Recently in Reviews
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."
Reviews
11 Oct 2019
Welsh National Opera revive glorious Cunning Little Vixen
First unveiled in 1980, this celebrated WNO production shows no sign of running out of steam. Thanks to director David Pountney and revival director Elaine Tyler-Hall, this Vixen has become a classic, its wide appeal owing much to the late Maria Bjørnson’s colourful costumes and picture book designs (superbly lit by Nick Chelton) which still gladden the eye after nearly forty years with their cinematic detail and pre-echoes of Teletubbies.
Alongside masterly direction, Janáček’s vibrant score was fabulously well
served by the WNO orchestra on opening night, and the array of impressive
performances on stage was especially memorable for the talent of
award-winning northern Irish soprano Aiofe Miskelly in the title role.
With a libretto based on the exploits of a wily fox illustrated in a Brno
newspaper in 1920, Janáček’s opera offers a refreshingly simple plot in
which a young vixen is captured by the local Forester. After killing his
hens, she escapes, marries, rears a family and, in a moment of provocation,
is shot by a poacher. While this is no cosy fireside fable, its bittersweet
fairy-tale world is filled with larger than life woodland creatures whose
brief lives are inextricably linked with their human counterparts. It
engages on several levels, firstly in the symbiotic connection between man
and nature, and secondly in the relationships between animal and human that
generate a deeper commentary on the cycle of life and death and the
inevitability of renewal. Of this universal and timeless reality Janáček
would have been acutely aware when he began composing the work just two
years before his seventieth birthday. To this ‘personal meditation on the
brevity and fragility of existence’, to borrow from Philip Ross Bullock’s
programme article, the composer responds with music of intense lyricism and
restlessness.
Beyond the pantomime-like caterpillar (complete with concertina), cricket
and dragonfly are themes of sexual awakening, regret and time passing that
underpin a work Janáček referred to in a letter to his muse Kamilla
Stösslová as ‘a merry thing with a sad end’. This tragic aspect is leavened
by the arrival of new beginnings, so touchingly delivered near the end when
the Forester meets a grandchild of a frog encountered in Act One and one of
the vixen’s daughters - both poignant moments of vanishing youth. Not far
from its jaunty and simultaneous pastoral surface are subsidiary ideas on
freedom, socialism and the empowering of women - wittily dealt with when
the vixen dreams of freedom, scolds the hens for their subservience to the
cockerel, and later evicts an indolent badger from his sett.
Aoife Miskelly (Vixen). Photo credit: Richard Hubert Smith.
The whole is amply thought-provoking, but its concepts are all conveyed
with a light brush. For those who are persuaded by spectacle, there’s
plenty; this visual feast repeatedly draws the eye to silhouetted hills
(set against deep blues and pinks), patchwork quilt landscapes (snowy
sheets reminding us of the harshness of nature) and cutaway dwellings for
the Forester’s cottage and local pub where the ageing schoolmaster and
priest share lost opportunities. Gossiping birds suspended from the ceiling
tell tales of other creatures in the community, one condemning a starling’s
promiscuous daughter for being ‘a filthy slapper’. The massacre of the hens
(dressed as charwomen) is brutal and the shower of red leaves as each one
is slaughtered is a nice imaginative touch.
If sparkling wit and charm provide atmosphere for this production, it’s
driven by a strong cast including some well drilled school children. Above
all, it’s Aiofe Miskelly as the feisty vixen Bystrouška whose clear-toned
soprano and gleeful presence is a perfect match for this role and equally
convincing whether brazen or maternal. Hers was a portrayal glowing with
humanity and if she overshadowed Lucia Cervoni’s eager fox, their duet was
a special joy. Claudio Otelli, as the Forester warmed to his role and gave
an impassioned closing soliloquy as he fondly recalled his younger self.
There was much to enjoy too from Peter van Hulle’s lonely Schoolmaster,
Wojtek Gierlach’s dignified Parson and David Stout’s unsentimental poacher.
A host of fox cubs, creatures winged and of the four-legged variety also
left their mark.
Down in the pit Tomáš Hanus directed his WNO forces with flair,
bringing out the score’s vivid detail and energy, allowing individual
players their moments in the sun, yet keenly alert to balance. In short,
it’s a must-see production bursting with life.
David Truslove
Janáček: The Cunning Little Vixen
Bystrouška - Aiofe Miskelly, Forester - Claudio Otelli, Fox - Lucia Cervoni, Poacher - David Stout, Schoolmaster - Peter Van Hulle, Parson - Wotjek Gairloch, Forester’s Wife - Kezia Bienek, Innkeeper - Martin Lloyd, Innkeeper’s Wife - Sarah Pope, Badger - Laurence Cole; Director - David Pountney, Conductor - Tomáš Hanus, Associate Director and Revival Choreographer - Elaine Tyler-Hall, Designer - Maria Bjørnson, Lighting Designer - Nick Chelton, Original Choreographer - Stuart Hopps, Orchestra and Chorus of Welsh National Opera.
Millennium Centre, Cardiff; Saturday 5th October 2019.