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."
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.
All the sounds of an English summer can be heard at Garsington Opera’s Wormsley home. An ideal, or idealised, vision of the season, perhaps; after all, umbrellas, midges, wasps and “rain stopped play” are just as likely to cloud the blue skies and rural ventures. But, with a public health emergency knocking the bails flying from the wickets of the creative industries’ spring 2020 season, for a short while back in March it seemed that wistful reminiscences and wishful dreaming might be all that was in store for culture-lovers and festival-goers during summer 2020.
Thankfully, theatre-makers, festival curators and individual performers have proved resourceful and innovative, whatever the challenges they face and as dark clouds gather on the cultural horizon. Garsington Opera have continued the conversation with their audiences, and Garsington Opera at Home has extended that audience, through free-to-view screenings of favourite past productions - full-length operas and ‘Isolated Arias’ - and new musical performances; Music for the Eyes - a new documentary series, looking at opera alongside visual art and literature to draw new connections between genres; and, 20-minute Motivation Monday singing and moving ‘workouts’.
Garsington Opera’s UNMUTE: A Musical Reunion , a live concert streamed from Wormsley on Sunday 5th July was a perfect combination of nostalgia and optimism. Six singers, Garsington’s Artistic Director Dougie Boyd, members of the Philharmonia Orchestra and actor Samuel West reminded listeners of what we are all missing this summer, and at the same time provided uplifting hope for and anticipation of next year’s summer opera season - and the renewal of the UK’s cultural life more generally.
Where else to begin but with Mozart? Garsington’s 2017 highly acclaimed production of Le nozze di Figaro - itself a ‘recreation’ of John Cox’s esteemed 2005 production which was the last performed at Garsington Manor, in 2010, before the company’s move to Wormsley - has been made freely available to watch via Opera Vision until 25th September. 2017’s Figaro, Joshua Bloom, may not have reunited with his former fellow cast members, but he was joined by a stellar cast of young and experienced voices, Soraya Mafi (Susanna), Roderick Williams (Count), Brindley Sherratt (Bartolo), Nardus Williams (Marcellina) and Sam Furness (Curzio). And, they made a dynamic and balanced sextet in Act 3’s ‘Riconosci in questo amplesso’, in which Figaro, in Wildean fashion, discovers unexpectedly that he has a mother after all, and a father, and delights at his unexpected reunion with his progenitors.
The six singers were raised on a gentle curve behind eleven musicians from the Philharmonia Orchestra spaciously spread across the bare Pavilion stage. Dougie Boyd got musical proceedings underway with characteristic immediacy and clarity, instantly transporting us into the heart of the unravelling knots of comic confusion. Bloom (who had been scheduled to sing Rocco in Garsington’s ill-fated 2020 Fidelio) sounded even more richly sonorous than I remember from 2017; Mafi segued with brilliant musical and dramatic slickness through Susanna’s rapidly fluctuating emotions, from excited confidence, to blazing fury, to relieved elation; Nardus Williams’ soprano glowed with the glossy shine of a mother’s joy at rediscovering her long-lost offspring; Sherratt’s Bartolo was plumped up with smugness; while Roderick Williams’ Count and Sam Furness’s Curzio glowered with frustration and impotence.
Scenes of the garden beyond the glass-walled Pavilion reminded us that the listeners were ‘elsewhere’ but that didn’t prevent the singers also transporting themselves to ‘another world’ - one of 18th-century intrigue and tender ironies. One thing was clear: you might take the audience out of the opera house, but you can’t take the performer out of the opera singer.
Strolling beneath the flower-bedecked trellis arches of Wormsley’s tranquil gardens, Samuel West reminded us of Mozart’s ambition, as voiced by Peter Shaffer in his play Amadeus, to write an opera finale lasting half an hour, in which “a quartet becomes a quintet becomes a sextet. On and on, wider and wider, all sounds multiplying and rising together - and then together making something entirely new.”
Naturally, back inside the Pavilion more Figaro followed. First, Mafi’s Susanna and Williams’ Countess plotted and penned an invitation to the Count that would be his undoing (‘Sull’aria’), the intriguers sounding both thrilled at the anticipated outcomes of their deception and as transported by their rapturously intertwining voices as listeners at home. The reduced instrumental forces gave additional prominence to the lovely woodwind playing of the Philharmonia members, the oboe and bassoon elegantly joining the outbursts of delight.
Next, aerial shots of the gardens invited us to imagine the nocturnal bowers amid which Susanna, disguised as the Countess, sets out to trick Figaro who, recognising her, effects his own double-deception, while the Count’s pompous self-righteousness prevents him from seeing what is going on before his eyes. Despite the lack of theatrical context or accoutrements, Mafi, Bloom and Roderick Williams (‘Pace pace mio dolce tesoro’) conveyed the complexities of the dramatic cat’s cradle and both the strains and delights of the shenanigans, before Mafi’s light, spring-fresh rendition of Susanna’s enraptured anticipation of love’s fulfilment (‘Deh vieni’) drew sympathetic duetting from the Philharmonia woodwind and spread a beam of magic through our imagined garden.
Back to the topiary-hedged garden paths, to hear West read from an unaddressed love letter written by Ludwig van Beethoven, dated 6 th July 1806 - 214 years to the date of the writing of this review, and a fitting introducing to ‘Mir ist so wunderbar’, the Act 1 quartet from Fidelio in which love craved for, hoped for and anticipated unites Leonore (Nardus Williams), Marzelline (Mafi), Rocco (Bloom) and Jaquino (Furness)
The small string forces presented an almost impossibly gentle and heavenly introduction, and the heart-pulse of the double bass deepened its throb with the entry of the voices, the women sweet and pure, Bloom evincing a lovely warm maturity, and Furness’s Jaquino strong and ardent. Boyd sculpted the counterpoint and textures with pinpoint clarity, expertly shaping the intensifying emotions.
Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin brough richer Romantic urgency. Roderick Williams demonstrated characteristic dramatic and musical insight in ‘Kogda by zhizn’’, the recitative conveying his appreciation of the troubled Onegin’s precariousness and uncertainty, complemented by clarinet delicacies. A lovely cello solo led in an aria of focused lyrical articulateness. I have occasionally commented that Williams’ baritone is a little ‘light’, but here he balanced elegance with surges of rich fullness. And, in all the arias from Onegin, I appreciated, for the first time, just how frequently Tchaikovsky employs the clarinet’s silkiness, and registral and timbral expanse, to complement the emotional landscape of his characters. Boyd’s flexible handling of tempo conveyed both self-reflection and insistent resolve.
In ‘Kuda, Kuda’ - in which Lensky reflects on his love for Olga as he awaits the duel with his former friend, now rival, Onegin - Sam Furness drifted dreamily in Romantic self-absorption then, enrichening his vocal colours and summoning a lovely firm tone, pushed forward with conviction. What a wonderful contrast between the floating head-voice with which Furness asked, “Will you ever shed a tear over my grave and think, ‘He loved me’?”, and the powerful surge of sound from Lensky’s soul, “Olga I loved you: to you I devoted the sad dawn of my stormy life.”
The final ‘musical word’ came from Brindley Sherratt who relished every ounce of joy in ‘Lyubvi vse vozrasty’, in which Prince Gremlin touches Onegin’s heart and conscience with his account of an old man’s joy at finding unexpected love. “Love is a blessing at any age” shimmered tenderly like a petal tremulous with the weight of raindrops, evoking a sense of overflowing wonder. Such openness and vulnerability contrasted with moments of firm authority, of the sort that makes Sherratt such a brilliant Sarastro and Claggart.
West left us with a final quotation from Amadeus. When Shaffer’s Salieri insists that God has chosen him to be his voice on earth, as is evident in Salieri’s exquisite music, Mozart offers his own understanding of his ‘role’: to make a sound entirely new. “I bet that’s how God hears music. Millions of sounds ascending at once and mixing in His ear to become an unending music, unimaginable to us.” West might have continued, for Mozart explains: “That’s our job … we composers. To combine the inner minds of him and him and her and her - the thoughts of chamber maids and court composers - and turn the audience into God.”
The String Sextet which opens Richard Strauss’s Capriccio - which Boyd conducted at Garsington in 2018 - suggested that Shaffer’s fictional Mozart was correct. The music is never silent: though it is sometimes unheard, it is always within us.
Claire Seymour
UNMUTE: A Musical Reunion will be available here, with no registration required, for six months.
Garsington Opera’s 2021 season celebrates its 10th anniversary at Wormsley.
UNMUTE: A Musical Reunion
Soraya Mafi (soprano), Nardus Williams (soprano), Sam Furness (tenor), Roderick Williams (baritone), Joshua Bloom (bass), Brindley Sherratt (bass), Samuel West (actor), Douglas Boyd (conductor), Members of the Philharmonia Orchestra.