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.
The clatter of information was overwhelmed by soaring bel canto, Verdi’s domestic tragedy destroyed by director Simon Stone, resurrected by conductor Michele Mariotti, a tour de force for South African soprano Pretty Yende.
No longer the sad tale of a fallen woman and the illusions of her Parisian beau monde, of a dangerous infatuation and the vindication of simple country life, director Simon Stone’s tale was of a celebrity Parisian beauty who was dying of cancer, and her drunken lover whom she rejected by capitulating to his authoritarian father.
This gave conductor Michele Mariotti carte blanche to explore Verdi’s musical world in bold strokes. An enormous orchestral explosion confirmed the declaration of love in the second act, a shattering fortissimo announced the lovers’ separation. But before and above all else the maestro sought and found the musical beauty of the full throated voices — this splendid bel canto ideal drew us not into this oft told tawdry tale but into a world of high operatic art.
South African soprano Pretty Yende had to be both an icon of beauty in the French capital and a singer equal to the musical aspirations of the conductor. With a purity of voice and dramatic innocence she well fulfilled the first, and with a formidable technique plus a willingness to take vocal risks she well met the maestro’s expectations. It was beautiful singing, the brilliance of her upper voice was carried amply into her lower registers, she dared exaggerated pianissimos in “Dite alla giovane si bella e pura,” she glowed in her farewell aria “È tardi . . .”
Pretty Yende as Violetta ValeryMetteur en scène Simon Stone constructed a noisy counterpoint to the maestro’s bel canto. It was the nervous energy that seeps through the flashy Parisian veneer. There was actual noise from the grinding and creaking of the huge stage box that turned to reveal ever changing musical moments. The resulting cacophony of scenes invented by director Stone and his Australian designer Bob Cousins added both visual noise and conceptual noise to this real noise.
The huge box, missing two sides, sat on the revolving platform. The interior was empty white, though it took on significant accoutrement as it turned to color each of the revealed scenes — a gilded equestrian statue and one slowly dancing couple for “Sempre libera,” a live cow (milked by Violetta) for Germont’s Act II entrance, a chemotherapy lounge for the Act III prelude, among many other conceptually poignant, off-the-wall images.
The exterior sides of the two constructed walls were massive video screens that were first the show curtain as the closed eyes of Mlle. Yende, the lid of the left eye moving slightly from time to time (yes, this put us on edge). The video screens sometimes served to display frantic tweeting and news flashes, and more often the screens were covered with perfect roses (until an Act III scene when their pedals were burnt).
The walls provided backdrop as well for a kebab stand, and pointedly as backdrop for the trash bins that held the detritus of Parisian revelry, by extension, sadly, the fate of the opera’s true love. These among other striking, off-the-wall images — yes, it was indeed conceptually edgy.
A very drunk Alfredo appeared at Flora’s costume ball dressed as Daffy Duck (Simon Stone dressed the Duke of Gloucester as Mickey Mouse in his Salzburg Lear). The other guests in grotesque costumes (including a couple of misplaced prosthetic penises) were the sole decor in the choreographically-less white box of this spectacle scene. Australian theater costumer Alice Babidge dressed Violetta in an off-the-wall constructed white gown in which Mlle. Yende chose to appear to accept the extended ovations awarded her when it was all over.
While the Dumas fils La Dame aux camélias and the Piave Traviata were soundly destroyed, Verdi’s score did not suffer, taking on contemporary emotional rhythms, revealing a myriad of hidden resonances that made this Paris Traviata a completely new, compelling opera — a remarkable feat!
Benjamin Bernheim as Alfredo GermontTenor Benjamin Bernheim ascended the pyramid of champagne glasses to deliver his “Libiamo” with the worldly energy of this unique Alfredo. He played the drunken Alfredo to the hilt and sang the final duet “Parisian, o cara, noi lasceremo” with remarkably beautiful phrasing. By incising his lines with precision baritone Lodovic Térzier surmounted the dramaturgical challenge of transforming Germont into a titan of industry before whom nothing is refused.
Simon Stone plays with a heavy hand. His Salzburg Médée just now was not a success, the slightness of the piece disappearing into the torrents of information that infused his staging. The brilliance of this Verdi masterpiece in the confident hands of bel canto conductor Michele Mariotti achieved a presence that the excessive energies of the Stone staging always amplified, and never diminished, to the very great pleasure of the opening night audience.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Violetta Valery: Pretty Yende; Alfredo Germont: Benjamin Bernheim; Giorgio Germont: Ludovic Tézier; Flora Bervoix: Catherine Trottmann; Annina: Marion Lebèque; Gastone: Julien Dran; Barone Douphol: Christian Helmer; Marchese d”Obigna: Marc Labonnette; Dottore Grenvil: Thomas Dear. Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris. Conductor: Michele Mariotti; Mise en scène: Simon Stone; Set Design: Bob Cousins; Costumes: Alice Babidge; Lighting: James Farncombe; Video: Zakk Hein. Palais Garnier, Paris, France, September 12, 2019.