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."
Aurélien Bory, director of a small, avant garde theater company in Toulouse, staged a spellbinding Parsifal at the Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse’s famed Orchestre National du Capitole in the pit — FYI the Capitole is Toulouse’s city hall, the opera house is a part of it.
The Orchestra National du Capitole earned its international reputation in the late 20th century with its conductor Michel Plasson and has retained its stature as one of France’s finest symphonic ensembles into the 21st century. Its quality was well evidenced at the fifth (and final), highly polished performance of Parsifal. Orchestrally there was an unfaltering beauty of tone throughout Parsifal’s wide dynamic register and its evolving intensities, and a suppleness of ensemble that softly and quite precisely sculpted Wagner’s unending flow of motives.
Conducting was Frank Beermann, long associated with an ongoing (since 2002) Wagner project at the Stadttheater Minden (near Hanover). Like many conductors Mo. Beermann takes much slower tempos than those prescribed by Wagner himself, resulting in a quite long evening. Nonetheless it efficiently spread the mysteries of Wagner’s rite of redemption into a musical and dramatic structure that entranced the audience for those many hours. Maestro Beermann and the orchestra were awarded a huge ovation when it was all over.
Toulouse assembled a remarkable cast led by Austrian tenor Nikolai Schukoff as Parsifal. Lithe and handsome Mr. Schukoff is not Wagner’s fool. He is a male force (a hunter and a lover) that Wagner will redeem with the help of opera’s most complex, enigmatic heroine Kundry. French mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch was the Kundry in her role debut. She reads as a beautiful, sexual woman. She also projects an intelligence befitting a woman who feels and demands to understand the conflict and contradiction of body and soul that consume her.
Kundry’s second act seduction of Parsifal and Parsifal’s resistance was the epicenter of director Aurélien Bory’s staging of Wagner’s quest of salvation. Kundry was its key, Mme. Koch exploding vocally and emotionally. The stage was blank except for a narrow, dark wall against a pale glow. Kundry in a dark green gown stood in the glow on one side, Parsifal, in white, on the other as they began their epic encounter concert style. Eventually it became a physical brawl, the two bodies and minds in physical and intellectual battle. [see lead photo]
Matthias Goerne as Amfortas
German bass-baritone Matthias Goerne was Amfortas. The wounded king was laid out in a horizontal chair carried by ninja-like bearers. Dressed completely in black he was tipped up to deliver his three excoriating monologues. Mr. Goerne, a lieder singer by choice, plumbed the depths of philosophical suffering with a profound musical intelligence in the voice of an operatically heroic bass, awesomely rising to his feet in his most intense moments.
Director Bory and his designer Pierre Dequivre worked with few scenic elements, each there for specific choreographic purpose — they were kinetic. The lance was a tube of light that sometimes lighted the face of someone in its wake. The tube was sometimes duplicated into many tubes of light that moved choreographically. The swan was a shadow puppet magnified onto a suspended slightly circular drape that then served as a gigantic reflecting surface for the immense Act I shadow revelation of the chalice.
A huge metal grid lay on the stage in Act I through which Gurnemanz appeared with his companions, the grid disappearing into the loft for the procession to the grail, Gurnemanz was sung by British bass Peter Rose in Falstaffian fashion though he attained true philosophic stature in his third act baptism of Parsifal.
Act I, Gurnemanz leads Parsifal to the grail
Circus-like the opera’s protagonists interfaced with the physical apparatus on the stage, the third act a huge cube of individual lights suspended in a black void. The lights illuminated in various configurations and intensities among, behind and over the protagonists to attain maximum illumination at musical and philosophical climaxes. Finally Parsifal, having shed his black knight attire, achieved his apotheosis, his salvation standing upon a cube, again in the white suit of his Act I entrance, now bathed in intense white light. The orchestral ascension that closes the opera found the male chorus on the stage in regimented formation echoing the geometric perfection of the cube of illuminated lights.
Director Bory has a huge presence in Toulouse, and this Toulouse Parsifal may well amplify that presence into a much, much larger, international sphere. Making Wagner’s enigmatic opera make perfect sense in a flow of light and dark encounters, really nothing more, was a monumental achievement.
Mr. Bory was assisted by Toulouse choreographer and Flamenco dancer Stéphanie Fuster with whom he frequently collaborates in dance pieces. Of great effect was the highly choreographed staging of the Flower Maidens, the six veiled singers lined across the stage, the choreography nothing more than the lifting and falling of their veils.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Nikolai Schukoff: Parsifal; Sophie Koch: Kundry; Peter Rose: Gurnemanz; Matthias Goerne: Amfortas; Pierre-Yves Pruvot: Klingsor; Julien Véronèse: Titurel; Andreea Soare, Marion Tassou, Adèle Charvet, Elena Poesina, Céline Laborie, Juliette Mars: Flower Maidens. Kristofer Lundin, Yuri Kissin, Enguerrand de Hys, François Almuzara: Knights and Squires. Chorus and Childrens Chorus of the Téâtre du Capitole augmented by the Chorus of the Opera de Montpellier. Orchestre National du Capitole. Frank Beermann: Conductor; Aurélien Bory: Mise en scène; Aurélien Bory and Pierre Dequivre: Scénographie; Manuela Agnesini: Costumes; Arno Veyrat: Lumières. Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse, France, February 4, 2020.