character who needed far more than a pretty voice.
Director Kratzer’s splendid production is site specific to Franconia, Bayreuth and the resources of the Festspielhaus. Make your way there!
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Landgraf Hermann: Stephen Milling; Tannhäuser: Stephen Gould; Wolfram von Eschenbach: Markus Eiche; Walther von der Vogelweide: Daniel Behle; Biterolf: Kay Stiefermann; Heinrich der Schreiber: Jorge Rodríguez-Norton; Reinmar von Zweter: Wilhelm Schwinghammer; Elisabeth, Nichte des Landgrafen: Lise Davidsen; Venus: Elena Zhidkova; Ein junger Hirt: Katharina Konradi; Le Gateau Chocolat: Le Gateau Chocolat; Oskar: Manni Laudenbach. Chorus and Orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival. Conductor: Christian Thielemann; Stage Director:Tobias Kratzer; Stage design:Rainer Sellmaier; Costumes: Rainer Sellmaier; Lighting: Reinhard Traub; Video: Manuel Braun; Dramaturgy: Konrad Kuhn. Bayreuther Festspiele, August 13, 2019.