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

Michael Spyres and Joyce El-Khoury [Photo by Russell Duncan]
05 Nov 2014

Donizetti’s Les Martyrs — Opera Rara, London

Opera Rara brought a rare performance of Donizetti’s first opera for the Paris Opera to the Royal Festival Hall on 4 November 2014, following recording sessions for the opera.

Donizetti’s Les Martyrs — Opera Rara, London

A review by Robert Hugill

Above: Michael Spyres and Joyce El-Khoury [Photo by Russell Duncan]

 

Sir Mark Elder conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Opera Rara Chorus and soloists Michael Spyres, Joyce El-Khoury, David Kempster, Brindley Sherratt, Clive Bayley and Wynne Evans.

Donizetti’s Les Martyrs was premiered at the Paris Opera in 1840. The work was created in double-quick time and was based on his Italian opera Poliuto, which had been cancelled just before the premiere in Naples owing to the plot’s element of religious martyrdom. Such subjects were, however, standard territory for the Paris Opera and Donizetti was able to re-cast the work as a four-act French Grand Opera with ballet to a new libretto by Eugene Scribe.Though Donizetti kept much of the original music it was re-cast into the sort of forms expected by the rather prescriptive Paris Opera. The result is an opera which fascinatingly moves between French and Italian forms so that, for example, Sévère has a very Italian caballetta embedded in the very French grand choral finale to Act two.

It is a long work, Sir Mark Elder and his forces gave us well over three hours of music even without performing the ballet. And it is written on a large scale, for large forces. The orchestra fielded a complement of around 50 strings, double woodwind plus piccolo and four bassoons (which Donizetti used to lovely effect in the overture), four horns, four trumpets, four trombones and an off-stage banda for four trumpets and three trombones. The French kept valveless horns for far longer than anyone else, so the horns were all hand stopped and each had a bewildering array of crooks, and the trumpeters similarly had two or three different instruments.

Set in Roman Armenia, the opera opens with the baptism into Christianity of the general Polyeucte (Michael Spyres). But Christians are proscribed, and Polyeucte is married to Pauline (Joyce El-Khoury) who is daughter of the governor Félix (Brindley Sherratt). Félix is introducing new laws threatening execution on anyone who gets baptised. The resulting struggle between pagan and Christian, public duty and private belief, is exacerbated by the fact the the new proconsul come to prosecute the new anti-Christian laws is Sévère (David Kempster) whom Pauline once loved (and still does) but thought was dead on the battle field.

The plot provides plenty of the ceremonial opportunities necessary in French Grand Opera, processions in the dark in catacombs, a Roman triumph, pagan ceremonies and the final throwing of the Christians to the lions in the arena. Donizetti doesn’t try to re-invent or re-structure the tradition as Verdi would do, and the work is not the masterpiece that Rossini’s Guillaume Tell is, but the music here is rich and rewarding. And the very Italian cast to the melodic material makes for an additional frisson.

One of the key scenes, however, would be a problem for modern producers I think. Pauline visits Polyeucte in prison and after he prays, she receives a vision and converts miraculously to Christianity. Donizetti’s response is to write some lovely music, unfortunately Pauline responds musically with an elaborate waltz which sounds completely out of key emotionally (though El-Khoury sang it beautifully). But the more personal scenes are very strong, particularly the third act with its confrontations between Pauline and Sévère, Pauline and Polyeucte, the questioning of Polyeucte’s Christian friend Néarque (Wynne Evans) and finally Polyeucte;s revelation of his Christianity and triumphant cabaletta which concludes the act. This was Donizetti at his best.

The role of Polyeucte was written for Gilbert Duprez, one of the singers that effectively invented the modern tenor voice; taking the chest voice up to top C and banishing the elaborate falsetto coloratura that was common until then. Whilst heroic for its time, Polyeucte requires a singer who can combine heroics with stamina, sustaining the high tessitura of the role but still able to sing with finesse and flexibility. The American tenor Michael Spyres has sung quite a number of the tenor roles in the early 19th century French Grand Opera repertoire (we saw him in Auber’s La muette de Portici in Paris in 2012) and his performance as Polyeucte was nothing less than heroic. He sang with untiring burnished tone, giving us fine nobility of phrasing and some finely flexible decorative passages. Dramatically he brought strong commitment to the role, making it believable and certainly a lot more than just a string of arias and ensembles.

The role of Pauline varied between dramatic declamation and ravishingly elaborated coloratura; it seemed as if Pauline’s response to stress was to break out in roulades. El-Khoury not only sang these beautifully, but used her lovely smoky voice to give dramatic weight to Pauline’s more vehement moments. You could imagine the role being sung with more weight and bite, but the original Pauline was Julie Dorus-Gras who created Berlioz’s Teresa and Eudoxie in Halevy’s La Juive - both roles with roulades galore. Like Spyres, El-Khoury brought dramatic commitment as well as technical poise to create a highly sympathetic and ravishing performance.

David Kempster was brilliant as Sévère, deprived of his lover Pauline yet required to find clemency for her husband. Kempster let fly brilliantly in the cavatina and caballetta the are part of the act two finale, and elsewhere brought finesse and sympathy to the role. Brindley Sherratt thundered magnificently as the governor Félix, but this was not a one-sided performance and Sherratt showed the character’s sympathetic side in his interchanges with his daughter. On the other hand, all Clive Bayley’s character of Callisthènes was required to do was thunder and he did so magnificently too. Wynne Evans was Néarque, Polyeucte’s Christian friend. This is the second tenor role, required to hang around and sing duets with the tenor and generally start things off before the lead tenor gets the fireworks. Evans sang with some style and showed a real feeling of commitment as the Christian withstood the threats of torture.

The Paris Opera required operas to make good use of the chorus and there were plenty of opportunities here for the excellent Opera Rara Chorus, which was made up of both Christians and pagans. They sang with energy and verve, giving us some lovely detailed singing. Chorus members Rosalind Waters, Andrew Friendhoff and Simon Preece all provide strong support in small solo moments.

With a long, unfamiliar score the whole performance could have felt horribly flat but Mark Elder drew a stunning performance out of the orchestra, full of life and energy. They gave some really thrilling vital playing, with copious details articulated brilliantly so that the whole had real vitality. There were also some fine solo moments from individual players.

Les Martyrs is not a forgotten masterpiece, but it is by no means a write-off. The mature Donizetti’s first response to the challenge of writing French Grand Opera, it is a fascinating transitional work. Written on such a lavish scale, opportunities of seeing it even in concert are rare so Opera Rara are to be congratulated on being able to not only perform it but to do a studio recording as well. Mark Elder and his forces did the work proud and gave a thrillingly engrossing performance.

The performance was recorded for release on Opera Rara’s own CD label, available soon. For more details, visit the Opera Rara website. it will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday 15th November at 6.15pm GMT.

Robert Hugill

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):