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."
‘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.’
Into the blackness of the unlit Cockpit Theatre resounded a spoken voice, solemnly pronouncing Book 12 of Revelations. Piano chords stamped angrily, followed by lighter, exploratory gestures which ventured through that darkness. Then, we heard a sung voice which flung a question into the void:
“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
… That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light?”
The first few minutes of Geoff Page’s Paradise Lost - a one-man show written for countertenor Lawrence Zazzo, which was performed live on 12th September, presented as an interactive broadcast three days later, and is available on demand for one month - set out the work’s musical stall. Lyrical ‘arias’, punctuated by melismatic swoops, swells and slides; alternations between Zazzo’s countertenor and baritone ranges; minimalist repetitions, pulsing moderato chords and sparse, high tinklings from Page at the piano. More cantata than opera - though perhaps not presented in its ‘final’ form (in a post-show discussion Zazzo indicated that the hour of music that we experienced had been whittled out of a much longer work) - Page’s score was decoratively pictorial rather than dramatic, though others may well have found its cinematic, emotion-inciting patterns more satisfying.
What made this Tête-à-Tête Opera production so stimulating was Zazzo’s performance as Lucifer, the fallen angel, tempter of Eve, destroyer of man’s innocence. Weaving through gentle lyricism (there are a few Finzi-esque pastoralisms, shot through with the odd touch of modernism), strident anger, and spoken declamation, this was a performance which embraced an astonishing emotional gamut and did so with courage, commitment and impressive technical underpinning. Purity, power, presence: Zazzo evinced all three. What a show with which to return to the performing platform after months of lockdown and the silencing of one’s singing voice.
Anyone attempting to turn Milton’s ten books and ten thousand lines-plus of blank verse into a one-hour musico-dramatic work faces an impossible task. Page wisely focuses on just a few passages of text: those which, in the main, depict the thoughts and words of Lucifer himself. We have the fall from heaven in Book 1, the temptation of Eve in Book 9, and the exultant reflections (from Book 10) of the deluded ‘victor’, whose power Milton’s language undermines even as his words describe. There are a few lines from the start and end of Books 2 and 3; and imagery and phrases from Book 4, when Satan first espies Eve, are inserted into the temptation scene. Some excisions of imagery make a nonsense of the grammar. As Page pointed out, the story is well known so there’s no need to explain and fill in gaps, but this didn’t dissuade him from using a spoken voice-over narration; and we hear Eve’s voice too. Neither of these spoken voices were identified or credited.
But, the focus on Lucifer himself is effective: and one can imagine this score working very well as a monologue, perhaps retitled Lucifer, in the manner of Britten’s Phaedra. The deeply felt despair of the loss of celestial light; the vengeful conversion of defeat into victory; the heroism which is heading unstoppably towards horrific self-destruction: we feel all of Lucifer’s delusions and ambitions. A chair and music-stand were strewn with ivy, an apple was ‘plucked’ from a ‘tree’, and the tempting of Eve was vocally irresistible. We heard the crunch of the bite that gave man ‘knowledge’ and left him in eternal suffering.
Satan’s final triumphant ecstasies omitted a crucial phrase from Milton’s text: ‘His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:/ A world who would not purchase with a bruise,/ Or much more grievous pain?/ Ye have the account/ Of my performance: What remains, ye gods,/ But up, and enter now into full bliss?’
For, this was a stunning performance: authoritative and brave - and, much like Milton’s own rebellion against absolute rule, blindness and loss, a reminder of human courage, ‘never to submit or yield/ and what is else not to be overcome?’
Claire Seymour
Paradise Lost : Geoff Page (composer/piano), Lawrence Zazzo (countertenor)
Tête-à-Tête 2020; performed live at the Cockpit Theatre, London, 12 th September 2020; broadcast on 15th September 2020.