Recently in Reviews
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."
Reviews
![Statue of Galuppi in Burano [Wikipedia Commons]](http://www.operatoday.com/Baldassare_Galuppi_Memorial.png)
25 Oct 2009
Baldassare Galuppi: Jahel
Dr. Charles Burney, who in August 1770 heard Galuppi’s singing girls
at the Incurabili, one of Venice’s four competing Ospedali or
musical orphanages, admired both their excellent performing standard
(“indeed all were such as would have merited and received great applause
in the first operas of Europe”), and the quality of the music that the
aging maestro was still able to write for them: “ it is generally allowed
here that his last operas, and his last compositions for the church, abound
with more spirit, taste, and fancy, than those of any other period of his
life”.
Had Burney visited Venice and the Incurabili short earlier, on May 24, he
might have attended the premiere of Jahel, a Galuppi oratorio recently
unearthed at the Zurich Central Library in Switzerland — probably a
remake of the score already performed at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti in 1747
and 1748. By 18th-century standards, 23 years was quite a long time-span in the
change of musical taste. Perhaps that’s why in 1772 Galuppi reverted to
the same subject on a different libretto and with a larger cast of characters
under the title Debbora prophetissa, but the core story remained the
same, based on chapters 4-5 of Judges in the version provided by the
Latin Vulgate Bible.
Actually, despite the triumphs gathered by his operas in London, Saint
Petersburg and Vienna, nowhere did Galuppi enjoy more popular acclaim than as a
composer of Latin oratorios on Bible subjects for the Ospedali of his
native Venice. It is reported that his Tres pueri hebraei in captivitate
Babylonis — premiered in 1744 at the Mendicanti — scored some
hundred (paying) performances, a feat comparable to those of modern musical
theater. Unfortunately, the 1770 version of Jahel is all we are left
with in this genre, since two more oratorios surviving in musical sources
(Adamo caduto of 1747) and Il sacrificio di Jephtha of 1749)
are in Italian.
At the outset of the eighteenth century, the language of oratorios at the
Incurabili became exclusively Latin, to remain so under the musical
directorship of Porpora, Jommelli, Cocchi, Ciampi, and Baldassare Galuppi. A
similar trend affected more or less the remaining three Ospedali.
Although the librettists’ choice was for a simplified variety of Latin,
aping at the stock imagery from contemporary cantata and opera seria
texts, one wonders whether the traditional status of Venice as a target for
multinational operagoers could account for such an unexpected association
between Latin and bel canto on a scale even larger than in Catholic
church-service proper.
Hearing those notes again within the Scuola Grande di San Rocco — the
‘Sistine Chapel of Venice’ studded with masterpieces by Tintoretto,
Titian and Tiepolo — was well worth a trip. As to the actual merit of the
performance, one might regret that a few arias were pruned of their da capo, or
that a harpsichord was substituted to the organ stipulated in the continuo
section. Nevertheless, the sparse period band Orchestra Barocca di Bologna,
some ten instrumentalists led by Paolo Faldi, sounded well attuned to style
requirements, with rhythmic stamina and accurate tuning generally deserving
appreciation throughout.
Title page of Jahel [Zentralbibliothek Zürich]
Not all the six singing ladies would have deserved the same applause as
their early counterparts, either out of lacking experience or worn-out voices
(the latter was probably the case for Candace Smith in the role of Sisara). Yet
both sopranos Pamela Lucciarini in the title role and Silvia Vajente (Debbora)
delivered terrific amounts of passagework, competing on a tight edge as to
projection and clarion notes. In the end, Vajente apparently won by a neck
thanks to a clearer diction and to the sensuous rendering of her aria
“Rosa et lilio”, accompanied by a pair of obbligato mandolins. As
Barac, mezzo Elena Biscuola unsheathed lovely dark color, accomplished
technique and dramatic panache. Her climactic duet with Vajente (“Fugato
jam maerore”, just before the final ensemble) was also praiseworthy.
Patrizia Vaccari, a coloratura soprano of considerable experience, delivered
a defiant rendering of “Non horret cor forte”, much in the vein of
Constanze’s “Martern aller Arten”. The taxing
‘storm’ aria for Haber, “Pugnent nubes fulminando”,
emphasized the good natural qualities of young soprano Laura Antonaz, such as
sterling color and easiness in ascending to the highest pitches. Her coloratura
technique needs further refinement, though.
Carlo Vitali