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.
.png)
The final performance of San Francisco Opera’s deeply flawed production of the Gounod masterpiece became, in fact, a triumph — for the Romeo of Pene Pati, the Juliet of Amina Edris, and for Charles Gounod in the hands of conductor Yves Abel.
This October 1 performance was the only one of the seven performance run entrusted to Egyptian-born soprano Amina Edris as Juliet. With Gounod’s famed “Je veux vivre” Mlle. Edris took command of the stage, revising this aria from its usual status as a soprano showpiece to become the portrait of a young girl full of life, ready to fall in love. Mlle. Edris possesses a beautifully colored, burnished tone, rare for a lyric coloratura soprano, her voice fully capable of sailing through the brilliant coloratura to create a freedom of spirit that we know will soon be crushed.
And fall in love at first sight Romeo did, pouring out his feelings in “Ange adorable,” and opening the second act with the famed “Ah! leve toi soleil” flawlessly sung in well-focused, beautifully colored tone. Then the tender duet “O nuit divine, je t’impore” begun and concluded by the smitten Romeo in lovely pianissimos, the scene in which Juliet gives herself to Romeo.
Tenor Pene Pati came into this beautifully finished voice for Gounod’s Romeo over the seven performances. I first heard the Somoan-born tenor in the third performance of this run. I was not persuaded that his voice possessed a convincing intonation though it was lyrical and elegant singing, and most of all it was very secure, youthful singing by an appealing and highly communicative artist. And tenor Pati did indeed provide sufficient foil for the vocal fireworks of the Juliet, sung by young opera star Nadine Sierra at this performance.
I heard Pene Pati’s Romeo a second time (the fifth opera house performance) at Opera at the Ballpark sipping $15 margaritas and munching garlic fries. There were more than 15,000 of us at this 12th annual simulcast of a War Memorial Opera House performance onto the gigantic scoreboard of the SF Giants ballpark. The audience is a cross section of San Franciscans, opera aficionados to be sure, and even the “why not wander in — it’s free!” Astonishment at the discovery of opera is sometimes uniquely expressed at the ballpark — “This is better than a f***in' ballgame!” was a men's room exclamation I overheard.
While the transmission of the voice of soprano Sierra to the ballpark was flattering, and the virtuosity of this brilliant young singer was even more apparent than in the real acoustic of an in-house performance, Pene Pati’s transmitted voice lacked much of the warmth that I had heard a few days before in the opera house. Though, remarkably, his strong and secure high C at the end of the Act III banishment sextet surely set a new record for high C home-runs.
At this final performance in the opera house with the Juliet of Mlle. Edris tenor Pati may have held the high C even longer than at the ballpark. But most striking was his discovery of a natural flow for the lyricism of Gounod’s ill-fated lover, the young tenor finding Romeo’s poetry without superfluous emotive emphasis and without mannerism. It was pure bel canto, and pure poetry.
With Mlle. Edris tenor Peti delivered the famed duet “Nuit d’hyménée” with unfaltering elegance, both singers revelling in the bel canto of their love. And finally Romeo’s wrenching “Salut! Tombeau sombre et silencieux” held true to the lyricism of Gounod’s musical line, the drama of Shakespeare’s tragedy laid bare in the beauty of young love, not in its angst.
It is true that Romeo is the voice of Gounod’s expressive poet, and that Juliet is the tragic victim of this love story. She must take the sleep potion offered her by Friar Lawrence to simulate death, and suffer the angst lying in the family mausoleum near her slain brother Tybald who, she imagines, demands that she reject Romeo. These, then, are the most dramatic moments of the opera, moments that are opportunities to amplify the work’s emotional outpourings into virtuoso operatic display. Mlle. Edris did not forsake the innocence of character she had created. While easily meeting the challenging technical demands of the poison aria (“Amour ranime mon courage”) she as well quietly underlined her angst by descending into a chest voice, almost spoken, from time to time.
This last performance vindicated a masterpiece status for Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. Canadian conductor Yves Abel built plateaux of orchestral lyricism that clearly inspired the ill-fated lovers to find Gounod’s poetry. Or perhaps it was that these two young artists inspired the maestro to create this world of innocence and musical beauty.
Not that the maestro did not foment the tensions to the utmost in the Act III fight scene, here noisily encouraging Juliet’s brother Tybald to skewer Mercutio, sung by Lucas Meacham, who had let loose with a Figaro-gone-mad act that truly needed to be silenced.
For my full September 19 review of this production please see Roméo et Juliette at San Francisco Opera.
Michael Milenski