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.
![Ailyn Pérez and Stephen Costello [Photo courtesy of Warner Classics]](http://www.operatoday.com/Love_Duets.png)
On Friday evening September 5, 2014, tenor Stephen Costello and soprano Ailyn Pérez gave a recital to open the San Diego Opera season. After all the threats to close the company down, it was a great joy to great San Diego Opera in its new vibrant, if slightly slimmed down form.
This performance was at the Balboa Theater, a reconditioned movie house with good acoustics. The auditorium was full and the applause greeting Carol Lazier, President of the Board of Directors, and Nicolas M. Reveles, Director of Education and Community Engagement, was almost as loud as the sounds that were heard last spring when the company almost disbanded.
On Friday evening September 5, 2014, tenor Stephen Costello and soprano Ailyn Pérez gave a recital to open the San Diego Opera season. After all the threats to close the company down as was the wish of former General Director Ian Campbell, it was a great joy to great San Diego Opera in its new vibrant, if slightly slimmed down form. This performance was at the Balboa Theater, a reconditioned movie house with good acoustics. The auditorium was full and the applause greeting Carol Lazier, President of the Board of Directors, and Nicolas M. Reveles, Director of Education and Community Engagement, was almost as loud as the sounds that were heard last spring when the company almost disbanded. San Diego was willing to let everyone in the world know it needed its opera company. That’s why it got contributions from all over the globe.
Stephen Costello and Ailyn Pérez had just released a new compact disc Love Duets and San Diego was the first stop on their tour of the United States. With collaborative pianist Danielle Orlando, Pérez entered in an exquisite scarlet-lined pink dress to sing lines from Act I of Verdi’s La traviata. Costello soon joined her as he might have had the scene been staged. His stage deportment has improved markedly since the last time I heard him and his “Un di felice” was as beautifully phrased as I have ever heard it.
She continued with songs by Reynaldo Hahn and he returned with Jake Heggie’s Friendly Persuasions, a group of songs that pay homage to Francis Poulenc. In one song Wanda Landowska worries about his giving her a concerto to learn the last minute. In another Pierre Bernac describes Christmas in 1936. Poulenc remembers Raymonde Linossier saying that his notes “like iron filings are pushed and pulled by the magnetic force” of Paul Eluard’s words. Costello’s French diction was laudable and the colors of his tones conveyed at least as much meaning as the words. These are wonderful songs and I hope more singers will soon perform them.
Pérez then sang a charming excerpt from Massenet’s Manon and her voice blossomed with silvered tones. Costello reminded this audience of the performances of Faust they performed together with “Salut demeure chaste et pure” which he ended with an exquisite, well controlled pianissimo. They brought the recital to intermission with an amusing duet from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.
After the interval the couple and their accompanist returned to perform the well-known duet from Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz, for which Pérez’s Suzel wore some very form fitting polka dots. She followed the duet with seven de Falla songs: El Paño Moruno speaks of stained cloth as a metaphor for a young girl of loose morals. In the Seguidilla Murciana Perez speaks of male inconstancy while in her other songs the colors of her voice and the textures of her music told of universal human conditions that are as true today as they were in the composer’s time.
Costello’s solo contributions were a combination of well known and lesser-known songs by Paolo Tosti. Most of the audience knew his Ideale, but his Non t’amo piu and Goodbye were new to many. The latter was actually written in English. Perez and Costello brought the recital to a close with Bernstein’s One Hand, One Heart, and its close was greeted with thunderous applause for them and for Orlando, their most capable accompanist, Their possessive audience would not let them go without three encores: Youmans’ Without a Song, Obradors’ Del cabello más sutil, and Rogers’ If I Loved You.
Maria Nockin