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

The death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta by Alexandre Cabanel (1870) [Source: Wikipedia]
16 Sep 2019

Tempestuous Francesca da Rimini opens Concertgebouw Saturday matinee series

Two Russian love letters to the tragic thirteenth century noblewoman Francesca da Rimini inaugurated the Saturday matinee series at the Concertgebouw.

Tempestuous Francesca da Rimini opens Concertgebouw Saturday matinee series

A review by Jenny Camilleri

Above: The death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta by Alexandre Cabanel (1870) [Source: Wikipedia]

 

The elegantly precise Stanislav Kochanovsky returned to the NTR ZaterdagMatinee to lead the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in thrillingly tumultuous performances of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic fantasy, Francesca da Rimini and the eponymous one-act opera by Sergei Rachmaninov. Poor Francesca da Polenta – she was led to believe she was about to set up house in Rimini with handsome Paolo, when, in fact, he’d been sent to woo her for his less physically favored older brother. When her husband caught them embracing, he killed them both. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Paolo and Francesca are doomed, with other adulterous couples, to be buffeted in the afterlife by an eternal whirlwind, a metaphor for the earthly passions that had swept them away. But, although he puts them in hell, Dante assigns them the mildest level of torture, while he smites their killer, Malatesta, deep into the icy ninth circle, with others who have murdered their relatives. The poet is so touched by Francesca’s fate that, when she tells him her story, he collapses, overcome by emotion.

In their similarly structured retellings, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov are both emotionally instructed by Dante. They both frame the episode in which the lovers’ submit to their forbidden passion by scenes of the pitiless infernal winds. Tchaikovsky’s spiral up swift and high, Rachmaninov’s are more heavily orchestrated and move ominously like a dark, dense mass. His chorus of the wailing damned gives his hell a human shape, however faceless. On Saturday, the Netherlands Radio Choir raised their voices in horrifying and beautiful desperation. But even in Tchaikovsky’s voiceless perdition, Kochanovsky managed to suggest echoes of human cries by filing a sharp edge onto the winds and strings. This piercing orchestral quality contrasted with the restrained lyricism of the love scene, which culminates, as in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, in the brutal interruption of an ecstatic embrace. As in his earlier appearances conducting Russian operas in Amsterdam, Kochanovsky proved a masterful storyteller, knowing when to go in for grand gestures, as in the violent tornados of both finales, as well as how to let a passage such a Tchaikovsky’s refined romance release its perfume gradually.

Rachmaninov’s opera, which sets a libretto by Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest, is broodier and less graphically descriptive than Tchaikovsky’s fantasy. It has the feel of a symphonic poem, with the orchestra always having at least as much to say as the voices. Besides finding the Radio Philharmonic close to their best, this concert version upheld the ZaterdagMatinee’s reputation for engaging choice vocalists. Alongside the chilling chorus, tenor Dmitry Golovnin as Dante and bass Mikhail Kolelishvili as his guide, the Ghost of Virgil, perched high behind the orchestra, ensured that the singing in hell was of the highest order. A last-minute substitute for soprano Venera Gimadieva, Maria Bayankina was a dignified, slightly elusive Francesca. She has an attractive middle voice and the slight flutter in her metallic top lent the necessary tension to the love duet.

Bayankina and the honey-voiced tenor Oleg Dolgov in the role of Paolo handled the demands of their unsparing, high-lying music very well, holding their own over the rich orchestral carpet. Still, there was something missing in terms of passion and the real erotic fire was stoked in the orchestra. Here again Kochanovsky displayed how expertly he uses space and dynamics to bring details to the fore. The vocal performance that equaled his expressive powers had come just before the lovers’ tryst, in Lanciotto Malatesta’s jealousy monologue. Vladislav Sulimsky turned his scene into a mini-opera, eliciting with his formidable baritone fear and revulsion, but also pity and understanding. Malatesta’s obsessing on unrequited desire and hate-filled plotting may not be as well known as other jealousy arias, such as “Eri tu” from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. But an interpretation such as Sulimsky’s, especially when accompanied so sensitively and vividly in the orchestra, almost made the case that it should be.

Jenny Camilleri


Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini, Op.32
Rachmaninov: Francesca da Rimini, Op.25

Mikhail Kolelishvili, Ghost of Virgil; Dmitry Golovnin, Dante Alighieri; Vladislav Sulimsky, Lanciotto Malatesta; Maria Bayankina, Francesca Malatesta; Oleg Dolgov, Paolo Malatesta. Stanislav Kochanovsky, Conductor. Netherlands Radio Choir (Groot Omroepkoor). Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Heard at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, on Saturday, the 14th of September, 2019.

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):