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

Roberta Invernizzi [Photo by RibaltaLuce Studio]
24 Jul 2015

Roberta Invernizzi, Wigmore Hall

‘Here, thanks be to God, my opera is praised to the skies and there is nothing in it which does not please greatly.’ So wrote Antonio Vivaldi to Marchese Guido Bentivoglio d’Aragona in Ferrara in 1737.

Roberta Invernizzi, Wigmore Hall

A review by Claire Seymour

Above: Roberta Invernizzi [Photo by RibaltaLuce Studio]

 

‘Here’ was Verona, just one of the Italian cities — Venice, Milan, Pavia, Rome and Mantua among others — in which Vivaldi had, since the performance of his opera Ottone in Villa in Vicenza in 1713, built ‘my name and reputation throughout Europe having composed ninety-four operas’, as he puts it in another letter, of 1739.

After his death, Vivaldi’s popularity waned; even the perennial concerti and instrumental works were little-known before the revival of interest in the composer’s music at the start of the 20th century. In recent years, that interest has stretched to his operatic oeuvre and around 50 operas have been rediscovered (some of the 94 mentioned were probably pasticci); there have been acclaimed performances and recordings by artists such as Cecilia Bartoli and Europa Galante, and by Roberta Invernizzi and La Risonanza (directed by Fabio Bonizzoni) who in 2012 released a CD of arias by Vivaldi (Glossa GCD922901).

This concert at the Wigmore Hall paired Vivaldi with Handel: a sort of operatic head-to-head. The programme was well-planned: each half focused on the vocal work of one composer, a selection of arias framing an instrumental work by the other composer. The arias themselves formed a sequence of contrasting moods and affekts, almost like movements of a symphony.

Invernizzi’s strengths were immediately on display in the opening aria, ‘Da due venti’ from Vivaldi’s Ercole su’l Termodonte, a fiery number in which Hippolyte, sister of the Queen of the man-hating Amazons, despairs in confusion having fallen in love with a man. Utterly committed to the drama, animated in delivery, Invernizzi has a real feeling for character and her portrayal of Hippolyte’s distress was visceral and intense. Her soprano has a thrilling glossiness and radiance; it is an immensely agile and she used it flamboyantly in the fierce fioiriture and wide leaps which conjure the ‘sea agitated by two winds’ to which Hippolyte compares her heart.

However, here and throughout the evening, vivid theatrical intensity was sometimes acquired at the expense of musical accuracy. Invernizzi employed a wide, weighty vibrato which — whatever one argues about ‘authenticity’ — adversely affected her control of pitch, and upper notes were repeatedly approached from below. In the slower numbers particularly, she struggled to shape the line: she tended to slide between notes rather than create a clean line, and there were some ungainly and distracting swells which tempered her bright, clean sound with a rather whiny edge. Her manner of performance could also be diverting: singing from the score in the Vivaldi-focused first half, Invernizzi whipped through the pages (presumably she was using an orchestral score rather than a vocal score) at great pace and with extravagant gestures, creating a great flapping and rustling, particularly as she raced back to the opening page for the da capo repeat.

‘Ombre vane, ingiusti orrori’ from Griselda was more reliable and show-cased Invernizzi’s rich tone and vocal intensity. There was an unearthly quality to the singer’s unaccompanied declamation, ‘Empty shades, iniquitous horrors’ as Constanza, Griselda’s daughter, expresses her fears, and also greater fluidity of line; the soprano’s strong, burnished lowered register was in evidence when Constanza cries in horror at the cruelty of fate. Problems of intonation and phrasing returned, however, in ‘Se mai senti spirarti’ from Cantone in Utica, where the tuning of the octave leaps was often approximate and where there was poor control of line. This is a ravishing aria of seduction, in which Caesar declares his passion for his enemy’s daughter, but the evenness and mellowness required were lacking, which was a pity as the muted violins and lone pizzicato viola of the accompaniment were deeply atmospheric.

The final Vivaldi aria, ‘Rete, lacci e strali adopra’, from Dorilla in Tempe made for a more confident and satisfying conclusion to the first half of the programme. Invernizzi’s coruscating soprano powerfully captured Filindo’s anger and frustration as, rejected by Eudamia, he compares his pursuit to a futile hunt. Here, the coloratura was both vivid and well-controlled; the soprano raced fierily through the wide-ranging scales, arpeggios and melismas with heroic fury and brilliance.

My reservations continued after the interval in the three Handel arias presented. ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’ from Guilio Cesare (in which Cleopatra laments losing both the battle against her brother Tolomeo and her beloved Caesar) suffered from a mannered emphasis on particular notes which disrupted the line, affected the tuning and thus weakened the dramatic intensity — although, as in the Vivaldi pieces heard earlier, the agitated ‘b’ section showed Invernizzi’s suppleness. Rodelinda’s expression of rhapsodic joy and longing for her husband, ‘Ritorna, o caro’, achieved a more tender simplicity and refinement. And, Invernizzi came into her own in the final aria, ‘Da tempeste’ from Guilio Cesare, conjuring great excitement as Cleopatra celebrates her liberation by Caesar from the clutches of Tolomeo and anticipates the victory that is sure to follow. Again, the soprano negotiated the coloratura with impressive agility and athleticism, and theatrical flair, and she used dynamics judiciously to shape the structure of the whole. Interestingly, Invernizzi stepped back from the music stand for this aria and, singing from memory, she seemed altogether more at ease.

La Risonanza, directed with verve and precision by Fabio Bonizzoni, were exemplary accompanists. Bonizzoni kept the pace pulsing and the strings alert, and his pounding continuo was invigorating. The players were attentive to every detail and played, by turns, with tremendous vigour and panache, and with grace and sensitivity. The string tone in the two instrumental interludes was beguiling. Handel’s Overture to Rodrigo was full-toned, but still airy and light, and was enhanced by lovely solos from leader Carlo Lazzaroni. String flourishes and florid ornaments were meticulously executed in Vivaldi’s Sinfonia to Dorilla in Tempe.

There were two splendid Vivaldi encores — from Ottone in Villa and the oratorio Juditha triumphans — in which Invernizzi seemed more relaxed. In the former, she at last found a floating, pure line of immense beauty. But, this fine ending to the recital could not quite dispel all my misgivings.

Claire Seymour


Performers and programme:

Roberta Invernizzi, soprano

La Risonanza: Fabio Bonizzoni (director, harpsichord); Carlo Lazzaroni, Laura Cavazzuti, Silvia Colli, Claudia Combs, Ulrike Slowik and Rossella Borsoni (violins); Livia Baldi (viola); Caterina dell’Agnello (cello); Vanni Moretto (double bass).

Vivaldi: Ercole su’l Termodonte RV710, ‘Da due venti’; Griselda RV718, ‘Ombre vane, ingiusti orrori’; Handel: Overture from Rodrigo HWV5; Vivaldi: Catone in Utica RV705, ‘Se mai senti spirarti sul volto’; Dorilla in Tempe RV709, ‘Rete, lacci e strali adopra’; Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto HWV17 ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’; Vivaldi: Dorilla in Tempe RV709, Sinfonia; Handel: Rodelinda HWV19, ‘Ritorna, o caro e dolce mio tesoro’; Giulio Cesare in Egitto HWV17, ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’.

Wigmore Hall, London, Tuesday 21st July 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):