‘There is a wonderful sense of style in her delivery, which sees her stand
as a goddess, eternally elegant of bearing’, wrote one commentator. She
returned to OHP the following year for more Mozart, performing Fiordiligi
in CosÏ fan tutte, a role which found her ‘in her
element’ and forming a partnership with Julia Riley’s Dorabella which
resulted ‘in a vocal blend of the utmost sweetness and beauty’ (Classical Source).
The intervening years have seen Llewellyn blossom and develop largely in
European houses and she has been a fairly infrequent performer in the UK.
So, it is with delight and great anticipation that we look forward to her
return to Investec Opera Holland Park, to sing the role of Madga – the
society-girl as free and flighty as a ‘swallow’, who falls in love with
Ruggero but sacrifices her own happiness to save him ruin – in Puccini’s La Rondine.
I ask Llewellyn what ‘tempted’ her back to these shores and without a doubt
the opportunity to perform the title role in one of the outliers in
Puccini’s canon, but one which has become increasingly popular in recent
years, was a compelling draw. Her operatic debut was in 2010 as MimÏ in
Jonathan Miller’s
La bohËme
at ENO (in which I admired her ‘warm, generous’ soprano), and since then
her voice has gained in weight and depth allowing her to take on the title
role in Suor Angelica – ‘a sensational debut in the title role … [her]
voice has a beguiling combination of duskiness and velvety warmth. ’ – and
Giorgetta (Il tabarro) at Royal Danish Opera in 2015. She followed
this with her first Tosca at Theater Magdeburg last year singing with
members of what MDR Radio described as ‘a downright dream-cast’: ‘in the
first place to mention is the English soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn who sings
and plays a glowing, passionate Diva.’
Llewellyn describes herself as a lyric spinto and says that the role of
Magda feels absolutely right for her voice at this time. La rondine is not ‘typical’ Puccini, though; after all, it’s a
‘comedy’ – presumably because no-one dies, jokes Llewellyn – though the
lack of tragedy might seem to remove Puccini’s defining motif. But, there’s
no lack of heart-wrenching and soul-wringing in La rondine; and
it’s this reaching for emotional extremities which are at once both
larger-than-life and yet so familiar to us all that Llewellyn seems to find
so powerfully absorbing in Puccini.
La rondine
has its share of tear-jerking moments but there’s plenty of comedy too,
especially in the first two acts: it’s a sort of cross between La traviata (the jaded courtesan who finds and loses true love) and La bohËme (bohemians in bustling bars), with a
splash of Fledermaus (charming waltzes and even a fox-trot) thrown
in. For, despite having vowed to his friend and agent, Angelo Eisner, that
‘an operetta is something I will never do’, in 1914 Puccini signed a
contract with the Carltheater in Vienna to do just that. However, Llewellyn
laughs that, having completed the first two acts, the composer seems to
have decided enough was enough, and Act 3 (which Puccini revised twice)
takes us to more familiar Puccinian terrain – prompting Llewellyn and
Matteo Lippi, who sings Magda’s beloved Ruggero, to ‘breathe a sigh of
relief’!
I ask Llewellyn what is distinctive about rehearsing and performing at OHP,
and she is in no doubt that the fact that those responsible for the
‘decision-making’ are closely involved with the rehearsal process is a huge
benefit to the singers, and helps to create a ‘family atmosphere’ in which
old hands, new faces and returnees are equally welcomed and comfortable.
Llewellyn clearly enjoys being given freedom to explore and experiment. We
discuss her roles for ENO – where she participated in the Opera Works
training programme – and she speaks eagerly of her appearance as MicaÎla in
Calixto Bieito’s
Carmen
in 2012. In reviewing, this performance I remarked that, ‘This MicaÎla is
no innocent; in Act 1, she professes to bring a greeting from JosÈ’s
mother, but bourgeois sentiment is manifestly and unashamedly discarded
when, rather than offering a demure peck on the cheek, she grabs her JosÈ
in a passionate embrace.’ Llewellyn explains that Bieito was adamant that
she should play MicaÎla not as a prepubescent ingÈnue but as a ‘real woman’
– no one would travel that far if they were not driven by, and determined
to satisfy, their own desires – and she welcomed this interpretation, and
the fact that she did not have to pretend to be a sixteen-year-old!
After ENO, opportunities in Europe beckoned, including her first Wagner
(Elsa, Lohengrin) for Theatre Magdeburg, and Elvira (Don Giovanni) for Bergen National Opera. Alongside these
emotionally and vocally weighty roles were lighter diversions, such as The Merry Widow for Cape Town Opera, which will surely stand her
in good stead as she interprets Magda’s capriciousness.
And, Llewellyn hasn’t been entirely absent from British shores. Her
performance as Amelia in English Touring Opera’s 2013 Simon Boccanegra was described by the Telegraph’s Rupert
Christiansen as the element of the performance that ‘truly comes alive’:
‘Elizabeth Llewellyn’s Amelia shines brightly: as well as negotiating one
of Verdi’s trickiest arias with elegant aplomb and crowning the wonderful
Council Chamber ensemble with glory, she also makes the girl’s hopes and
fears vivid, suggesting that innocent womanhood can point the way out of
the mess that men have made of the world.’ No wonder her performance saw
her nominated for ‘Singer of the Year’ in OpernWelt magazine that
year.
There have been more unusual ventures too, such as last year’s The Iris Murder with the Hebrides Ensemble, a new chamber
opera by Alasdair Nicolson and librettist John Gallas which was
commissioned to mark the Hebrides Ensemble’s 25th birthday. Though she is
not a regular performer of contemporary music, Llewellyn enormously valued
being about to work with one of the foremost chamber music collectives in
the UK which, under its artistic director and co-founder, cellist and
conductor William Conway, has placed contemporary music at the heart of its
repertoire.
Llewellyn is obviously an intelligent musician – thoughtful and discerning
– and I ask her what led her to a career as a singer. Her Jamaican parents
both enjoyed choral singing, but it was when her elder sister abandoned her
piano lessons and the piano at home languished in silence, that Llewellyn’s
appetite was stimulated. An accomplished pianist, she has a strong sense of
the structural and harmonic architecture of the operas that she performs,
which must sharpen her musico-dramatic judgment and acumen. She remarks
that, in rehearsal, she always needs a musical context to fully inhabit the
role: it’s no good being told ‘here’s your note’, she needs to know where
that note has come from and where it’s going.
There is a quiet determination about Llewellyn. Her career has been one of
steady growth and development, rather than stellar ascendancy, but she’s
reaching the stage where she can take her time to choose the roles that are
right for her, and she’s not without ambition. She’d love to singAida and some Strauss, possibly Rosenkavalier or Arabella, and maybe some more Wagner will beckon.
Before that, this autumn she returns to Copenhagen for more Puccini (Madame Butterfly), and 2018 will see Llewellyn make her US debut
at Seattle Opera, singing Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a
role she seems surprised but delighted to have bagged.
First though, it is Puccini’s sophisticated but compromised Magda whom
Llewellyn will bring to life. Puccini may have struggled with the work,
calling it a ‘pig of an opera’, but the ephemerality of Magda’s love –
which is destroyed from without by bourgeois morality and within by Magda’s
indulgent sensuousness – will surely be made poignantly tangible by
Llewellyn’s elegiac lyricism.
Soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn opens the Investec Opera Holland Park 2017
season as Magda in
La rondine
,
1-23 June.
Claire Seymour
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Cosi2012%20162%20Fritz%20Curzon.jpg
image_description=Investec Holland Park 2017
product=yes
product_title=Investec Holland Park 2017
product_by=An interview with Claire Seymour
product_id=Above: Elizabeth Llewellyn as Fiordiligi CosÏ fan tutte, 2012
Photo credit: Fritz Curzon
Elizabeth Llewellyn: Investec Opera Holland Park stages Puccini’s La Rondine
‘There is a wonderful sense of style in her delivery, which sees her stand
as a goddess, eternally elegant of bearing’, wrote one commentator. She
returned to OHP the following year for more Mozart, performing Fiordiligi
in CosÏ fan tutte, a role which found her ‘in her
element’ and forming a partnership with Julia Riley’s Dorabella which
resulted ‘in a vocal blend of the utmost sweetness and beauty’ (Classical Source).
The intervening years have seen Llewellyn blossom and develop largely in
European houses and she has been a fairly infrequent performer in the UK.
So, it is with delight and great anticipation that we look forward to her
return to Investec Opera Holland Park, to sing the role of Madga – the
society-girl as free and flighty as a ‘swallow’, who falls in love with
Ruggero but sacrifices her own happiness to save him ruin – in Puccini’s La Rondine.
I ask Llewellyn what ‘tempted’ her back to these shores and without a doubt
the opportunity to perform the title role in one of the outliers in
Puccini’s canon, but one which has become increasingly popular in recent
years, was a compelling draw. Her operatic debut was in 2010 as MimÏ in
Jonathan Miller’s
La bohËme
at ENO (in which I admired her ‘warm, generous’ soprano), and since then
her voice has gained in weight and depth allowing her to take on the title
role in Suor Angelica – ‘a sensational debut in the title role … [her]
voice has a beguiling combination of duskiness and velvety warmth. ’ – and
Giorgetta (Il tabarro) at Royal Danish Opera in 2015. She followed
this with her first Tosca at Theater Magdeburg last year singing with
members of what MDR Radio described as ‘a downright dream-cast’: ‘in the
first place to mention is the English soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn who sings
and plays a glowing, passionate Diva.’
Llewellyn describes herself as a lyric spinto and says that the role of
Magda feels absolutely right for her voice at this time. La rondine is not ‘typical’ Puccini, though; after all, it’s a
‘comedy’ – presumably because no-one dies, jokes Llewellyn – though the
lack of tragedy might seem to remove Puccini’s defining motif. But, there’s
no lack of heart-wrenching and soul-wringing in La rondine; and
it’s this reaching for emotional extremities which are at once both
larger-than-life and yet so familiar to us all that Llewellyn seems to find
so powerfully absorbing in Puccini.
La rondine
has its share of tear-jerking moments but there’s plenty of comedy too,
especially in the first two acts: it’s a sort of cross between La traviata (the jaded courtesan who finds and loses true love) and La bohËme (bohemians in bustling bars), with a
splash of Fledermaus (charming waltzes and even a fox-trot) thrown
in. For, despite having vowed to his friend and agent, Angelo Eisner, that
‘an operetta is something I will never do’, in 1914 Puccini signed a
contract with the Carltheater in Vienna to do just that. However, Llewellyn
laughs that, having completed the first two acts, the composer seems to
have decided enough was enough, and Act 3 (which Puccini revised twice)
takes us to more familiar Puccinian terrain – prompting Llewellyn and
Matteo Lippi, who sings Magda’s beloved Ruggero, to ‘breathe a sigh of
relief’!
I ask Llewellyn what is distinctive about rehearsing and performing at OHP,
and she is in no doubt that the fact that those responsible for the
‘decision-making’ are closely involved with the rehearsal process is a huge
benefit to the singers, and helps to create a ‘family atmosphere’ in which
old hands, new faces and returnees are equally welcomed and comfortable.
Llewellyn clearly enjoys being given freedom to explore and experiment. We
discuss her roles for ENO – where she participated in the Opera Works
training programme – and she speaks eagerly of her appearance as MicaÎla in
Calixto Bieito’s
Carmen
in 2012. In reviewing, this performance I remarked that, ‘This MicaÎla is
no innocent; in Act 1, she professes to bring a greeting from JosÈ’s
mother, but bourgeois sentiment is manifestly and unashamedly discarded
when, rather than offering a demure peck on the cheek, she grabs her JosÈ
in a passionate embrace.’ Llewellyn explains that Bieito was adamant that
she should play MicaÎla not as a prepubescent ingÈnue but as a ‘real woman’
– no one would travel that far if they were not driven by, and determined
to satisfy, their own desires – and she welcomed this interpretation, and
the fact that she did not have to pretend to be a sixteen-year-old!
After ENO, opportunities in Europe beckoned, including her first Wagner
(Elsa, Lohengrin) for Theatre Magdeburg, and Elvira (Don Giovanni) for Bergen National Opera. Alongside these
emotionally and vocally weighty roles were lighter diversions, such as The Merry Widow for Cape Town Opera, which will surely stand her
in good stead as she interprets Magda’s capriciousness.
And, Llewellyn hasn’t been entirely absent from British shores. Her
performance as Amelia in English Touring Opera’s 2013 Simon Boccanegra was described by the Telegraph’s Rupert
Christiansen as the element of the performance that ‘truly comes alive’:
‘Elizabeth Llewellyn’s Amelia shines brightly: as well as negotiating one
of Verdi’s trickiest arias with elegant aplomb and crowning the wonderful
Council Chamber ensemble with glory, she also makes the girl’s hopes and
fears vivid, suggesting that innocent womanhood can point the way out of
the mess that men have made of the world.’ No wonder her performance saw
her nominated for ‘Singer of the Year’ in OpernWelt magazine that
year.
There have been more unusual ventures too, such as last year’s The Iris Murder with the Hebrides Ensemble, a new chamber
opera by Alasdair Nicolson and librettist John Gallas which was
commissioned to mark the Hebrides Ensemble’s 25th birthday. Though she is
not a regular performer of contemporary music, Llewellyn enormously valued
being about to work with one of the foremost chamber music collectives in
the UK which, under its artistic director and co-founder, cellist and
conductor William Conway, has placed contemporary music at the heart of its
repertoire.
Llewellyn is obviously an intelligent musician – thoughtful and discerning
– and I ask her what led her to a career as a singer. Her Jamaican parents
both enjoyed choral singing, but it was when her elder sister abandoned her
piano lessons and the piano at home languished in silence, that Llewellyn’s
appetite was stimulated. An accomplished pianist, she has a strong sense of
the structural and harmonic architecture of the operas that she performs,
which must sharpen her musico-dramatic judgment and acumen. She remarks
that, in rehearsal, she always needs a musical context to fully inhabit the
role: it’s no good being told ‘here’s your note’, she needs to know where
that note has come from and where it’s going.
There is a quiet determination about Llewellyn. Her career has been one of
steady growth and development, rather than stellar ascendancy, but she’s
reaching the stage where she can take her time to choose the roles that are
right for her, and she’s not without ambition. She’d love to singAida and some Strauss, possibly Rosenkavalier or Arabella, and maybe some more Wagner will beckon.
Before that, this autumn she returns to Copenhagen for more Puccini (Madame Butterfly), and 2018 will see Llewellyn make her US debut
at Seattle Opera, singing Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a
role she seems surprised but delighted to have bagged.
First though, it is Puccini’s sophisticated but compromised Magda whom
Llewellyn will bring to life. Puccini may have struggled with the work,
calling it a ‘pig of an opera’, but the ephemerality of Magda’s love –
which is destroyed from without by bourgeois morality and within by Magda’s
indulgent sensuousness – will surely be made poignantly tangible by
Llewellyn’s elegiac lyricism.
Soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn opens the Investec Opera Holland Park 2017
season as Magda in
La rondine
,
1-23 June.
Claire Seymour
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Cosi2012%20162%20Fritz%20Curzon.jpg
image_description=Investec Holland Park 2017
product=yes
product_title=Investec Holland Park 2017
product_by=An interview with Claire Seymour
product_id=Above: Elizabeth Llewellyn as Fiordiligi CosÏ fan tutte, 2012
Photo credit: Fritz Curzon