Norfolk-based arts writer, Tony Cooper, enjoys a musical heritage tour to Leipzig, a relaxing and inviting city to visit awash with so much musical history.

The Gewandhaus at the Augustusplatz in Leipzig-Mitte with the Mendebrunnen at night (2016)
(Photo: Wikimedia - By Ichwarsnur - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0) 

Come 2025, the Leipzig Gewandhaus will be staging a major international festival in honour of Dimitri Shostakovich marking the 50th anniversary of his death

A frequent visitor to Germany attending Ring cycles here, there and everywhere, Tony Cooper recently enjoyed a short break in Leipzig taking in a concert by the Gewandhausorchester conducted by Alan Gilbert featuring Shostakovich’s 10th symphony whilst also enjoying a rare performance of Thea Musgrave’s opera, Mary, Queen of Scots.  

With so much musical history and knowledge wrapped up in Leipzig’s cultural portfolio, Tony also took adventurous steps by way of trekking the Leipzig Music Trail stopping off to visit the Bach-Archiv, conveniently situated opposite St Thomas’ Church and the Mendelssohn House Museum not forgetting, of course, the Schumann House while soaking up the city’s illustrious past discovering that Richard Wagner was born here, Georg Philipp Telemann worked here and just up the road in Halle, George Frideric Handel, entered life. And that’s just for starters!  

A Lady and her Reputation: with modern recordings of Smyth's major works in the catalogue, we now need to put her work into a proper context

The 1922 founding of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Salzburg, showing Smyth and Arthur Bliss alongside such luminaries as Hindemith, Egon Wellesz and Webern. A work by Smyth would be included in the performance days the accompanied the event
(see the ISCM website for more details)

Ethel Smyth wrote six operas, Fantasio (premiered at the Hoftheater, Weimar in 1898), Der Wald (premiered at the Königliches Opernhaus, Berlin in 1902), The Wreckers (premiered at the Neues Theater, Leipzig in 1906), The Boatswain's Mate (premiered in London in 1916), Fête galante (premiered in Birmingham in 1923) and Entente Cordiale (premiered in Bristol in 1925), along with two major choral works, the Mass (premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 1893) and The Prison (premiered at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh in 1931).

All these received major performances during her lifetime, mainly thanks to the composer's own indefatigable energies. After writing a new work, she would set to and stomp around Europe encouraging people to perform the piece - commentators remain divided as to whether the difficulties she faced were owing to her sex or whether her somewhat abrasive personality might have contributed. She broke several glass ceilings, she was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Met in New York and had major performances at Covent Garden.

We now have modern recordings that do the works justice for all her major operas and both choral works, as well as the major Glyndebourne production of The Wreckers from 2022. So it is time to give her work a coherent modern assessment and see it in its proper context and not simply re-legislate past-history and past opinions.

Successfully integrated into the same eco-system: The Stoller Hall and Chetham's School of Music in Manchester

Manchester: left to right, Manchester Cathedral, the Victorian former Manchester Grammar School building, Chetham's 15th century buildings and The Stoller Hall.
In the foreground left, the National Football Museum

The Stoller Hall in Manchester is the most recent addition to an ensemble of buildings that goes back to the 15th century. At that period, housing was built for the clergy of Manchester Collegiate Church, now the Cathedral. Thanks to the generosity of Sir Humphrey Chetham, in 1653 the buildings became a school for 20 poor boys along with a free public library. This historic library, which still exists, played host to Marx and Engels during their influential time in Manchester. The 19th and 20th centuries saw an expansion of the site and at one point the Manchester Grammar School, Nicholls Hospital School and Chetham’s School all shared the site. In the 1970s, Chetham's became a specialist music school, and in 2017, The Stoller Hall was opened. This provides Manchester with a first-class smaller-scale hall as well as creating a new school facility. My photograph above shows the site today, left to right, Manchester Cathedral, the Victorian former Manchester Grammar School building, Chetham's 15th century buildings and The Stoller Hall.

If you visit The Stoller Hall for a concert, then what you experience is a well-designed modern hall with a central atrium and an additional smaller recital hall. The main hall's acoustics are very fine. I heard the Manchester Camerata rehearsing their latest Mozart, Made in Manchester programme with their artistic director Gábor Takács-Nagy and pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, and the warmly responsive acoustic seemed ideal for the music.

Manchester Camerata, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Gábor Takács-Nagy at The Stoller Hall

What such a visit gives no hint of is that the hall is part of the school campus, when in public use the hall is locked down with no access to the school. 

In search of eternal life: creating my cantata Et expecto resurrectionem - cryogenics, Burke & Hare, Frankenstein and more

Walt Whitman, age 35, July 1854
from the frontispiece to Leaves of Grass 

Robert Hugill: Et expecto resurrectionem, cantata for tenor, baritone and piano, will be premiered by Ben Vonberg-Clark (tenor), James Atkinson (baritone) and Nigel Foster (piano) at the concert Out of the Shadows at Hinde Street Methodist Church on Friday 3 February 2023 [further details]. 

My cantata Et expecto resurrectionem looks at ideas of resurrection and eternal life, starting with the Latin creed and moving through cryogenics, body snatchers, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, ending with a passage from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The work had quite a complex genesis, having started out almost as a different work entirely and along the way it spawned my short opera The Genesis of Frankenstein. 

One Sunday in 2015, I was sitting in the choir at St Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Chelsea during Latin mass, waiting for the choir's next piece and rather wool-gathering. At such moments I rather get ideas for music and having just sung the Latin Creed I was mulling over the idea of creating a work exploring life after death, expanding on the phrase 'Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum'.

The problem was, the more I thought about the idea later, the more trouble I had finding texts that I wanted to set. My original idea had been simply a religious work exploring what resurrection meant. But having coffee with a singer friend, to whom I mentioned my difficulties, she responded with the idea of expanding what resurrection might mean.

So, I proceeded to explore subjects such as Cryogenics, the early 19th-century Edinburgh body snatchers Burke and Hare, and even Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, making the cantata less about the religious idea of resurrection and more about man's desperate search for life after death.

Beyond the Garden: Developing an Opera

Stephen McNeff & Aoife Mannix: Beyond the Garden - Susan Bickley at premiere of the work (Photo Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre)

Stephen McNeff and Aoife Mannix' opera Beyond the Garden (subtitled When the past is not how you want to remember it…) was commissioned by Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre and premiered by them in Slovenia in 2019, but prior to then Stephen had presented excerpts in a workshop that I was lucky enough to be able to attend. 

Now the work is receiving its UK premiere, with performances at the Lichfield Festival on 14 July [ticket details] and at the Three Choirs Festival on 25 July [ticket details], with mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley as Ottilia (a role she created at the opera's premiere), and soprano Alison Rose as Klara, with Gemini, conducted by Dominic Wheeler.

Stephen McNeff and Aoife Mannix have made some changes to the opera since its first performance, and in this article, Stephen explores the processes by which they developed the work.

South Moravian Winter Landscape (Photo Stephen McNeff)

It’s to the great credit of Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre that two years ago in the middle of the pandemic they took advantage of a lull at the end of August to push ahead – under strict social distancing conditions – with the premiere of Beyond the Garden. Since then, the opera has been performed several times, each time subtly developing as the experience of performance sharpened the emphasis. Most recently in the Czech Republic in Brno, Olomouc and Prague, audiences and critics (and of course the fantastic contribution of the performers) helped Aoife Mannix (the librettist) and I discover more about what we wanted to say. They helped to pin down what the work is really about.

Winter Opera St Louis educates as it entertains

Gilbert & Sullivan: The Gondoliers - Winter Opera St Louis

In the UK, if we know the American city of St Louis for opera it is via Opera Theater of St Louis (OTSL) which does a Summer season each year and is routinely reviewed in national and international press. But there are other companies in the area too. Recently, British-Italian conductor Dario Salvi [most recently mentioned in these pages for conducting Meyerbeer's first opera Jephtas Gelübde, see my review] conducted Winter Opera St Louis in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers in Kirkwood, Missouri. In a guest posting Gary Liam Scott, a reviewer based in St Louis, introduces the company and its devotion to operetta.

During a seminar discussion of pedagogical methods years ago at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, Professor Lewis Hilton--a Canadian by birth and a specialist in ethnomusicology as well as education, thus bringing a wider perspective to the issues--asked the question, "Who is the real music educator in our society today?"  Without actually pausing for responses, Dr. Hilton quickly opined that, overall, people of all ages probably gather the bulk of their musical knowledge not from formalized instruction, but from radio disc jockeys.  

Hilton's statement, perhaps intended more for drama and shock thinking rather than an outright assertion, did serve the purpose of making his listeners ponder more deeply.  Contrary to what is generally assumed, the United States spends an enormous amount on education, which includes instruction in music and visual arts at all levels, as do many other countries.  And yet, one might question just how much the average citizen knows about music history, development of styles and performance practices, the development of instruments, and so forth.

Samson et Dalila: Sir Sidney Nolan and the opera

Sidney Nolan: Designs for silk floor cloths for Samson et Dalila, 1981
(Image courtesy of Christopher Kingzett Fine Art)

In May next year, the Royal Opera debuts a new production of Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila, directed by Richard Jones and designed by Hyemi Shin and Nicky Gillibrand. 

The company last performed Samson et Dalila in 2004, the final outing for the 1981 production directed by Elijah Moshinsky and designed by the Australian artist Sir Sidney Nolan. Whilst I am delighted that the piece is back on the Royal Opera House stage, it seems a great shame that we have to bid farewell to Nolan's stunning designs which I feel should have been declared national treasures.

Moshinsky and Nolan's production debuted on 28 September 1981, conducted by Sir Colin Davis with Jon Vickers and Shirley Verrett in the title roles. I was there, and it remains one of my vivid memories, though I also saw Placido Domingo (1985) and Jose Carreras (1991) in the opera as well. By the time of the revival in 2004, with Jose Cura and Denyce Graves, the production seems to have been creaking and the sets in a bad way. It is sad that the opportunity was not taken to refurbish one of Nolan's few major operatic ventures.

Whilst Nolan designed quite extensively for stage, Samson et Dalila seems to have been a rare venture into opera. He would design drop curtains for Moshinsky's 1985 production of Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, but Nolan first worked at the Royal Opera House in 1962 when he designed Kenneth MacMillan's The Rite of Spring (which is still in the repertoire). Intriguingly, I remember when the Royal Opera was considering a new Ring cycle in the 1980s, a suggestion was made that Nolan be invited to design it, now that would have made for a striking dramatic journey! 

Nolan first worked in the theatre in 1940 in Australia when he designed Serge Lifar's Icare for the Original Ballet Russe, and Nolan would go on to work with other choreographers including Robert Helpmann. In 1945 Nolan began his iconic series of Ned Kelly paintings (now held at the National Gallery of Australia) and intriguingly would create the designs for Douglas Stewart's play Ned Kelly in 1956.

Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila opens at the Royal Opera House on 26 May 2022, with Nicky Spence and Elina Garanca, conducted by Antonio Pappano, further information from Operabase.

Further information about Sir Sidney Nolan from the Sidney Nolan Trust.

To present the artistic diversity and quality of the European opera scene: Introducing ARTE Opera

Wolfgang Bergmann
managing director of ARTE Deutschland & ARTE Coordinator of the ZDF

Now in its fourth season, ARTE Opera presents current productions that whenever possible are live-streamed  from the opera house, and  afterwards the operas, ballets  and concerts can all be viewed as videos on demand. All productions are available throughout Europe and most of them  even worldwide. Wolfgang Bergmann, managing director of ARTE Deutschland and ARTE Coordinator of the ZDF, was kind enough to answer some questions about the enterprise.

ARTE seems a huge undertaking, what are its aims?

The goal of the European project of the ARTE Opera Season is to present the artistic diversity and quality of the European opera scene and to introduce it to new audiences. 

Furthermore, ARTE Opera is conceived as a network between opera houses, festivals and ARTE as a broadcaster, aiming to work on a pan-European visibility of European opera production. We are very happy to count 21 of the leading European opera houses among our partners, e.g. the Paris National Opera, the Berlin State Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Royal Theatre of Madrid or the Czech National Theatre of Prague.

'The more light-heartedly you can handle this, the better it would be' - Strauss, Hofmannsthal and Die ägyptische Helena

Richard Strauss' Die ägyptische Helena at La Scala, Milan in 2019 with Ricarda Merbeth as Helena

Despite his virtues as an opera librettist, concision and clarity of plot were not Hugo von Hofmannsthal's strong points. His ideas behind Die Frau ohne Schatten, the collaboration with Richard Strauss which premiered at the Vienna State Opera in 1919, arose out of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, but the resulting opera became one of the largest and taxing in the repertoire, with performances developing into real occasions. The strange thing is that their subsequence collaboration, Die ägyptische Helena (1928), which has a similarly complex mythic plot and challenging solo parts, is so rarely performed that rather than being an occasion, the performance becomes a red-letter day. 

Whilst Covent Garden managed to put on concert performances of Die ägyptische Helena (at the Royal Festival Hall in 1998 with Deborah Voigt as Helena), the palm for creating the first British staging of the opera goes to Garsington Opera who staged it in 1997 (with Susan Bullock as Helena). Now the opera is getting a second UK staging, as Fulham Opera bravely assault the peak of Strauss and von Hofmannsthal's complexity. And they will be giving the UK premiere of Strauss' 1933 revision.

From Rinaldo to Amadigi di Gaula: a look at Handel's highly experimental early London period

Burlington House in 1690s, London home of Handel's patron the Earl of Burlington

When Handel came to London in 1710 to compose an opera for the Queen's Theatre, it was certainly not obvious that he would stay in the city until his death, nor that opera and large-scale dramatic oratorio would be his focus. In the early 18th century, opera in England was a somewhat fluid affair and Italian opera was certainly not fully established. It would not be until the 1720s, with the establishment of the Royal Academy of Music with its roster of Italian composers (including Handel) that Italian opera would be produced in the capital with any degree of consistency. The operas from Handel's early years in London reflect this fluidity, each was a separate project and there is a fascinating sense of experiment with form. As English Touring Opera presents its new production of Handel's Amadigi di Gaula at the Hackney Empire on 1 October 2021, we look at the operas of Handel's early London period.

The opera that Handel came to London to stage was Rinaldo, based on an episode in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata with a libretto by the theatre's impresario Aaron Hill. It premiered in early 1711, the first Italian opera to be composed specifically for London. Though Handel's music is something of a patchwork of existing items and the libretto is a poor thing, it wowed London audiences partly because Handel cherry-picked some of his finest music from his Italian sojourn to reuse in the opera. He could probably safely assume that none of his London audiences would have heard any of the Italian music before. As ever, with these early operas, the staging was the thing and Handel's music would have come a poor second to the spectacular sets and transformation scenes.

Marco Ricci - Rehearsal for an opera (1709)
Ricci was a stage painter at the Queen's Theatre, and this singer is assumed to depict Nicolini, the house's principal castrato.

There was then something of a gap, and Handel's next opera Il pastor fido did not debut until November 1712. The opera is based on Giovanni Battista Guarini's influential play, which was written in the 1580s and published in 1590 and formed an important source for pastoral text and imagery for both operas and madrigals. The opera represents a surprising change for Handel, moving to the pastoral after the heroic, but it may have been Handel's intention to demonstrate his versatility. 

The history behind: 17 June 1800 - Puccini's Tosca and Sardou's La Tosca

Soprano Hariclea Darclée, the first Tosca

Have you ever wondered why Cavaradossi, in the middle of Act Two of Puccini's Tosca, suddenly launches into a triumphal aria 'Vittoria, vittoria!' despite having just suffered torture at the hands of Scarpia's minions? You need to follow the libretto pretty closely, something I suspect few people bother to do, to realise that the aria arises directly from the very specific historical context of the opera.

Puccini's inspirations for his operas were many and various (and reading his biography the net seems to have been cast remarkably wide with some surprising ones that got away). But many of his ideas came from seeing stage works, so that both Madama Butterfly and La fanciulla del West are based on English-language stage plays by John Belasco (despite Puccini understanding barely any of the spoken English texts). 

Tosca is based on French-language dramatic play, La Tosca, written in 1887 by playwright Victorien Sardou as a vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt. Puccini saw La Tosca at least twice, in Milan and Turin and on 7 May 1889 he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, asking him to get permission for the work to be made into an opera. The path to creating the opera was rocky, Puccini started with librettist Luigi Illica, but Illica was not keen and Sardou disliked Puccini's music! Ricordi eventually transferred the opera to Alberto Franchetti, who started work on it but somehow the project got transferred back to Puccini. There is a suggestion that Franchetti was never at ease with the subject matter. But however it happened, Puccini resumed work in 1895 and the opera premiered in 1900 in Rome with Hariclea Darclée, Emilio De Marchi, and Eugenio Giraldoni, conducted by Leopoldo Mugnone. Ricordi had arranged to premiere the work in Rome, rather than at La Scala, Milan, because of the opera's very specific Roman setting.

Sardou sets La Tosca at a very specific period of time and place, the afternoon, evening, and early morning of 17 and 18 June 1800 in Rome.

Admired by Berlioz and Wagner, the operas of Gaspare Spontini were hugely influential in their day yet are still a rarity on the modern operatic stage

Soprano Caroline Branchu as Julia in Spontini's La Vestale

Berlioz wrote in his memoirs, 'My religion is that of Beethoven, Weber, Gluck, Spontini', yet Berlioz' great admiration for Spontini's three major French operas, La Vestale, Fernand Cortez and Olimpie, has not translated into the modern era. In the post-War era of re-discovery of bel canto, Spontini's operas have tended to be revived as vehicles for great female singers and his finest opera, La Vestale, performed in Italian translation rather than French. But the composer seems to have attracted an element of ill luck during his lifetime as well, and you can't help feel sorry for him, for all that he was evidently not a likeable man (Berlioz wrote, after Spontini's death, in a letter of 1/2/1856, 'He was not a likeable man, but I had come to love him by dint of admiration. The very asperities of his temperament endeared him to me, perhaps because they fitted my own').

Gaspare Spontini was born in 1774 and trained at one of the conservatories in Naples, and his early career was in Italy where he wrote ten operas. Travelling to Paris in 1804, he had success with his Italian comedies and wrote three French comic operas. But he came to the attention of the Imperial court and in 1805 was made compositeur particulier de la chambre to Empress Josephine. This is where some of Spontini's ill-luck comes in, because his two major operas La Vestale and Fernand Cortez would be strongly identified with the Napoleonic regime.

La Vestale was written in 1805 evidently with the encouragement of the Empress. It seems to be Spontini's first serious opera and is a three-act  tragédie lyrique where Spontini's admiration for the French operas of Gluck shines through. It wasn't premiered at the Paris Opera until 1807 because of politicking and it was thanks to the Empress' support that it was finally performed. The highly regarded libretto was by the French dramatist Étienne de Jouy, who would go on to write librettos for Rossini (Moïse et Pharaon in 1827, Guillaume Tell in 1829). La Vestale ran for a hundred nights and, owing in part to its libretto, was characterised by the Institut de France as the best lyric drama of the day. In the title role was the French diva of the period, Caroline Branchu who sang in both Spontini's Fernand Cortez and Olimpie, and who was briefly Napoleon's mistress. There is also a suggestion that contemporary audiences would have identified Licinus, the Roman general hero, with Napoleon.

Hugely admired by his contemporaries, not just Berlioz but Wagner, the opera's Gluckian classicism has meant that it struggles somewhat in the present day and like Cherubini's Médée (which premiered in Paris in 1797), La Vestale has been reliant on a leading soprano to champion it, notably of course Maria Callas. And like Médée, La Vestale has become better known in its Italian translation, though French versions are becoming more common. The opera perhaps also suffers because the plot (about a vestal virgin who transgresses on her vows) is a bit too reminiscent of Bellini's Norma. There have been historically informed performances of the La Vestale (the work was conducted by Jérémie Rhorer at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2013 with Ermonela Jaho in the title role, see on-line review, which was the work's first staging in Paris for 160 years!). But none has made it to disc so that if you are interested in hearing the original French version then the choice inevitably falls on Riccardo Muti's 1993 recording from La Scala, Milan with no Francophone singers in the cast.

The work is being given in concert next June at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées with Christophe Rousset conducting Les Talens Lyriques with Marina Rebeka and Stanislas de Barbeyrac as Julia and Licinus, see the theatre's website.

Hooray for summer! Hooray for BBC Proms! Hooray for Royal Albert Hall! Tony Cooper reports on this year’s musical extravaganza

Sir Henry Wood conducting at the Royal Albert Hall

The world’s largest classical-music festival, the BBC Proms (running from Friday 30 July to Saturday 11 September) is a feast of music like no other and, thankfully, heralds in a summer of live music on a scale not seen since before the pandemic. 

A total of 52 concerts are on offer over a six-week season featuring 30 orchestras and ensembles, over 100 soloists and conductors and more than 2000 musicians. And if you cannot get to the Royal Albert Hall one will be able to tune in at home to BBC Radio 3 who’ll be broadcasting every concert live while twenty Proms will be televised. Furthermore, all broadcasts can be reached on BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer.

As in past years, BBC orchestras and choirs remain the beating heart of the Proms and they’ll be joined by a wealth of world-class British orchestras and ensembles. Therefore, some of the best-loved British artists appearing include Nicola Benedetti, Karen Cargill, Lucy Crowe, Sir Mark Elder, Benjamin Grosvenor, Steven Isserlis, Sally Matthews, Sir Simon Rattle, Christine Rice and Roderick Williams while Sir John Eliot Gardiner will surely get the Prommers roar of approval when he steps on stage for his 60th Proms appearance.

So closely associated with Sir Henry Wood (Old Timber) - who, by the way, was no stranger to my home city of Norwich as he was artistic director/conductor of the Norfolk & Norwich Triennial Festival from 1908 to 1930 - the Proms are a celebration of the best that classical music can offer. Celebrations all round, really, as the Royal Albert Hall chalks up its 150th anniversary this year while its 80 years since the venue became home to the BBC Proms. Cake all round! 

And marking the Royal Albert Hall’s 150th, the Hall’s magnificent organ will be heard across five concerts while four new works have been commissioned by the BBC to honour the occasion from Augusta Read Thomas, Britta Byström, Grace-Evangeline Mason and Gity Razaz. All of the composers have taken the Hall’s original name The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences as inspiration for their respective works.

Songs for a Broken World: American composer David Chesky discusses the way contemporary and historical issues intersect in his new album

The American composer David Chesky has releasing a new album Songs for a Broken World on his own label, Chesky Records. The album is a sincere statement of worries the composer feels necessary to share with the world, in which all of us live and die. It features performances from Ute Lemper, J'Nai Bridges, Pedro R Diaz, Milan Milasavljevic and the Orchestra & Choir of the 21st Century in four of Chesky's works, Remembrance for the Victims of the Vietnam War, For Our Own, Sacred Child of Aleppo and The White Rose Trilogy. This last is named for the non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany led by a group of students from the University of Munich, including Sophie Scholl whose centenary is this year.

In this guest posting David Chesky shares some of his thoughs on why he has written the music:

Songs for a Broken World, why ? Because we are witness to the breakdown of this world in my humble opinion. And I do hope it is temporary, and I hope we can learn from this and correct our course.

With the threat that emerged with the re-election of Donald Trump—whose administration poisoned American political culture, trampled over democratic norms, and miserably failed the test posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the face of the increasing violence of Trump’s followers, I looked to the resistance group The White Rose, whose humanism led its members to risk their lives fighting the National Socialist regime. We need a White Rose today. We need someone with the strength of Sophie Scholl.

Now a well-established on-line concert series, Sands Films created The Music Room in their film studio as a response to 2020's lack of performances for artists

Music Antica Rotherhithe at Sands Films' The Music Room (taken from live-stream)

Sands Films' The Music Room has become a regular fixture in the internet provision of live-streamed performances which appeared in response to last year's crisis. At first sight, The Music Room seems to have sprung up from nowhere, yet it has its roots in an historic 18th century building in Rotherhithe which is home to a film studio with links to composers has diverse at Nino Rota and Jehan Alain.

Last year I was sent information about an on-line concert which the performers were hoping I would watch and write about (a not uncommon occurence). This was taking place at Sands Films' The Music Room and since then I have caught other concerts from the same venue (Musica Antica Rotherhithe were there in February 2021 and will be returning on Saturday, 17 April) without ever being able to say what the venue was, or where!

Sands Films is an independent film studio and international costumier operating in an 18th century listed building in Rotherhithe, and founded by Richard and Christine Goodwin (Christine Edzard) in 1975.

Towards Perfection: the idea of an ideal version of an opera has not always played out in history, with composers being surprisingly willing to rewrite works to suit circumstances

Stuart Laing, Kristy Swift & ensemble - Beethoven's 1804 Leonore at the Buxton Festival, 2016 (photo Robert Workman)

Whilst it might seem a piece of 19th century Romanticism, the ideal of a composer straining to create the perfect version of an opera is one which still informs the way we think of many of the operas in the historical canon. But history shows that it was rarely thus, and operas were rarely final and even the great composers often showed a surprising willingness to tinker with works and adjust them.

On 23 May 1814, Beethoven premiered the opera we have come to know as Fidelio. It wasn't the work's first outing, originally the work premiered in 1804 with a revised version appearing in 1805. What was performed in 1814 was a further radical revision. In making the changes, Beethoven wasn't responding to changes of cast (all three versions featured soprano Anna Milder-Hauptman in the leading role of Leonore), nor radical changes of performance location, all three took place in commercial theatres in Vienna. Instead, Beethoven was working towards perfecting Fidelio as a work of art, though as his own musical personality had developed significantly in the years from 1805 to 1814, this meant that the final version of Fidelio had significantly different aims to the work which premiered in 1804 and which we now know as Leonore.

It is with Fidelio that the idea of opera as a perfect work of art would seem to come into being, a myth that would be continued by Richard Wagner. Not only do all of Wagner's mature operas exist in single, final versions but what constitutes mature Wagner was (and is) rigorously curated by the Bayreuth Festival so that his earliest three works are not included in the canon. In an ideal world Wagner would have kept The Ring and Parsifal as being performed only at Bayreuth but financial pressures forced him to sell the Ring copyrights. This is the creation of opera as a perfect work of art, controlled by the composer (and librettist); it assumes that an opera only exists in a single version and that is the one we should focus on.

Of course, it wasn't always thus and in fact is hardly ever thus, though the creation of traditional versions of some operas has led us to prize some music over other in a way which would have puzzled the works' creators.

To delight the eyes and ears without the risk of sinning against reason or common sense: the creation of Reform Opera

The old Burgtheater in Vienna where Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice was premiered in1762
(Photograph taken pre-1880)

When Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi premiered Orfeo ed Euridice at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1762, the work showcased a new operatic style which merged elements of French and Italian opera, eschewed the virtuosity and many of the dramatic conventions of classic opera seria and prized emotion over display. It can often seem as if their type of opera, Reform Opera, sprang into life fully formed. But the Reform movement was one which had slowly gathered force across Europe during the mid-18th century, involving a pleasure-loving German duke, an English actor, an Italian singer coached by Handel, a French choreographer, and an Italian theorist, not to mention three or four different composers. All these contributed to the 'perfect storm' that was the Reform movement in Vienna.

The Italian style and the French style

The poet Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782) wrote opera librettos for nearly 50 years and for much of the mid-18th century he was the single most influential librettist in Italian opera. His texts eschew any of the comic elements which were common in late 17th century operas, whilst using fine poetry with a conscious desire to elevate the genre. His libretto for Adriano in Siria, originally set by Antonio Caldara (1670-1736) in 1732 was to be set by over 60 composers through to the early 19th century. Based in Vienna, Metastasio more than any particular composer came to define opera seria, a genre written for a small group of star singers who depended on dazzling vocal effects, with sometimes rather contorted dramatic situations which allowed protagonists to express the extremes of emotion and nobility of sentiment.

Whilst this style of opera effectively defined serious opera in Italian all over Europe during the 18th century, it wasn't the only serious operatic style. In France, setting the French language rather than Italian was of prime importance and a distinctive French style of serious opera, the tragédie en musique (tragédie lyrique) had developed [see my article, Politics, Poetry & Personal Interest: Lully, King Louis XIV and the invention of French opera]. This was a genre that had its origins in the late 17th century French rejection of Italian style and culture as part of the political rejection of the regime of Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin. 

Tragédie en musique was no less stylised than opera seria, with five acts each with a main aria, recitative and shorter arias ending in a divertissement for chorus and ballet.

Daniel Kidane: Beyond Solidarity

Daniel Kidane (Photo Kaupo Kikkas)

Composer and Ivors Academy board member Daniel Kidane talks frankly about 2020 and a watershed moment for diversity in music.

2020 was a challenging year, not only because of a global pandemic but also because it was a year that vividly highlighted the racial inequalities that still exist in the UK. Learning that black and minority ethnic groups are at higher risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to people of white ethnicity filled me, as a person of mixed black and white heritage, with real alarm. It was further worrying to learn that the increased likelihood of death was linked to societal inequalities and discrimination. Delving into Health Foundation analysis, the extent to which black and minority ethnic groups make up a disproportionately large share of high risk ‘key workers’ was eye opening (a point I’ll revisit). Then came the slaying of George Floyd in America, which ignited Black Lives Matter protests across the globe. 

Fast forward to the start of 2021, when I had the chance to look at UK Music’s latest Diversity Report. Examining the figures relating to ethnic minorities in music related workforces, Black, Asian and ethnic minority representation descends the higher up the job ladder one goes: 42.1 percent at apprentice/intern level, 34.6 percent at entry-level, 21.6 percent at mid-level and 19.9 percent at senior level. I could not help but draw comparisons between the glass ceilings faced by Black, Asian and ethnic minority people in employment and demographic, geographical and socioeconomic inequalities. For me, the coronavirus pandemic brought the inequalities in my own industry into sharp focus. 

Without discrimination, harm or transphobia: a look at transgender singers in classical music

We Sing/I Sang - CN Lester with Hannah Gardiner (viola) - Tête à Tête 2020 (Photo Claire Shovelton)

Countertenor Alexander Pullinger describes himself on his website as singer, teacher and advocate and he has used lockdown to expand his advocacy work, writing a paper for Sound Connections. Published in December last year Alexander's paper, Facilitating the Empowerment of Transgender Voices Through Singing [PDF],  takes an extended look at transgender singers in classical music and the creation of trans-positive singing spaces. I recently chatted to Alexander to find out more about the background to the paper and to discover what the reaction had been.

Alexander's first concern in our conversation was to ensure that we were clear on the basics. A transgender person is someone whose sex is not the same as their gender.  Sex (body type) is assigned at birth, and the issue with singing arises because the voice develops according to sex (the direct result of hormones acting on the larynx at puberty) so that the lazy assumption that women sing high and men sing low is a false equivalence. Alexander's advocacy is focused on the idea of creating spaces in classical singing so that transgender people can participate without discrimination, harm and transphobia.

Classical singing places a lot of focus on the body and technique, and this creates a perfect environment for gendered voice types, ie. men sing low, women sing high, which creates a difficulty for transgender people. People tend to not question the assumption even though it is based on a misunderstanding about sex (which produces voice types) and gender (how they identify as male/female/non-binary).

'Ladies in long black, men in black shirt and jackets'

The concentration in classical singing on men's voice and women's voices, often with highly gendered dress codes (referring to what the women will wear, rather than what the sopranos and altos will wear), causes a host of problems for transgendered singers and invalidates them.

Rinaldo and Armida: from Monteverdi to Rossini to Dvorak to Judith Weir, composers have been inspired by Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata

Lully's Armide at the Palais-Royal Opera House in Paris in 1761, watercolour by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin

In 1627, Claudio Monteverdi was busy at work on a new small-scale dramatic work for the wedding celebrations of Duke Odoardo Farnese of Parma and Margherita de' Medici. Armida Abbandonata was to be a work akin to Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, with the story coming from the same source, Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata. In the event, the performance did not take place, and scholars are divided as to whether Monteverdi's Armida Abandonata was ever performed, whilst no trace of the music survives.

The story of Armida and Rinaldo, however, would continue into operatic history and composers through to Rossini (in 1817), Dvorak (in 1904) and Judith Weir (in 2005) would be inspired by the same subject. What is fascinating about the list of operas based on the story of Armida and Rinaldo is not the long list of composers (there were plenty of other subjects common in the 18th century), but that so many of the operas have some sort of currency today. Lully's Armide (1686) and Handel's Rinaldo (1711) are almost commonplace in the operatic repertoire, whilst Gluck's Armide (1777), Salieri's Armida (1771), Haydn's Armida (1784) occupy that place where works are regarded as interesting even if infrequently performed, whilst Rossini's Armida retains a special place in his output.