Recently in Reviews

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.

Henry Purcell, Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Vol. III: The Sixteen/Harry Christophers

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.

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.

Anima Rara: Ermonela Jaho

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.

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.

Requiem pour les temps futurs: An AI requiem for a post-modern society

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.

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.’

Ádám Fischer’s 1991 MahlerFest Kassel ‘Resurrection’ issued for the first time

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.

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.’

Max Lorenz: Tristan und Isolde, Hamburg 1949

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.

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."

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

Reviews

14 Mar 2015

Die Meistersinger and The Indian Queen
at the ENO

It has been a cold and gray winter in the south of France (where I live) made splendid by some really good opera, followed just now by splendid sunshine at Trafalgar Square and two exquisite productions at English National Opera.

Die Meistersinger and The Indian Queen at the English National Opera

A review by Michael Milenski

Above: Lucy Crowe as Doña Isabel, Julia Bullock as The Indian Queen [All photos from the ENO]

 

Sometimes you’ve got to get away to find a bit of sun, with good opera a bonus.

It was a brilliantly lighted afternoon making our way through Trafalgar Square on our way to the London Coliseum for the 3 PM curtain of Die Meistersinger, the winter hit of the ENO season. The production by British metteur en scène Richard Jones earned very positive review here on Opera Today, please see The Mastersingers of Nurenberg, as well as in the British press.

Of course it was no longer Die Meistersinger as it had been transformed into The Mastersingers of Nurenburg, and of course metteur en scène Richard Jones transformed Wagner’s noble, some may think pretentious tale of the glory of German art into a definitely unpretentious little story of cruelty to a silly old man (like in real comedy), though it was uncertain if the silly old man was Beckmesser — it might have been Hans Sachs). Like in real comedies true love prevailed, and that was enough to motivate Wagner’s mighty climax (abridged version) with just a tiny wink at German art — flash card faces at the very last moment (there had been a couple of hundred photos/drawings of German artists copied onto on the show curtain of which Jacques Offenbach was in bullseye position).

Like his staging of Ariodante in Aix last summer where the king of Scotland had become a mid-western American farmer, Mr. Jones miniaturized, indeed trivialized Meistersinger, here into a storybook tale. American designer Paul Steinberg created an almost children’s book setting. It was a mostly two dimensional scenic world of wallpaper-like repeating patterns in backdrops, the repetitive shapes echoed as well as in furniture and hand props. The second (riot) act was the intersection of two flat faced streets like classical Roman comedy, and the last scene (the competition) construed most of what we had already seen (props and drops) into grandiose, decidedly mock columns of imperial architecture.

The first scene (with the quintet) of the third act was, of course, the most rewarding. No longer the graphically flat public world of printed books it was the private world of Hans Sach exposed in the cluttered, not-for-public-view realism of a life that is not art, a flesh and blood life discovered in the midst of the artifice of witty and sophisticated design. In fact the quintet itself, surely meant by Wagner to be one of humankind’s greatest moments, stepped outside all scenic context, the singers lined across the stage in brilliant white light. Nothing else.

Meistersinger_ENO1.pngGwyn Hughes Jones as Walther and the Mastersingers.

The use of the English language at ENO is very practiced, the diction nothing less than miraculous. The preciousness of the diction added a storybook, even infantile musicality that contributed greatly to Richard Jones’ fairytale, indeed satiric vision of what Mr. Jones, and we too might even perceive as Wagnerian bombast. It was this satire that brought honesty and perspective to this magnificent opera for us English speakers. Though maybe, finally, some of us missed the subtlety and gravity of the deeper reaches of Wagnerian thinking.

Back at Trafalgar Square a couple of days later the floating clouds of an ideal English skyscape prevailed during the day though heavy rains were predicted for the evening. The Peter Sellars production did rain heavy changes on Purcell’s 1695 "Dramatik Opera," The Indian Queen. Its original "Heroik Verse" by John Dryden washed away by Mr. Sellars’ Heroik Platitudes of Social Responsibility when not drowned in Down-With-White-European-Males syndrome.

The Indian Queen has not yet been reviewed on Opera Today.

There are those few of us who remember the 1998 Long Beach (CA) Opera production of The Indian Queen by Mexican performance artist Guillermo Gômez-Peña, the Dryden verse adapted to contemporary Chicano actors embodying the stereotypes that north-of-the-[Mexican]-border observers (cultural tourism) have imposed on south-of-the-border. However in the Peter Sellars production Dryden has been exiled from the Purcell intention.

Purcell’s piece does indeed cry out for racial and ethnic exoticism. In the Sellars production a Chicano actress from California narrated the ugly deeds of Dryden's Aztecs whom Sellars had transformed into Spanish conquistadors, manufacturing the evils they could have perpetrated on women and children. Note that this production has already been at Madrid’s Teatro Real where it certainly belongs — may the Spaniards expiate the sins of their past. It was a naive art, fish-out-of-water in London’s sophisticated theatrical world.

Peter Sellars has a fabulous, original theatrical mind and he is a great stage director. It was an evening of highest level theater, brilliantly conceived and realized starting with four dancers who were tirelessly choreographed into exotically titled dance sequences that added Mayan mysteries to Dryden's already absurd geography. Purcell's added Symphony, its parts titled Adagio, Allegro, etc., assumed names like “Dance of the Solar Fire Deities.” Note that a dramatik opera was like a French masque with recited words, instrumental music, airs and choruses, dances and of course spectacle.

Spectacle was created by Gronk [sic], the single named, Chicano artist/performance artist/etc who lives in downtown Los Angeles. He created paintings in the brilliant colors of exotic birds, industriously magnified into giant full stage drops or into large panels that could do all sorts of things like configure themselves into a Mayan temple from time to time. Sellars slickly incorporated this naive scenic art into the cult of talented, downtrodden but proud personalities that define his muse.

Cherry-atop-the-cake there was a signer [!] who stood in the baignoire next to the stage and signed the entire performance. You were not sure if this was for a disoriented deaf person who may have found himself in the Coliseum that evening, or to insist that the opposite of sound, excoriating evil in this case, is silence that simply ignores evil. Or what? It is a rich if silly image indeed. As well, both halves of the program culminated in silence, a quiet that endured naturally and decayed gradually. A coup de théâtre indeed before the delayed applause was heard. There were no individual bows taken beyond that of the conductor.

There are many of us who will argue that the ENO is the world’s finest opera company. Here the assembled cast was excellent (for the most part), polished singers of appropriate skin colors to sing the newly created words (Dryden was not at all in the picture). Well, except the conquistador replacing Dryden's Montezuma who was a black man. The orchestra boasted three theorbos, both a harpsichord and an portable organ in the sizable continuo, and a large number of modern and early music instruments for the larger orchestral pieces.

Most impressive of all was the ENO chorus, meticulously rehearsed into seemingly infinite colors and textures and volumes, the anti-war chorus that finalized the first act was positively shouted. The chorus had rushed onto the stage apron to confront us culpable white European males innocently sitting in the Coliseum auditorium.

The gentleman walking out of the auditorium ahead of me confessed to his friend that he had become hostile. So had I.

Michael Milenski


Casts and production information:

The Mastersingers of Nurenburg Walther: Gwyn Hughes Jones; Eva: Rachel Nicholls; Magdalene: Madeleine Shaw; David: Nicky Spence; Hans Sachs: Iain Paterson; Sixtus Beckmesser: Andrew Shore; Veit Pogner: James Creswell; Fritz Kothner: David Stout; Kunz Vogelgesang: Peter van Hulle; Konrad Nachtigall: Quentin Hayes; Ulrich Eisslinger: Timothy Robinson; Hermann Ortel: Nicholas Folwell; Balthasar Zorn: Richard Roberts; Augustin Moser: Stephen Rooke; Hans Folz: Roderick Earle; Hans Schwarz: Jonathan Lemalu; Night Watchman: Nicholas Crawley. Chorus and Orchestra of the English National Opera. Conductor: Edward Gardner; Producer: Richard Jones; Set designs: Paul Steinberg; Costumes: Buki Schiff; Lighting: Mimi Jordan Sherrin; Choreography: Lucy Burge. The London Coliseum, Saturday, March 7, 2015.

The Indian Queen Teculihuatzin/Doña Luisa: Julia Bullock; Doña Isabel: Lucy Crowe; Hunahpú: Vince Yi; Ixbalanqué: Anthony Roth Costanzo; Don Pedro de Alvarado: Noah Stewart; Don Pedrarias Dávila: Thomas Walker; Sacerdote: Maya Luthando Qave; Leonor: Maritxell Carrero. Chorus and Orchestra of the English National Opera. Conductor: Laurence Cummings; Director: Peter Sellars; Set Designer: Gronk; Costume Designer: Dunya Ramicova; Lighting Designer: James F. Ingalls; Choreographer: Christopher Williams. Libretto: Songs and hymns by Purcell, with texts by Katherine Philips, George Herbert et al. Spoken texts by Rosario Aguilar from The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma. London Coliseum, March 9, 2015.

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):