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.
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.
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.
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.’
‘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.’
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 doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”
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.
![Michael Robert Hendrick as Lennie and Gregory Dahl as George [Photo by R. Tinker]](http://www.operatoday.com/_RWT5931.png)
Opera as an art form has never shied away from the grittier shadows of life. Nor has Manitoba Opera, with its recent past productions dealing with torture, incest, murder and desperate political prisoners still so tragically relevant today.
The company’s brave and bold choice to end its 43rd season with Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men based on John Steinbeck’s classic novella is the latest in that canon, with the 145-minute production stage directed by Winnipeg-born Michael Cavanagh held April 23, 26 and 29, at the Centennial Concert Hall.
Notably, opening night’s audience included the renowned, now-90-year old South Carolina-born composer/librettist. Regarded one of America’s greatest living opera composers, Floyd is perhaps best known for his 1953/54 opera Susannah, with his latest opera, Prince of Players remarkably just given its world premiere by the Houston Grand Opera in March.
The MO show co-produced with Utah Symphony and Utah Opera, Cleveland Opera and Vancouver Opera, also featured effective sets — including a treacherous raked stage — by Vicki Davis and costumes by Susan Memmott Allred with Scott Henderson’s lighting design. Tyrone Paterson skillfully led the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra through Floyd’s all-American score infused with the spirit of Copland, Barber and Bernstein that also eschewed the rampant compositional serialism of the day.
Set at the height of the Great Depression, Steinbeck’s 1937 tale (later morphed into a play and film) tells of two migrant workers, George and Lennie, who dream of owning land until the latter’s penchant for stroking soft rabbits, puppies and baby mice literally to death ultimately leads to tragic consequences. Like shucking an ear of corn, Floyd has stripped Steinbeck’s text to its core essence, while adding poetic license to his operatic version that premiered in 1970.
Marking his MO debut, Michael Robert Hendrick’s deeply compassionate portrayal of the hulking Lennie, described in today’s kinder, gentler terms as a person labeled with an intellectual disability, perfectly balanced his character’s raw emotional vulnerability with volatile, brute strength. Hendrick resisted all temptation to fall into easy stereotypes, while also nailing Floyd’s wide dissonant leaps and melting lyricism as he sang of “living off the fat of the land,” projecting both heartbreak and eternal hope.
Winnipeg’s Nikki Einfeld appearing as the attention-starved, aspiring Hollywood starlet simply called “Curley’s Wife” brought prismatic colour to her tarty role, slinking about the stage and wheedling the lusty ranch hands for sex that made the bunkhouse hotter than a heat wave in July. Her impeccably controlled, flexible soprano voice impressed as she artfully shaded her dynamics on her uppermost notes.
Former Winnipegger Gregory Dahl also delivered a strong performance as George, with his robust baritone matching Hendrick’s vocals note for note. His Act I solo in which he tells how his life “would be so simple by itself” created soulful, introspective counterpoint to Lennie, and particularly when he sings “One day soon” during their subsequent duet.
Also making his MO debut, American tenor Joel Sorenson plays the sadistic Curley like an explosive powder keg ready to blow. However, had we been shown more emotional undertow and multi-layering with his characterization, his whip-cracking fury would have become more potent by contrast. Less is often much, much more, and the brief moments during Act II in which he (almost) becomes pulled in by his wife’s seductive ways provided critical sub-text — albeit all-too-fleeting. Relationships are paramount in opera, and too often these rang hollow.
The always rock solid character bass-baritone Peter Strummer’s Candy, and veteran bass-baritone David Watson’s Slim, provided substantive backbone throughout the production, with Strummer’s own furry sidekick, the well-trained pooch Cailean inspiring audible oohs and ahs from the audience. Peter John (PJ) Buchan’s melodious tenor rang out as the harmonica-playing balladeer, despite his role not being particularly well integrated.
The libretto’s pacing is somewhat challenging, and the opera teeters toward melodrama. The narrative’s relatively scant action only diluted the dramatic tension and overall forward thrust. The opening scene, in which police sirens wail, and blinding searchlights penetrate the darkness, is ironically more powerfully urgent than the show’s climax in which George ultimately pumps a bullet into Lennie’s head as an act of mercy. Strangely, Curley’s rabid lynch mob falls (mostly) silent when they should be reaching a fevered pitch during the finale.
Still, Steinbeck’s timeless tale about shattered dreams still resonates nearly 80 years since first penned. Kudos to MO for choosing lesser-performed works, and giving voice to those who once held — or continue to do to — their own wistful longings for home.
Holly Harris
Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. April 23, 26 & 29, 2016.