Recently in Performances
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.
Performances
01 Jun 2005
Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Chicago Opera Theater
In its recent performances of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Chicago Opera Theater affirms its reputation for carefully gauged and well cast productions. Already from the subdued opening accompanied by muted strings an underlying tension is evident in the darting figure of Puck, a spoken role assumed in this production by the actor Jason Griffin. The movements of all the characters in this production are matched consistently to an orchestral or vocal expression, emphasizing thus the union of choreography with lyrical and declamatory effect. Chicago Opera Theater’s presentation divides the action and emotional entanglements of Britten’s three acts into two parts. Soon after the start of the first of these the royal fairy couple, Oberon and Tytania, enter in formal dress. Their disagreement over a youth taken into the service of the queen, yet desired by Oberon, fuels an initial conflict that — by the time of its resolution — will bear on the fates of the other pairs of young lovers in the piece as well.
Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream (Photo: Chicago Opera Theater)
Benjamin Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Libretto by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears.
Chicago Opera Theater
Conducted by Alexander Platt. Directed by Andrei Serban.
Click here for additional information.
In its recent performances of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream Chicago Opera Theater affirms its reputation for carefully gauged and well cast productions. Already from the subdued opening accompanied by muted strings an underlying tension is evident in the darting figure of Puck, a spoken role assumed in this production by the actor Jason Griffin. The movements of all the characters in this production are matched consistently to an orchestral or vocal expression, emphasizing thus the union of choreography with lyrical and declamatory effect. Chicago Opera Theater's presentation divides the action and emotional entanglements of Britten's three acts into two parts. Soon after the start of the first of these the royal fairy couple, Oberon and Tytania, enter in formal dress. Their disagreement over a youth taken into the service of the queen, yet desired by Oberon, fuels an initial conflict that — by the time of its resolution — will bear on the fates of the other pairs of young lovers in the piece as well.
In the roles of fairy king and queen Tobias Cole and Danielle de Niese exhibit regal bearing alternating with bemused detachment or boundless passion. Britten's writing for countertenor and coloratura soprano is admirably fulfilled by this pair, each sinking into the dignity or erotic mask of the respective role with convincing vocal and dramatic involvement. Cole shows an especially effortless and graceful approach to the sung and declaimed line of Oberon, while de Niese's skillful vocal approach underscores her unexpected later attachment to the rustic Bottom.
The two pairs of young lovers — Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius — are sung by Allyson McHardy and Patrick Miller, Laura Whalen and Ian Greenlaw, respectively. In their fine delineation of character in both singing and acting the four lovers negotiate the amorous confusion caused by wrongful application of the herb on the part of Puck. Their youthful exuberance and quarreling parallel the erotic abandon of Tytania after Puck's machinations lead her to awaken and fall enamored of Bottom wearing the head of an ass.
In this production the dreams, thoughts, and emotions of characters are intermittently suggested by film clips projected on the rear part of the stage. The pink, purple, and green colors — as well as "nodding" flowers — suggest the stylized hues of a woodland while directing focus to the emotional tangles played out and righted within their midst. Most of the stage content in Part One of Chicago Opera Theater's presentation, up to the point of confusion of nearly all leading roles, covers the first two acts of Britten's opera. Although there are moments — especially toward the close of this Part One — where Britten's writing for the text lags in inspiration, the forces conducted here by Alexander Platt keep a consistent musical and dramatic fluidity.
The imaginative movements assigned to the fairies of Tytania's and Oberon's realm for this production — riding on scooters, sporting hula-hoops, executing cartwheels — are in keeping with the fanciful spirit of the text. Yet these actions can also detract from the simultaneous performance of the principals, especially when the fairies run out into the audience and shine their flashlights in a cliché maneuver. The buffoonery engaged in by the collected rustics is here both well-timed and humorously acted. Noteworthy among these singers are the Bottom/Pyramus of Kevin Burdette and the Flute/Thisbe of Tracy Wise.
By the close of their play-within-a-play at the court of Theseus in Part Two, the lovers are appropriately re-aligned and disagreements have been settled. Puck's closing promise to "restore amends" recalls his earlier movements in Part One of this production, during which he wove together hanging chains as a symbol of the lovers' entanglements. The twofold musical and dramatic resolution of the play and the play within has a renewed significance as this Puck unites both action and indulgence from Chicago Opera Theater's memorable dream.
Salvatore Calomino
Madison, Wisconsin