Oh Goodie! Celebrating English Touring Opera's 40th anniversary.

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Christopher Ainslie - English Touring Opera 2017 (Photo Richard Hubert Smith)

Not for the first time, I have opened the leaflet about English Touring Opera's (ETO) forthcoming season and thought 'Oh, goodie'. This year ETO celebrates 40 years  and whilst the company is busy touring its current programme, Handel's Giulio Cesare [see my review], Bach's St John Passion [see my review], Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and the children's opera The Extraordinary Adventures of You and Me, it has announced plans for its Autumn 2020 tour, which will include Sir Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden, Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek.

I don't think that Tippett's The Knot Garden has been staged in London since the 1980s when Nicholas Hyntner directed it at the Royal Opera, though Scottish Opera did a centenary production in 2005. This is the second Tippett opera that ETO has staged having given us King Priam in 2014, thus providing a valuable service at a time when these major 20th century operas are generally ignored by larger companies.

During Tippett's lifetime, the relationship between himself and Britten was generally friendly, and each seems to have held a positive attitude to the other's work, so it will be interesting to see two major operas side by side: The Knot Garden which premiered in 1970 and The Turn of the Screw which premiered in 1954.

For The Knot Garden, director David Freeman will be revisiting his 1984 Opera Factory production which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre (dear reader, I was there) with Richard Baker conducting [we last saw him conducting Philip Venables' 4:48 Psychosis, see my review]. For The Turn of the Screw, Amy Lane, artistic director of the Copenhagen Opera Festival, will direct and Dane Lam will conduct [we last saw him conducting Opera Holland Park's production of Cilea's L'Arlesiana in 2019, see my review].

The third work is Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek, his operatic version of Stephen Berkoff's powerful contemporary re-working of the Oedipus myth. It will be directed by Jonathan Moore, who directed the premiere of the opera in 1988 and co-adapted the text, and conducted by Tim Anderson. Anderson recently conducted the UK premiere of Philip Venables' Denis and Katya with Music Theatre Wales, and conducted Jonathan Moore's production of Greek at the Grimeborn Festival in 2019.

ETO's Autumn tour starts at the Hackney Empire (7 October 2020) and visits Buxton, Durham, Snape, Saffron Hall, Exeter and Bath, ending on 10 November 2020.

Tippett: King Priam - English Touring Opera 2014 (Photo Richard Hubert Smith)

2020 is the company's 40th anniversary (it was started as Opera 80) and there is much to celebrate, the range of its work is remarkable (as is the ability to stretch a limited budget).  I first saw them many years ago, at the Theatre Royal Brighton in a production of Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos (directed by Anthony Besch whose production of that opera I saw at Scottish Opera in the 1980s with Janet Baker), and was bowled over by a vivid account of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in 2005. Other 'Oh Goody' moments since then have included Tippett's King Priam, Rossini's Elisabetta Regina d'Inghilterra, Kurt Weill's Der Silbersee, Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience, Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride, Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse, the world premiere of Alexander Goehr's Promised End and a whole series of fine Handel stagings.


And of course, we should not forget that alongside the main stage operas there are a series of operas for children including Russell Hepplewhite's award-winning Laika the Spacedog.

What is remarkable is not so much that the company dares to go where many UK companies do not, but that it takes the productions on long UK tours (19 different venues for the current Spring tour). So that alongside small-scale versions of established classics it encourages audiences to open eyes and ears whether it be  Baroque opera, Italian 19th century opera seria or challenging 20th century classics.

Maxim Emelyanychev's eclectic second season with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Maxim Emelyanychev & the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Photo Ryan Buchanan)

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2020/21 season sees principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev celebrating his second season with them, with an eclectic mix of programming, plus premieres by Anna Clyne, Karine Polwart and Pippa Murphy, and Julian Anderson along with music by Andrea Tarrodi, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Pēteris Vasks, Oliver Knussen, George Benjamin, John Adams and Einojuhani Rautavaara.

Emelyanychev opens the season with John Adams, Tchaikovsky and Bruch's Violin Concerto with Nicola Benedetti, and he continues with Adams' Violin Concerto (with Josef Špaček), Mozart's Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, Schubert, Poulenc and Prokofiev, alongside Stravinsky's complete Pulcinella. Emelyanychev is the soloist in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.5, and he ends the season with Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem, and a programme of Ravel, Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsakov.

The orchestra's Associate Composer is Anna Clyne and she has three premieres in the new season, Overflow which marks Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters and is inspired by Emily Dickinson's poem By the Sea, a new work for a cappella choir to be performed by the SCO Chorus, and a new work conducted by Andrew Manze in February 2021.

Other new music in the orchestra's season includes folk-artist and theatre-maker Karine Polwart and composer and sound designer Pippa Murphy examining climate change in If You See Me, Weep, the title coming from one of The Hunger Stones, ancient drought markers in the River Elbe which serve as both memorials to past hardships and warnings to future generations. The works movements will be interspersed throughout a programme directed by Pekka Kuusisto, which also includes music by Beethoven, Andrea Tarrodi, Erkki-Sven Tüür, and Pēteris Vasks.

Other highlights include countertenor Iestyn Davies, soprano Lydia Teuscher and baritone Matthew Brook in an evening of Handel conducted by Bernard Labadie, tenor Allan Clayton and horn player Alec Frank-Gemmill in Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, cellist Alban Gerhardt in the Scottish premiere of Julian Anderson’s Cello Concerto ‘Litanies,’ written in memory of Oliver Knussen whose music is included in Sir George Benjamin's programme with the orchestra alongside Benjamin's own music, and Ravel.

Saxophonist Jess Gilham makes her debut with the orchestra in John Adams' Saxophone Concerto, soprano Carolyn Sampson performs Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne pianist Gabriela Montero is the soloist in Clara Schumann's early Piano Concerto (written, with some help from Robert, when she was in her teens), and Colin Currie performs Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Percussion Concerto ‘Incantations’ conducted by John Storgårds.

The SCO Youth Academy launches in Autumn 2020. It is a new, unique and distinct youth orchestra for school-aged musicians, who will work with top professionals over a series of Sunday afternoon sessions in the centre of Edinburgh. Designed to enhance and complement existing provision, it builds on the success of the SCO String Academy (launched 2019) and the SCO Wind Academy (launched 2020) and aims to enhance musical learning in a welcoming environment. Conducted by SCO violinist Gordon Bragg and tutored by SCO musicians, the SCO Youth Academy is open to aspiring school-aged orchestral musicians who have reached Grade 6+ and who are able to commit to a series of sessions. Applications open in April. For more information see the SCO website.

 Full details of all the SCO's concerts from its website.

Poulenc at the piano: a chance to hear an alternative version of the 'Concert champêtre' on this new disc of concertos and chamber music

Francis Poulenc Piano Concerto, Concert champêtre; Mark Bebbington, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Jan Latham-Koenig; Resonus Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 March 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Poulenc's harpsichord concerto in its rarely performed piano version on this new disc where Mark Bebbington teams up the composer's concertos with his chamber music

This new disc featuring music by Francis Poulenc has two intriguing features. The first is that pianist Mark Bebbington has chosen to pair two of Poulenc's concertante works for piano and orchestra with two of his chamber music pieces. The second is that Bebbington is performing Poulenc's Concert champêtre in the composer's version for piano and orchestra.

Pianist Mark Bebbington performs Francis Poulenc's Piano Concerto and Concert champêtre with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Jan Latham-Koenig, and Poulenc's Trio for Piano, Oboe & Bassoon and Sonata for Oboe & Piano with oboist John Roberts and bassoonist Jonathan Davies on Resonus Classics.

Francis Poulenc's Piano Concerto dates from 1949 and was a commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra as a piece for Poulenc to play on his second American tour in 1950 when he premiered the work in Boston conducted by Charles Munch. The work was politely received, but it wasn't the virtuoso showcase that audiences wanted, nor was it well-received when given its European premiere, though nowadays we are able to enjoy the piece for itself.

Intriguing companions: OOTS performs Django Bates, Bowie and Beethoven

Like many ensembles, the Orchestra of the Swan (OOTS) is celebrating Beethoven this year but the orchestra (artistic director David Le Page) is pairing Beethoven's music with some intriguing companions. In a two programmes which tour to Stratford, Hereford, London's Kings Place and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, OOTS is pairing Beethoven's Violin Concerto with a work by jazz composer Django Bates, his Umpteenth Concerto, and performing Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 and Grosse Fuge alongside arrangements of songs by David Bowie.

Violinist Thomas Gould is the soloist in Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Django Bates' Umpteenth Concerto, with conductor Eckehard Stier, in concerts at Stratford Playhouse (24/3/2020), The Courtyard, Hereford (26/3/2020), and Kings Place (3/4/2020). Bates, who is currently celebrating his 60th birthday and 40 years in the profession, has written four new cadenzas for Beethoven's concerto thus providing an intriguing link between the two works. Talking about his concerto, which has been newly revised for the concerts, Bates said:

"There are so many violin concertos in the world (often given numbers instead of names) that mine is perhaps the umpteenth. The piece explores infinity, as music often does. Umpteenth embraces melodious folk music from an imaginary land, pays homage to its great concerti predecessors (even offering a small Mendelssohn quote) and, above all, celebrates the violin and the drama which it can create."

Further ahead, OOTS is teaming up with composer/cellist Philip Sheppard to perform Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and Symphony No. 5 alongside Ashes to Ashes, a new work which sets David Bowie’s songs Station to Station, Lazarus, Fame, Aladdin Sane and Heroes for chamber orchestra, arranged by OOTS Artist Director David Le Page and composer/cellist Philip Sheppard. The programme Rebel Rebel is being performed at Stratford Playhouse (5/5/2020) and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (6/5/2020).

The idea behind the linking is to examine the enduring cultural relevance and legacy of two visionary artists, and the concert will be introduced by journalist Paul Morley.

Full details from the Orchestra of the Swan website.

A different focus: Victoria's Requiem performed by children's voices and instrumental ensemble from Toulouse

Victoria Requiem; La Maitrise de Toulouse, Les Sacqueboutiers, Mark Opstad; Regent Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 26 February 2020 Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
Children's voices and early instruments bring a different focus the ineffably grand version of Victoria's music for the funeral of his Royal patroness

The use of instruments with Renaissance choral music is something that is known about and written about, but not so frequently put into practice in modern performance, though Gareth Wilson and the choir of Girton College gave us Orlande de Lassus' Requiem with brass instruments on Toccata Classics [see my review]. 

In 17th century Spain, in particular, the combination of voices and instruments was something often used on festal and other special occasions. This new disc from La Maitrise de Toulouse and Les Sacqueboutiers, conductor Mark Opstad on Regent Records, takes its inspiration from contemporary descriptions such as that quoted in the CD booklet from 1666 when a French traveller, Jean Muret, witnessed a funeral for a monk in Madrid:

'They bury them to the sound of instruments and with musical concerts to which everyone is invited as if to a party ... All the people gathered there maintain their gravity whilst the musicians play on furious'

So on this disc we have Victoria's Requiem, alongside motets by Correa, Guerrero, Marques, Lobo, Romero and Patino, performed by the combined forces of the young singers and cornets, sackbuts, shawm and bassoon of Les Sacqueboutiers.

Victoria had been given permission to retire from Rome in 1585, and back in Madrid was given a position at the Convent of las Descalzas Reales as private chaplain to Empress Maria of Austria who lived there. Victoria carried out the functions of director of music at the convent, but does not seem to have had the official title. He wrote the Requiem for Empress Maria's funeral in 1603 and it was printed in 1605.

One of the intentions behind this recording was to do a project which combined the children's voices of La Maitrise de Toulouse with Les Sacqueboutiers. But there is a good historical basis for this reconstruction. We know that in the early 17th century, the convent of las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, where Victoria was based, had musicians attached to it. And documents such as the one by Jean Muret testify to the Spanish use of instruments in church.

Seeking young orchestral players - the Blaricum Music Festival Orchestra

Blaricum Music Festival Orchestra 2019

Blaricum is a village in North Holland, some 30 kilometres from Amsterdam, and in 2018 Peter Santa founded the Blaricum Music Festival in what was his home town. In 2020 the festival returns for its third edition, (18-28 June 2020) and it is looking for good young (18-28) orchestral players to participate in the (student) Blaricum Music Festival Orchestra (11-28 June 2020). Soloists include Augustin Dumay, Steven Isserlis, Alexandra Conunova, Barry Douglas and Camilla Tilling. French conductor Mathieu Herzog (former viola player with the Quatuor Ébène) is returning as the orchestra’s Artistic Director.

There is no fee but all expenses (travel, transfers, lodging, meals) are covered by the festival and apart from the rehearsals there will be group coaching sessions with outstanding orchestral players from (among others) the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

The application deadline is April 1st 2020 and all applicants will be notified no later than 15th April 2020 whether or not they are invited to participate. Interested musicians should send a full biography, colour photograph (printing quality) and (a) link(s) to online video footage on which they are seen playing at least 2 contrasting pieces/movements to info@blaricumfestival.com.

Full details from the festival website.

Giulio Cesare returns: a new cast brings a different focus to English Touring Opera's production of Handel's masterpiece

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Clint van der Linde, Susanna Hurrell, Alexander Simpson
English Touring Opera 2020 (Photo Jane Hobson)

Handel Giulio Cesare; Susanna Hurrell, Clint van der Linde, Ann Taylor, Kitty Whately, Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian, Edward Hawkins, dir: James Conway, cond: Jonathan Peter Kenny; English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 7 March 2020 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
Small of scale, big on drama, ETO's revival of one of Handel's greatest opera seria really creates a sense of musical drama

In revival, a production of an opera seria like Handel's Giulio Cesare is inevitably different. Most Handelian opera seria is 'closed box' drama of a type not unfamiliar to lovers of Agatha Christie type novels, a group of people coming together for a limited time in a single confined space. The nub the work is a series of interactions, as characters learn about each other and about themselves, rather than pure plot. And with a small cast, inevitably a new team of singers brings different flavours to this hothouse atmosphere. And the music changes too, in the programme for English Touring Opera's revival of James Conway's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare, they reprinted conductor Jonathan Peter Kenny's intelligent elucidation of the often misunderstood art of ornamentation in the arias. In Handel's day the singers were specialists, only singing this type of music and trained since youth in the art of co-creation of the music. But today's singers are generalists, so the ornamentation was pre-planned but tailored to the singer's voice; a different cast would bring differences.

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Ann Taylor
English Touring Opera(Photo Jane Hobson)

We saw James Conway's production in 2017 for English Touring Opera (ETO) when it was new [see my review], and the opera was done complete over two evenings. For ETO's 2020 revival of Handel's Giulio Cesare, which we caught at the Hackney Empire on Saturday 7 March 2020, the opera was trimmed down to just three hours (including interval), losing a lot (the full opera runs to four hours of music) but keeping plenty too. Jonathan Peter Kenny conducted the Old Street Band (ETO's period instrument band), with Clint van der Linde as Giulio Cesare, Susanna Hurrell as Cleopatra, Ann Taylor as Cornelia, Kitty Whately as Sesto, Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian as Tolomeo, Bradley Travis as Curio, Alexander Simpson as Nireno and Edward Hawkins as Achilla. The chorus (singing from the auditorium) was provided by The Museum Singers (ETO is working with a different local ensemble at each venue).

The plot of the opera is about the rational Romans (Cesare, Cornelia, Sesto) being fascinated, seduced and trapped by the exotic Egyptian siblings Cleopatra and Tolomeo with the two being different, at war with each other but in their own way dangerous. There is nothing specifically Egyptian about the opera, and Conway's production places it in the time of composition (1724) with the Romans as the 'rational' rulers from Great Britain's Protestant succession and the Egyptians as the exotic and seductive (and Roman Catholic) French - James Conway's article in the programme book draws some interesting parallels including one between Tolomeo and the boy King Louis XV.

One reason why performances of Handelian opera seria can drag on is that the performance conventions (long delays after arias, too much applause) and scenic requirements (pause every time the scene changes) can stretch things out. At ETO, in the pit Jonathan Peter Kenny ensured that things were kept ticking along nicely, with zippy speeds (and some impressive fast passage-work from his cast) and minimal pauses, whilst on stage designer Cordelia Chisholm's flexible gilt box and James Conway's fluid production ensured that the action flowed with never a pause. The evening finished a few minutes before 10.30pm, and flowed nicely; whilst the piece was cut, ETO managed to fit in a remarkable amount of music.

Conway does not make the mistake of having elements of Act One as out-and-out comedy (it is difficult to take Cleopatra's distress seriously if in the first half of the opera she has been treated light-heartedly), and Conway understands Handel's mosaic technique, making us understand a character by revealing different aspects in each aria. But there was a comic element, so that Susanna Hurrell's (Cleopatra) scenes in Act One with Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian (Tolomeo) were funny, but disturbing too as it became clear that her teasing of him had a sexual element (quite how far they would go was an interesting question which Conway wisely does not answer), and also Bénos-Djian's Tolomeo had a submissive element, he seemed to like being tied up.

The singing was on a consistently very high level, meaning that we could enjoy the performance as performance and each singer went far beyond simply 'getting round' the notes, there was plenty of singing which used the complex passage-work and those vexed ornamentations for expressive purposes.

Musical peaks: Beethoven's Fidelio at Covent Garden with Lise Davidsen and Jonas Kauffmann

Beethoven: Fidelio - Jonas Kaufmann - Royal Opera (Photo ROH/Bill Cooper)

Beethoven Fidelio; Lise Davidsen, Jonas Kaufmann, dir: Tobias Kratzer, cond: Antonio Pappano; Royal Opera House
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 March 2020 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Thrilling musical contributions rescue an overly conceptual production

It is probably an understatement to say that Covent Garden's new production of Beethoven's Fidelio was eagerly awaited. Featuring Lise Davidsen as Leonore and Jonas Kaufmann as Fidelio, it was the casting which drew the attention rather than the Royal Opera debut of director Tobias Kratzer, who studied at the Bavarian Theatre Academy August Everding. At the premiere of the production (on 1 March 2020), apologies were made for Kaufmann. We caught the third performance of Beethoven's Fidelio on 6 March 2020 at the Royal Opera House. Antonio Pappano conducted with Davidsen and Kaufmann joined by Robin Tritschler as Jaquino, Amanda Forsythe as Marzelline, Georg Zeppenfeld as Rocco, Simon Neal as Don Pizzaro and Egils Silins as Don Fernando.

My first exposure to Beethoven's Fidelio was at Scottish Opera in the 1970s with Helga Dernesch (still singing as a soprano) and the great Charles Craig, in a production by Peter Ebert that might be described as intelligently traditional. At Covent Garden in 1981 it was again the casting which made its mark, Jon Vickers as Florestan and Linda Esther Gray as Leonore in a revival of a production which dated back to 1961! Since then, productions have veered towards the conceptual rather than the straightforward narrative. This reflects a basic problem with Beethoven's final version of his opera, it exists very much in two parts and the music for Act Two pushes the piece towards the transcendent mythic, leaving behind the idea of rescue opera and singspiel/opera comique. Most directors choose either to stage act two as an extension of act one (the traditional route), leaving the transcendence to the music, or to make act one more conceptual (the modernist route) including a tendency to minimise, or remove altogether, the spoken dialogue.

As an opera, a dramaturgical entity, Beethoven's first version of the opera, known as Leonore, works best [see my review of the Buxton Festival's 2016 performances of Leonore]. For his production at Covent Garden, director Tobias Kratzer (working with regular design partner Rainer Sellmaier) decided to reflect the split between the two acts in the staging. Basing the drama in France at the time of the French Revolution (the original Spanish setting was almost certainly designed simply to get round the censor), Act One was pure singspiel, completely naturalistic with Kratzer's revised dialogue aiming to increase the dramatic depth. For Act Two we moved to the more conceptual, the leading characters were still in 18th century dress, and Florestan (Jonas Kaufmann) was chained on a bare stone surface, but surrounded by a chorus of silent observers in modern dress. They know what is happening, and flinch, but do nothing until the moment the trumpet sounds.

It is an interesting idea, the idea of agency and group-think, we are all responsible. But the decision to emphasise this by having live video (video designer Manuel Braun) made for an interestingly uncomfortable setting, for a period, but eventually the video became distracting. You were watching the huge images of people rather than the soloists, and there was something a bit self-conscious about it all, 'ACTING' rather than acting. Kratzer also adjusted the ending, the agency of change was not Don Ferrando (Egils Silins) but Marzelline (Amanda Forsythe)!

Beethoven: Fidelio - Lise Davidsen, Jonas Kaufmann - Royal Opera (Photo ROH/Bill Cooper)

The first act was fine, but I found the action overly fussy, too busy. To make the point in Act Two about Marzelline, Kratzer needed to adjust the action in Act One, so he had Marzelline observe Fidelio unbinding her breasts; all well and good but this all took place during Lise Davidsen's thrilling account of 'Abscheulicher' making far too much of a distraction from the music.

Perhaps my biggest objection was to the placing of the action.

Bringing the House Down: bass Brindley Sherratt on the gala at Glyndebourne for The Meath

Brindley Sherratt with his daughter Amy (Photo Colin Hart)

Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak Bringing the House Down has been postponed until Sunday 11^th April 2021. A new line-up will be announced shortly. For more information please click here.
 
On 5 April 2020, bass Brindley Sherratt will be joined by the singers Louise Alder, Sally Matthews, Barry Banks, Sophie Bevan, Danielle de Niese, Yvonne Howard, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Allan Clayton, Mark Padmore, Jacques Imbrailo and Sir John Tomlinson, for a gala performance at Glyndebourne for Bringing the House Down: A Concert at Glyndebourne for The Meath Epilepsy Charity, a gala to raise money for The Meath, a residential care home for people with complex epilepsy. The concert has a strong personal connection for Brindley as his daughter Amy lives at The Meath. I recently met up with Brindley to chat about the concert and about The Meath, but also about the relatively late flowering of Brindley's international career and his recent move into Wagnerian roles (with debuts as Hagen and as Gurnemanz to come).

Brindley Sherratt

The whole gala started simply as an idea. As Amy lives at The Meath, Brindley and his wife Christina received a booklet, which The Meath had sent to family and friends, containing a wishlist of the things that they would like to acquire to help improve the quality of life of the residents, from a toaster to a people carrier. Brindley thought, why not a concert and decided to ask his friends to help. At the time he was performing the role of Baron Ochs in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier at Glyndebourne and started to ask singers with whom he was friends. All of them said yes, and the list of participants grew as he mentioned it. Suddenly the idea became an event, which meant that they needed a venue.

Some singers approached Brindley about singing in the concert; Barry Banks is flying over from the USA and Mark Padmore is coming from Munich. He finds it very touching that they are supporting something so dear to him.

Originally, Brindley had simply thought of a central London venue, but his wife suggested Brindley approach Glyndebourne. He mentioned it to Gus Christie (executive chairman of Glyndebourne),  and the result is that the concert is taking place in the main auditorium at Glyndebourne, and they have full use of the venue, complete with car parking, ushers and catering, for the whole day. The event has proved a startling amount of work, even with professional help, and has dominated Brindley's year.

The audience will be a mixture of those coming for the singers and those coming to support The Meath. As a result the music for the gala will be pitched somewhat on the lighter side with popular arias and duets alongside Gilbert and Sullivan and songs from the shows.

The Meath Choir, made up of people who live there, will be performing alongside Godalming Jazz Choir and the evening will end with RVW's Serenade to Music where the sixteen soloists will be the distinguished singers from the evening plus four young singers – Katie Stevenson (mezzo soprano), William Morgan (tenor), Matthew Durkan (baritone) and Stephanie Wake-Edwards (mezzo soprano) - conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth. The accompanists will be Matthew Fletcher and Caroline Jaya-Ratnam, and John Suchet will be presenting the evening.

The Meath is based at a large Victorian mansion near Godalmining, now surrounded by other more modern houses in 12 acres of land, which provide a residential home for people with epilepsy (there are 65 residents). [You can read more about the charity's fascinating, long history on The Meath website].

Communal experience & the re-telling of familiar stories: Bach's St John Passion from English Touring Opera

Bach: St John Passion - English Touring Opera (Photo Andreas Grieger)

Bach St John Passion; English Touring Opera, Jonathan Peter Kenny; Hackney Empire
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 March 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Bach's passion becomes a dramatic re-telling in this absorbing concert staging with local & community involvement

Bach: St John Passion
English Touring Opera (Photo Andreas Grieger)

Over the last few years, English Touring Opera (ETO) has included Bach's passions alongside its operatic season, at each venue working with local choirs. For its Spring 2020 tour, ETO is performing Bach's St John Passion in a concert staging which is visiting both theatres and churches. We caught English Touring Opera's performance of Bach's St John Passion at the Hackney Empire on Thursday 5 March 2020, with Jonathan Peter Kenny conducting the Old Street Band, with soloists Susanna Hurrell, Martha Jones, Tim Morgan, Richard Dowling, Thomas Elwin, Stephan Loges and Bradley Travis, plus Collegium Musicum of London Chamber Choir, Hackney Singers, Hackney Choral, and London Youth Boys' Choir. The concert staging was directed by James Conway and used, I think, the set from Handel's Giulio Cesare.

We sometimes forget that the original performances of Bach's passions were a communal events. With performances by major choirs, ensembles and soloists we lose sight of the fact that originally the soprano solos were sung by Grete's youngest whilst Mathias' cousin was the Evangelist - the performers were part of the community, the story was familiar even if the manner of its telling was not (it was Bach who introduced the more operatic elements into Leipzig's passion performances) and of course the chorales were all familiar melodies. Something of this element was crucial to ETO's performance of the St John Passion, the choirs were local - Hackney Singers is a non-auditioned community choir, and both Hackney Choral and London Youth Boys' Choir are based on the transformative effect of communal music making on young people. And for those audience members attending the other operas in ETO's Spring season, the soloist line up featured Cleopatra, Dorabella, Giulio Cesare, two Ferrandos, Don Alfonso, Curio and Mr Higginbottom in The Extraordinary Adventures of You & Me (ETO's Spring 2020 opera for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities).

The London Orchestra Project returns to LSO St Luke's with RVW, Britten & Mozart

James Ham conducting the London Orchestra Project

Founded by Stephen Bryant, leader of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and conductor James Ham, the London Orchestra Project features some of the UK’s best orchestral players sitting side-by-side outstanding students and recent graduates from London’s music colleges in a 50/50 split. The orchestra thus becomes a means for students and graduates on the cusp of a professional orchestral career to directly benefit from the knowledge and insight from some of the UK’s most experienced orchestral musicians.

The London Orchestra Project made its debut in 2015, and performed Richard Strauss, Bartok and Ligeti at LSO St Luke's in 2018. Now the orchestra returns and conducted by James Ham will be performing RVW's Concerto Grosso, Britten’s Simple Symphony and Mozart’s Symphony no. 36 ‘Linz’. RVW's Concerto Grosso was written in 1950 for performance by the Rural Schools Music Association conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. The work splits the strings into three groups of differing ability, Concertino (Advanced), Tutti (Intermediate), and Ad Lib (Novice) playing only on open strings, though this part is optional. Britten's Simple Symphony was written in 1934 and premiered by an amateur orchestra in Norwich, for the work Britten re-used themes from music he had composed as a teenager.

Students and recent graduates from the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity Laban Conservatoire will sit alongside players from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, orchestra of English National Ballet, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Swan, orchestra of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Mozart Players, BBC Concert Orchestra and former members of the Kreuzer Quartet and Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Further information from the London Orchestra Project website.

Bath Festival 2020

The Bath Festival, which runs from 15 to 24 May 2020, features a wide range of literature, music and more starting with Party in the City on Friday 15 May, when musicians, poets, bands and choirs will perform in more than 30 venues across the city, and the festival ends with the finale weekend when a range of artists perform in Bath Recreation Ground. In between, there is opera by Poulenc and Lehar, Ian Burnside's musical play about Wagner, the Heath Quartet in Beethoven, recitals from young artists and the reconvening of the icon Bath Festival Orchestra.

Yehudi Menuhin originally set up the Bath Festival Orchestra in 1959; the orchestra is being revived this year and will form a platform for young orchestral musicians. The orchestra debuts with a concert in the Assembly Rooms, when Peter Manning conducts Mozart's Linz Symphony, Ligeti's Ramfications, Brahms's Serenade in D, Op. 11 and Richard Strauss lieder with soprano Johanna Wallroth.

Poulenc's Le voix humaine is being given a highly intimate performance in a Georgian home, directed by David Pountney with soprano Claire Booth. Iain Burnside's theatre piece The View from the Villa explores the spaces between Wagner's Wesendonck Songs with mezzo-soprano Susan Bickley, baritone Matthew Brook and actor Victoria Newlyn. Whilst Iford Arts brings its production Lehar's The Merry Widow conducted by Oliver Gooch, directed by Simon Butteriss with Maire Flavin and James McOran Campbell.

Conductor Charles Hazelwood will lead the Paraorchestra, an integrated orchestra of disabled and non-disabled musicians, with soprano Victoria Oruwari in a performance of Gorecki's Sorrowful Songs beside the waters of the Roman Baths. The Bath Philharmonia is joined by the Band of the Royal Marines, conducted by Jason Thornton in Copland, Mozart, Janacek, Haydn and Tchaikovsky.

Other performers include the Gesualdo Six, pianist Bertrande Chamayou, pianist Tom Poster, and the Heath Quartet play Beethoven quartets across three concerts.

The Classical Music Rising Stars concerts, supported by Scala Radio, include coffee and cake before the performance served in convivial surroundings before the concert, with recitals from mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons, violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha, trumpeter Matilda Lloyd, pianist Martin James Bartlett, and guitarist Sean Shibe.

Full details from the Bath Festival website.

Classical music weekend in Watford

Artur Cimirro

The Master Music Festival returns to Watford in March 2020 for events at Watford's Clarendon Muse. Brazilian pianist and composer Artur Cimirro will make his UK debut, performing Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninov plus his own arrangements and compositions. In the tradition of composer/pianists of the past Cimirro's transcriptions and arrangements explore new horizons in piano technique including ambitious projects, such as Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Études in versions for the left hand alone.

For the festival's Children's Concert, Brazilian flautist and composer Daniela Mars will discuss and perform on a range of different flutes to introduce young audiences to the world of classical music. Pianist Ji Liu will be adjudicating the festival's piano competitions which cater for all ages and levels of ability, providing local talent with a superb platform to showcase their achievements.

The festival is organised by Master Music Publications, a publishing house providing original compositions, transcriptions, interpretative editions and educational resources by the world’s finest contemporary musicians.

Full details from the Master Music website.

Beyond the Spanish Golden Age: London Festival of Baroque Music 2020

With the title of Beyond the Spanish Golden Age, this year's London Festival of Baroque Music (LFBM) runs from 9 to 23 May 2020 with 21 concerts over 15 days at St John's Smith Square and elsewhere. The centrepiece of the festival is four days (14 to 17 May) devoted entirely to Spanish music.

A new initiative is the LFBM Academy, bringing together outstanding young professionals from across the globe under the directorship of Margaret Faultless. The ensemble's first concert features music by Bach, Handel and Telemann (13/5).

Spanish ensemble L’Apothéose and soprano Lucía Caihuela’s concert Madrid 1700 explores Spanish sacred and secular music including music from Madrid theatres (15/5), and still in Madrid, violinist Daniel Pinteño and his ensemble Concerto 1700 present music by composers working there (14/5). Madrid-based José Miguel Moreno explores two centuries of Spanish music in his concert The Spanish guitar from 1500 to 1700 (16/5).

At a late-night concert (15/5), Navarran soprano Raquel Andueza and her ensemble La Galanía perform music by 17th century Spanish composer José Marín. Spanish vocal and instrumental ensemble, La Grande Chapelle and director Albert Recasens will explore music by Juan Hidalgo, harpist of the Royal Chapel in Madrid and one of the key figures in the development of theatrical music in 17th century Spain. The concert by Capella de Ministrers of Valencia (17/5) will demonstrate the transition from Renaissance to Baroque in Spanish music from 1500 to 1650.

Other highlights include David Bates conducting La Nuova Musica in Handel's Ariodante in near complete form, omitting only the dances, with Polly Leech, Nardus Williams, Alexandra Oomens and Nicholas Tamagna (17/5), and William Christie directing Les Arts Florissants in duets by Handel and his contemporaries with soprano Katherine Watson and mezzo-soprano Eva Zaick. Other performers include the Brook Street Band, the choir of Westminster Abbey, Ensemble Correspondances, Improviso, Le banquet celeste, the Holst Singers, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a come-and-sing Vivaldi Gloria directed by LFBM's artistic director (and director of St John's Smith Square) Richard Heason

The festival opens with a weekend devoted to Bach's 48, with harpsichordist Steven Devine performing both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier in four intimate one-hour concerts.

Full details from the LFBM website

From The Velvet Room to Tabla and Tap: the new cohort of artists taking part in Opera North's Resonance

Abel Selaocoe © Ben Bonouvrier

Opera North has announced a new intake of artists for Resonance, its residency scheme from BAME music makers. Taking part in 2020 will be British-Egyptian mezzo-soprano Camille Maalawy, cellist Abel Selaocoe, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and singer Pariss Elektra, composer, vocalist and film maker Dan Loops, tabla player, producer and educator Bhupinder Chaggar and writer-director Omari Swanston-Jeffers.

Resonance is Opera North's programme which offers time, space and resources to professional artists from BAME backgrounds working in any genre of music and based in the North of England, to take their work in new directions, to experiment with collaborators and new ideas, and to test the results in front of audiences. A new sitar concerto by Jasdeep Singh Degun, premiered by the orchestra of Opera North last month, was the result of Jasdeep Singh Degun's participation in a Resonance residency with Opera North.

Omari Swanston-Jeffers

• Camille Maalawy will be bringing the traditions of Arabic song and western opera together, collaborating with principal nay player in the Orchestra of the Cairo Opera House Mina Mikhael Salama, and Guy Schalom, a percussionist who specialises in Arabic and klezmer music. 
• Abel Selaocoe will work on original solo music for the cello that reimagines or is influenced by different stringed instruments from the African continent, working with specialist musicians including Sidiki Dembele, a master of the West African djembe, ngoni and kora. 
• Pariss Elektra will work on The Velvet Room, a ‘live music performance triptych’ that features her band, Pariss & The Presence, interacting with projection mapped visuals and animation by visual artist Natasha Joseph. 
• Dan Loops will continue his journey into theatre-making with the lives of three characters, rapper, a poet and an actor, charted through an overlapping combination of hip hop, acoustic and classical score. 
• Bhupinder Chaggar will develop his vision for a coming together of Indian classical Kathak dance, tap dance, percussion and electronic production - Tabla and Tap. 
• Omari Swanston-Jeffers will develop a narrative centred around music, dance and community. 3NEGUS,  collaborating with singer-songwriter, producer and composer Christella Litras, whose soundtrack for a full-length animated film began life in the first round of Resonance residencies in 2018 and Pariss Elektra from the latest cohort of artists.

Full details from Opera North website

Bromley Symphony Orchestra premieres new work by Florence Ann Maunders as part of Centenary

Whilst the range of contemporary composers performed in the UK is indeed becoming diverse, in some ways the rate of change is surprisingly slow. On 14 March 2020, the Bromley Symphony Orchestra will be performing Florence Anna Maunders' Bacchanal, a wild and exciting drunken revel for large orchestra, which members of the orchestra voted to perform as their Orchestra's Choice to celebrate the orchestra's centenary. The work mixes Syrian folk music with the techniques of urban electronic dance music.

As well as being a major event for an up and coming composer, this is the first performance by a British amateur orchestra of a piece by a transgender composer, but also the first performance by any British orchestra of music composed by a transgender composer since the BBC Concert Orchestra played the music of Angela Morley in the 1960s.

Maunders' studied at the Royal Northern College of Music with Anthony Gilbert, Adam Gorb, Simon Holt & Clark Rundell, and enjoys a career as a jazz pianist, orchestral percussionist, vocalist, composer and teacher. She has already had work performed this year by the Red Note Ensemble, and London Consorts of Winds premieres her Nonet on 8 March, and Skipton Camerata will be performing a new piece in their 2020/21 season. See Maunders' website for more details.

Adrian Brown conducts the Bromley Symphony Orchestra in Florence Anna Maunders' Bacchanal, Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 at Langley Park School, Beckenham, BR3 3PB, 14 March 2020.
Full details from the orchestra's website.

Strong individual performances in the revival of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots - Deutsche Oper, Berlin (Photo Bettina Stöß)

Meyerbeer Les Huguenots; Olesya Golovneva, Anton Rositskiy, Liv Redpath, Ante Jerkunica, dir: David Alden, cond: Alexander Vedernikov; Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 1 March 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Powerful solo performances in this bring out the intimate side of this grand opera

The Deutsche Opera, Berlin has revived its 2016 production of Giacomo Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots alongside two of the composer other operas, Le prophete [see my review] and Dinorah, for a mini-Meyerbeer festival.

We caught David Alden's production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin on Sunday 1 March 2020 conducted by Alexander Vedernikov with Anton Rositskiy as Raul, Olesya Golovneva as Valentine, Liv Redpath as Marguerite of Valois, Ante Jerkunica as Marcel, Dimitris Tiliakos as Nevers and Derek Welton as Saint Bris.

Les Huguenots has not retained the extreme level of popularity which the opera had in the 19th century  but productions are becoming somewhat less unusual. The work's length and tone are perhaps both somewhat off-putting for audiences and opera houses. At the Deutsche Oper we had well-over four hours of music, which when you include two intervals is a long time in the theatre. And the work's tone is not consistently tragic, despite the historical background of the piece (the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris in 1572 when Catholic slaughtered Protestants) and the tragic dénouement, the opening acts have a lighter feel. In fact, Meyerbeer gives each act a different feel, letting the mood gradually darken.

David Alden's production was set in a roofed hall which provided all the settings, giving a suitably oppressive atmosphere. The drawback was the lack of space for the large chorus, resulting in a very static feel to many of the great scenes. Act III's opening scene on the Pré aux clercs is intended to combine multiple choruses to visually and musically dazzling effect, but also to demonstrate the simmering tensions between groups. Here, the chorus remained seated as if in church. Here, and elsewhere, Alden relied only on the dancers to add movement. But at times, such as the nuns fondling phallic swords during the blessing of the swords (in Act Four) or the waiters handing out champagne during the duet (in Act Three), you felt Alden was using the dance to send up the music.

Still in fine form: Meyerbeer's Le prophète returns to the Deutsche Oper, Berlin with Gregory Kunde back in the title role

Meyerbeer: Le prophète - Deutsche Oper, Berlin (Photo Bettina Stöß)

Giacomo Meyerbeer Le prophète; Gregory Kunde, Clémentine Margaine, Elena Tsallagova, Seth Carrico, Derek Welton, dir: Olivier Py, cond: Enrique Mazzola; Deutsche Oper Berlin
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 29 February 2020 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Olivier Py's thoughtfully dramatic production returns to Berlin with the original cast in fine form

Giacomo Meyerbeer was very much a European; German-born, Jewish, he wrote Italian operas in Italy, French operas in French and German opera in Germany (incidentally an unfulfilled ambition of the young Richard Wagner). So it is perhaps fitting that much of the recent Meyerbeer revival is occurring in Germany, not withstanding the return of Les Huguenots to the Paris Opera after a gap of some 30 years [see my review]. The Deutsche Oper, Berlin has been exploring Meyerbeer's French operas and during February and March 2020 revived three of them, stagings of Le prophète and Les Huguenots, and concert performances of Dinorah, to create a mini-Meyerbeer festival.

Tony Cooper caught Olivier Py's production of Le prophète at the Deutsche Opera when it was new in 2017 [see Tony's review], and we saw the second cast in 2018 but that occasion was marred by flooding which rendered the theatre's hydraulic system inoperable to the opera was given in a simplified staging [see my review]. So it was with great interest that we caught Meyerbeer's Le prophète at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin on Saturday 29 February 2020 with the original conductor, Enrique Mazzola, and many of the first cast returning to their roles including Gregory Kunde as Jean de Leyde, Clémentine Margaine as Fidès, Elena Tsallagova as Berthe, Seth Carrico as Oberthal, Derek Welton as Zaccarias,  plus Gideon Poppe as Jonas and Thomas Lehman as Mathisen.

Le prophète is French Grand Opera to the max. We know that operas did not always have to be in five acts, have a ballet in act three and have be on a huge scale, but Meyerbeer and librettists Eugene Scribe and Emile Deschamps used the full forces available at the Paris Opera. Though it is worth bearing in mind that the work was not written for the gargantuan Palais Garnier (which was not built until the 1870s) but for the more modestly sized Salle Pelletier (the Opera Comique is now on the site).

Whilst Meyerbeer had successfully used religious discord as a backdrop in opera in 1836 for Les Huguenots, Le prophète (which premiered in 1849) is unusual in being so focused. There is no sub-plot, no comic sidelines, and the work continued themes from Fromenthal Halevy's La Juive (premiered 1835, see my review of the Opera Vlaanderen production) which placed a father/daughter relationship at its centre, minimising the love interest. Le prophète follows suit, placing Jean de Leyde (Gregory Kunde) and his mother Fidès (Clémentine Margaine) at the centre.

Meyerbeer: Le prophète - Gregory Kunde - Deutsche Oper, Berlin (Photo Bettina Stöß)

Ostensibly the opera is about the Anabaptist take over of Munster in the 1530s (a bloody episode also treated by Alexander Goehr in his opera Behold the Sun, which premiered at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 1985), but Meyerbeer (a Jew all his life) was using the past as a mirror of the present.

Olivier Py's production, with designs by Pierre-Andre Waltz, used a dystopian cityscape as a background to a tale of warring overlords. Meyerbeer does not seem to have been interested specifically in the religious issues, but in politics, power and morality, the issues at the centre of the opera and subjects which can resonate in many settings. Py did not try to reconstruct the Grand Opera form, nor did he substantially subvert it, though he was less interested in display in moments like the Act Three coronation scene than the original production would have been.

His message still resonates with us today: artistic director Marios Papadopoulos discusses the Oxford Philharmonic's year-long Beethoven Festival

Marios Papadopoulos and the Oxford Philharmonic at the Sheldonian Theatre

The Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, artistic director Marios Papadopoulos, has just started its Beethoven Festival, a year long exploration of Beethoven's music (symphonies, concertos, chamber music, piano sonatas and more) in and around the orchestra's home-base, the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. I recently met up with Marios to chat about the festival and find out more.

The festival celebrates not just the 250 years since Beethoven's birth but also that Oxford is twinned with Bonn, Beethoven's birthplace. Marios feels that the concerts offer the rather special experience of being able to hear Beethoven's symphonic music and opera in the unique acoustic of the Sheldonian Theatre. Seating around 700, the hall offers intimacy with some members of the audience almost able to touch the players. And Marios points out that many performances of Beethoven's music during his lifetime took place in similar venues.

Marios Papadopoulos

As well as conducting the orchestral concerts and Fidelio, Marios is the soloist in the piano concertos. This is music that he has performed and conducted for nearly 16 years and it is dear to his heart. And performing in the Sheldonian Theatre, knowing the music with such long experience, changes what he brings to it.

The concerts are starting to sell out, so there is clearly a demand, and 200 of the seats in the Sheldonian Theatre's upper gallery are offered to students for £5. A far higher percentage of subsidised cheap seats than most orchestra concert series.

Creative Doubles: how combining roles can change how we look at an opera

Luigi Bassi in the title role
of Don Giovanni in 1787.

When Mozart's opera Don Giovanni premiered in Prague in 1787 the same singer, Giuseppe Lolli, performed the roles of Masetto and the Commendatore, and the same doubling with a different singer happened at the work's Viennese premiere in 1788. Whilst nowadays, we would be unlikely to cast the same singer in both roles (the Commendatore is normally sung by a darker, heavier voice than Masetto), this type of doubling of roles was quite common. It made perfect economic sense and made a more interesting challenge for the singer. The same sort of doubling had taken place at the premiere of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in Vienna in 1786, with Michael Kelly singing Basilio and Don Curzio, and Francesco Bussani singing Bartolo and Antonio, doublings of pairs of smaller roles which make ample practical sense but do not always happen nowadays.

Audiences of the time would not have made anything of this type of doubling, operas with large casts frequently had singers playing multiple roles. The fact that the same person appeared as, say, Masetto and the Commendatore did not say anything special about either character.

But modern audiences can experience a different kind of creative doubling, where having the same singer playing multiple roles links the roles psychologically, making them seem as if they are aspects of the same person, or in some cases creating a single composite character from multiple disparate roles.

Britten: Death in Venice - Gerald Finley and the players - Royal Opera
((c) ROH 2019 photographed by Catherine Ashmore)

Benjamin Britten wrote the lead baritone role in Death in Venice (1973) in this way. By linking seven apparently disparate roles Britten provides a mysterious and ominous thread running alongside Aschenbach's journey of self-revelation. Aschenbach seems to be accompanied by this strange character who plays a variety of functions at key moments on Aschenbach's journey. And whilst it is tempting to see this as very much a post-Freudian operatic development, one of Britten and librettist Myfanwy Piper's inspirations must have been the multiple baritone roles in Jacques Offenbach's final opera, Les Contes d'Hoffman.