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.
![Iago and Otello [Photo by Marcello Orselli]](http://www.operatoday.com/Otello_Genoa3_OT.png)
Forget Shakespeare, this was distinctly an Otello without the ‘h’. It was Italian melodramma to its core, the collaboration of its metteur en scène Davide Livermore, wunderkind conductor Andrea Battistoni and its Desdemona, Maria Agresto.
There was some foreign intervention, the Otello of American (Wisconsin) tenor Gregory Kunde and the Iago of Spanish baritone Carlos Àlvarez. The American is one of Europe’s leading bel canto tenors who sang Rossini’s Otello long before taking on Verdi’s Moor, in fact his role debut as the Verdi Otello was in the premiere of this production that happened in Valencia, Spain in June 2013 with these same three principals (Zubin Mehta conducting).
Kunde is a bel canto singer who finds unexpected lyricism in this gigantic showpiece usually undertaken by the spinto voices. Kunde’s voice resonated with more depth and beauty than his Rossini roles elicit, with a substantial force of voice somewhat rounder rather than the cutting tone that serves him well in Rossini. The result of this lighter voice in Genoa was a vulnerable Otello, a man neurotically tormented by jealousy, not simply possessed by it. This lyricism grounded the Livermore production as an exposition of neurosis, Desdemona and Iago components of Otello's neurosis.
Àlvarez possesses a darkly colored voice, a black tonality often found in basses who must create the dread associated with opera’s villains — though a baritone Iago is maybe the ugliest of all operatic villains. Àlvarez’ lack of tonal warmth plus his reserve of power, that of a true Verdi baritone, his slim stature and his head endowed with snaky black locks of hair made an evil character who oscillated between feigned passivity and triumphant domination. True to the end he did not dash toward a cowardly escape but ceremoniously descended off the upper edge of the stage, no longer a player in Otello's hell.
Maria Agresta as Desdemona, Gregory Kunde as Otello. Photo by Marcello Orselli
Soprano Maria Agresto as Desdemona revealed levels of vulnerability to human instinct that Shakespeare ignores (the Bard hides deeper character revelations in the phrase picked up by Verdi and Boito — “born under an evil star”). This splendid young soprano is of powerful and complex voice, fearlessly mounting to pianissimo high notes that permitted hints of risk which added edge to character. Of complex persona as well she circled Otello in the Act I duet almost dancing as an animal in rut. And there was more circling — flirtatious at the least — in her Act II meeting with Cassio. La Agresto sang her final prayer lying face down on the floor, a fallen angel, reflected as the whore Otello had made her.
This spectacular casting was topped off by the Cassio of Angelo Fiori, a very tall, very present, young Italian who moved a bit like a dancer. Like Desdemona he was wigged in long blond hair unabashedly establishing a physical connection to her that ignited Otello’s neurosis and palpably inflamed the innate terror of the corni (horns) of all males (Italians) present in the theater.
Like melodramma and like verismo, these characters were possessed by big emotions, clearly stated at the beginning and simply awaiting brutal dénouement. This was Act III, the Venetian scene, when 26 year-old conductor Andrea Battistoni let loose with volumes that equaled, maybe exceeded the opening storm, volumes that were spine chilling in intensity, and dramatically ironic in that they established the enormity of the murderous emotion yet to come. This young conductor obviously relished the brutality of the Livermore conception, visibly participating with the stage by demonstratively pushing the chorus to and beyond its limits. All chorus scenes were huge, the Act II garden chorus seated, aggressively taunting more than praising the purity of Desdemona.
Act II Garden Chorus. Photo by Marcello Orselli
These days metteur en scène Davide Livermore is the most visible stage director on Italy’s more adventurous stages. Like all of his recent projects here he was not only stage director but also the set designer with the collaboration of Giò Forma, a Milanese design company that does big events like the America’s Cup 2012 and the MTV Awards. Here the concept was a vortex like structure (descending concentric circles) with a central, focal disk, like the pupil of an eye. The pupil moved, rising above the structure to transport Otello and Desdemona to the heavens of desire in their love duet. It elevated its front edge from which Iago delivered his “Credo in un dio crudele” at which point the edges of the concentric circles illuminated in red lines (Mr. Livermore is credited for the lighting).
Costume design is credited to Mr. Livermore, wigs a signature element of character (the long blond wigs of Desdemona and Cassio, the long black tresses of Iago that may or may not have been a wig, the identical ship-like, punk shapes of the wigs for the women’s chorus). The swaths of cape colors illuminated character — Iago in luminous metallic silver, Otello ultimately in priestly vestment, a red-lined white cape, that he carefully took off to administer death to Desdemona. Stage movement was abstract, actors moving on the vortex lines of an unstoppable downward vacuum, finding the most powerful, emotional place on the structure to deliver their signature statements. Otello at the end again elevated on the pupil of the eye, this time alone reliving the “bacio” to Verdi’s trombones whispering the opera’s opening storm.
Rarely do operatic forces converge with the artistic power created on the Carlo Felice stage by this production.
Michael Milenski
Cast and production information:
Otello: Gregory Kunde; Jago: Carlos Àlvarez; Cassio: Angelo Fiore; Roderigo: Naoyuki Okada; Lodovico: Seung Pil Choi; Montano: Claudio Ottino; Un Araldo: Gian Piero Barattero; Desdemona: Maria Agresta; Emilia: Valeria Sepe. Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Carlo Felice. Conductor: Andrea Battistoni; Metteur en scène: Davide Livermore; Scenery: Davide Livermore and Giò Forma; Costumes: Davide Livermore and Marianna Fracasso; Lighting: Davide Livermore. Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa, Italy. January 3, 2014.