Recently in Performances

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

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.

Love, always: Chanticleer, Live from London … via San Francisco

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 …).

Dreams and delusions from Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper at Wigmore Hall

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.

Treasures of the English Renaissance: Stile Antico, Live from London

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.

A wonderful Wigmore Hall debut by Elizabeth Llewellyn

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.

The Sixteen: Music for Reflection, live from Kings Place

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’.

Iestyn Davies and Elizabeth Kenny explore Dowland's directness and darkness at Hatfield House

'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’

Paradise Lost: Tête-à-Tête 2020

‘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.’

Joyce DiDonato: Met Stars Live in Concert

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.

‘Where All Roses Go’: Apollo5, Live from London

‘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 're-connect'

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’.

Lucy Crowe and Allan Clayton join Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO at St Luke's

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.

Choral Dances: VOCES8, Live from London

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.

Royal Opera House Gala Concert

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’.

Fading: The Gesualdo Six at Live from London

"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."

Met Stars Live in Concert: Lise Davidsen at the Oscarshall Palace in Oslo

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.

Precipice: The Grange Festival

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.

Monteverdi: The Ache of Love - Live from London

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: Rowan Pierce and Christopher Glynn at Ryedale Online

“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”

A Musical Reunion at Garsington Opera

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.

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

Performances

Jane Archibald as Semele (foreground) and William Burden as Jupiter (background) [Photo by Michael Cooper courtesy of Canadian Opera Company]
21 May 2012

Semele, Canadian Opera Company

You never can tell. I would never have predicted which opera would be my favourite of the seven operas programmed this season by the Canadian Opera Company.

G. F. Handel: Semele

Click here for cast and other information regarding this production.

Above: Jane Archibald as Semele (foreground) and William Burden as Jupiter (background)

Photos by Michael Cooper courtesy of Canadian Opera Company

 

Both the adventurous staging and the consistently brilliant singing make Handel’s Semele by far the best opera production I’ve seen from the COC.

Luckily I had my backstage preview of the opera that gave me a chance to wrap my head around this most original approach to Semele in the piece I posted a few days ago. My expectations were confirmed, the production doing pretty much what I’d expected. I had wondered if the COC would allow the liberties with Handel that (director) Zhang Huan took in the two previous incarnations (in Belgium & later China). They did indeed.

I am going to explain where I am coming from. Opera purists who come to a performance expecting -or demanding—that the usual procedures be followed might take issue with this production, as they have in New York with the Lepage Ring cycle. Just as Lepage strove to get back to the original text -albeit via an expensive modern production—so it would appear do Zhang.and his team.

But how, you may wonder, can a production using a dancing horse, a Tibetan singer, sumo wrestlers, puppets and finishing with a version of the Internationale, be in any sense faithful? I think the problem is in how we understand the work.

Semele began as a Lenten oratorio, making it a bit of an oxymoron if one considers that this erotically charged work was fashioned to premiere in the season of restraint. It’s in the most curious balance between the rational and the passionate, frequently stepping back to make detached commentaries about its action through its chorus, then giving one of the principals the opportunity to explore their feelings. The schizophrenic push-me pull-you style of baroque oratorio (or opera) is hyper-repressive, in the way that action moves in discreet chunks, followed by a lengthy exploration of a passion in the stasis of an aria. To a Martian -or come to think of it, a Chinese installation artist such as Zhang—Handel’s oratorio would seem very odd. It doesn’t really have a native performance style, having been uprooted from the beginning, in the almost immediate rejection of this style by the London public, a kind of exile that’s never really had a proper home, but was always something of a fish out of water. The worst thing one could do is stage it as though it were realistic, as some have attempted.

In the 18th century, opera was a very different experience from what we get now. If you had Juno & Semele onstage together they would both be dressed in lovely attire, but without any clear indication what century they were to portray, let alone the kind of precisely coded costuming and set one frequently encounters nowadays. I believe that were a baroque performer suddenly resurrected in Toronto and shown the three operatic programs currently being staged, they’d find Zhang’s approach - where the set is merely a context rather than an attempt to simulate a world—highly congenial and recognizable, while feeling a bit odd on a set from a specific time (as you find in Gianni Schicchi or Contes d’hoffmann). I believe this production is far more congenial to the work than the conventional / purely representational approaches.

semele-mc-d-0832.gif  (l - r) Allyson McHardy as Juno and Katherine Whyte as Iris

That Zhang chose to substitute parts of the opera might also upset purists, but in the 18th century it was the way opera was done. I’m not saying Zhang read about suitcase arias, but I applaud his choices on the grounds that any purist defending Handel on grounds of textual integrity needs to remember that such principles are always relative to the century you’re working in.

Sigh. I did run into a couple in the elevator who left at the intermission. Of course I was grinning like a 5 year old and said “how did you like it,” not expecting that anyone felt different than I did (and the house had erupted in applause at the end). When I talked to them they were pleasant but seemed mystified by the production, which mixes serious (a 450 year old Buddhist temple, a tale of gods and mortals) and silly (an inflatable puppet, a dancing horse, sumo wrestlers), and couldn’t understand my enthusiasm, which I was unable to conceal.

For me, Zhang’s production feels like a production from first principles, addressing fundamental questions about what it is to be human or immortal, to be incarnated in a body or concealed in another form (and this is true of both of the gods as well as the temple that is the set). Those thoughtful arias and choruses that seem too rational for real life make sense in this inter-life place, a temple where souls come to be incarnated, or comment afterwards (as Semele does). The odd mix of styles and cultures-of Handel in English, a Tibetan song, a pair of sumo wrestlers, and to finish, the Internationale—are properly multi-cultural, as if in a magical place that is all cultures and no cultures, a forgiving mix that is a reflection of this oddball opera.

In a more typical production of Semele I’d be feeling a bit strange about Juno, Jupiter and Semele, who would look like opera singers onstage, even though one purports to be mortal, while the other two are supposedly gods. If, however, we’re in this odd space suggesting souls seeking peace, the abstract conversation makes much more sense. I no longer mind that a god and a mortal are side by side, because they’re in a virtual space for the incarnation of souls, as we might see for example in Noh theatre.

This is the most sensual opera I have ever seen. There’s more touching, more allusions to sexuality, more pure passion than I’ve ever seen in a production of Tristan und Isolde (Wagner lovers take note). The chorus were often pressed into service as if they were illustrations in a sex-ed textbook, or failing that, used for their voyeuristic potential when Jupiter & Semele were at it.

Tenor William Burden was a very believable Jupiter, singing the opera’s best known tune, “Where e’er ye walk”, a concretely sensual exploration of Semele, massaging and washing the feet of Jane Archibald as she lay on her back before him. Elsewhere, his cadenzas were opportunities to teasingly manhandle her, the god bewildering her with his physical dominance.

Semele is also very funny. Juno is jealous of Semele, and because we’re seeing a production unafraid of the text, the humour is very close to the surface. Allyson McHardy has no remorse leading Semele to her doom, gleefully celebrating. The voice reminds me of Janet Baker, with consistent richness well below middle C, and wonderful musicianship. I would have been happy had she been the star, thrilled by her singing.

semele-hutch-168.gif  (l - r) Anthony Roth Costanzo as Athamas, Allyson McHardy as Ino, Steven Humes as Cadmus and Jane Archibald as Semele

The cast is one of the strongest seen at the Four Seasons Centre in recent years, with no weaknesses, Semele was especially strong, as played by Jane Archibald. There are several arias that stop the show, particularly the third act aria “My self I shall adore”. A disguised Juno presents Semele with a mirror that makes her ever more vain & self-loving. The set design made the entire stage a colossal mirror, reflecting the theatre back to itself. Archibald coyly played to this huge mirror, never seeming at all taxed in this most difficult of arias. I suddenly remembered: they premiered the opera two nights ago, yet Archibald was singing effortlessly, popping out what sounded like a high F above a couple of Cs in that aria, a D in another aria, and showing several different types of singing. Archibald all by herself is actually better than any opera presented this season, perhaps the best coloratura in the world right now, a gorgeous, witty actress playing the part with such complete ease that we get lost in her humour or her pathos.

Archibald and McHardy are still quite young, so that we can hope to see their talents re-united again. They sound wonderful together.

The COC orchestra played like a period ensemble due to the leadership of conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini. There was a time that the only way to get a particular timbre was with one of the historically informed performance ensembles such as Tafelmusik. While there’s no real substitute for the gentle sounds of such an orchestra, conductors are now able to bring their scholarship to the performance of modern instruments. The COC orchestra had a previous experience like this with Harry Bicket leading them in Orfeo ed Euridice a couple of years ago. Then as now, you might have wondered whether they were playing on different instruments.

I am thrilled that I already have tickets to another later performance. You must see this, if only for Archibald’s heroics in that amazing aria, but also for the lovely sound of Allyson McHardy, the playing of the COC orchestra, the COC chorus’ outstanding performance, and the beautiful set.

The Canadian Opera Company production of Semele continues until May 26 at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto.

Leslie Barcza

[This review first appeared at barczablog. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.]

Send to a friend

Send a link to this article to a friend with an optional message.

Friend's Email Address: (required)

Your Email Address: (required)

Message (optional):