Bear At The Concert: Anna Caterina Antonacci and The English Concert

It is always gives me a thrill to see a couple of theorbos and an harpsichord - you just know that the music is going to be sublime and affecting. The English Concert with the extraordinary soprano/mezzo-soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci lived up to my high expectations and widely sailed over. The set brought old favourites like Monteverdi together with some new names to me; Castello, Marini and Farina.

The Castello (early 17th century) and the Marini (1594-1663) set the scene for the Barbara Strozzi (1619-c1677) 'Lagrime mie' sung by the illustrious Anna Caterina Antonacci.... having her wonderful recording I was waiting tremulously... oh what an exquisite rendition... the recording is tortured bliss but watching Anna Caterina Antonacci you are plunged headlong into this morass of tragic lamentation. From the opening middle eastern tones of 'Lagrime mie' (yes, 17th century Venice was huge cultural melting pot) to the aching lament of 'E voi, lumi dolente, not piangete' (And you, o aching eyes, aren't you going to cry') manages to wrench every emotion out. Antonacci with clenched fists pushed, pulled, no, bodily heaved the whole audience through Strozzi's changes of mood.

To save us from emotional breakdown from Strozzi's sorrow-filled tale the English Concert tucked in Carlo Farina's (c1600-1640) Capriccio stravagante... and what a difference. Farina threw in everything but the kitchen sink into this piece.... the strings imitate the fife, hens cackling, cats fighting and dogs barking. The audience were suitably amused with violins sounding like cocks crowing and cats fighting. An erratic, fun and playful piece. Truly weird. Looks like it is a favourite of the English Concert but will probably swiftly become 'what the audience talked about most'.

Back from the interval we are plied with more Castello to ease us into a blistering 'Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda' by Monteverdi. A tale of mistaken identity, battle and war... you can hear to the clashing of swords and the striking of blows in the music and Antonacci's rapid pronounciation of 'L'onta irrita lo sdegno a la vendetta, E las vendetta poi l'onta rinova...' (Pride excites rage and vengence, and vengence refuels pride) describing the battle which falls away to the aftermath where both warriors are weary and out of breath... Antonacci pants 'E dopo lungo faticar respira' (and after a long pause, regain their breath) and you just have that scene in your head.... I was open-mouthed through most of this, awe-struck by Antonacci's mastery and exciting, beautiful tone.


After a thunderous applause the unexpected encore was an impassioned 'Addio, Roma!' from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. This was probably the best rendition that I have heard of Ottavia's famous aria. Antonacci sung of real anguish in having to leave your homeland.... such a plea of woe... I was impressed... one could not fault her passionate singing whilst still managing to be technically brilliant.

I wanted more.... maybe I will just come back Thursday when she sings again at the Wigmore.

Harry Bicket and Anna Caterina Antonacci

Il Combattimento - Monday 26th January 2009

Anna Caterina Antonacci Soprano
Harry Bicket Director/Harpsichord/Organ
Nadja Zwiener Violin
Walter Reiter Violin
Alfonso Leal del Ojo Viola
Joseph Crouch Bass Violin
Peter McCarthy Basso di viola
Elizabeth Kenny Theorbo
David Miller Theorbo
Frances Kelly Harp

Castello Sonata 16 a 4 stromenti
Marini Sonata a 4, Passacaglia op.22
Strozzi 'Lagrime Mie'
Farina Capriccio stravagante

interval

Castello Sonata 15
Monteverdi I combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

Encore

Monteverdi Addio, Roma! from L'incoronazione di Poppea

Bear At The Movies: Orfeo ed Euridice

I had such high expectations for this production - it is one of my favourites; a perfect marriage of music to singing, Gluck trying to make the music as important to the singing. This should be achingly beautiful and tragic. This production only managed to be beautiful I think.
Mark Morris' (self-professed 'opera queen' wrapped in a pink pashmina) direction was adequate. For a dance choreographer the dancing element was lacking. The focus was out. Trying to mesh singers and dancers together did not work.... and really since in previous Morris productions the singers were even banished from the stage I was disappointed with the lack of ambition in the direction....
James Levine's obvious love for this piece was born through in his conducting which was suitably dramatic.... perhaps it was the singing the made me deflated with the overall piece. Now, I had heard rave reviews of Stephanie Blythe's Orfeo - great range, and impassioned in parts but she left me cold.... Yes, her voice is beautiful, yes, she does have a good tone but there was no tie in with the words; there was no notion of the real tragedy. I know that she had missed a performance due to illness and I wondered if this was the reason for the sometimes lack of emotive force. Was she concentrating on controlling her voice particularly in the higher registers?
Heidi Grant Murphy's Amor in a pink polo shirt and chinos brought a little more baroque feel to the piece - cheeky but every so charming. The surprise for me was Danielle De Niese as Eurydice - the best I have heard her... An extraordinary impassioned performance - she still overacts but she did manage to raise the emotional charge of the piece and encourage a little more passion from Stephanie Blythe.
A note about the set..... when Eurydice is re-united with Orfeo the whole scene looks like it set on a staircase made of glistening coal.... The set was definitely the star in this scene.
Overall this was a rather disappointing production. Morris could have made more of the dancers and for me this was a missed opportunity. I did so want this to be a great production but then may be I just had too high expectations.

Bear Notes: Anna Caterina Antonacci

I have to admit that I was not exactly bowled over when I saw Anna Caterina Antonacci at first in a cinema broadcast of Carmen from the Royal Opera House.... she was a very traditional Carmen and perhaps that just what swayed me from truly appreciating her talent...

That all radically changed when I heard her only recording (surprisingly) 'Era La Notte' - a beautiful collection of Baroque classics from the likes of Monteverdi, Giramo and Strozzi. I was completely entranced - at one point her voice had such beauty but then in the next sentence be so vicious and steely.I was joyous that she should have recorded such rare gems (Monteverdi I adored and Strozzi was to become my new love - more on Strozzi in a later post). In Strozzi's Lamento 'Lagrime mie' when Antonacci sings 'E voi, lumi dolenti, non piangete?' (And you, my afflicted eyes, do you not weep?) I had that familiar piercing of the heart, the same shock that great voices bring.

Luckily she is bringing her rare vocal talents to London and the Wigmore this month (Monday 26th and Thursday 29th January) showcasing some of the pieces from her album... Monteverdi's 'Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda' and joy - Strozzi's 'Lagrime mie'. I just hope that the concert will, at least, be half as good as the recording....

Read more about Anna Caterina Antonacci in the Times... an interesting article about this 'cult' diva.

Bear Notes

As befits the 250th anniversary of Handel's death Radio 3 have a host of programming for our delection. This week he is composer of the week.... check out on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/ - everyday this week at 12:00-13:00 and 22:00-23:00.

Bear Necessities

On Bear's Listening Post....


'Luonnotar' - Sibelius - from Sibelius Tone Poems - Songs
'Piante ombrose' - Cavalli - La Calisto - Sally Matthews
'Oh Thou Bright Sun' - Handel - Theodora - Dawn Upshaw from the Glyndebourne Peter Sellers Production
'True Love Will Find You In The End' - Headless Heroes (with Alela Diane)
'The Green French One (Original Mix)' - Dinamoe - from Body Language Vol. 7 - Mixed By Matthew Dear

Bear At The Opera: Riders To The Sea

Leigh Melrose, Kate Valentine, Patricia Bardon, Edward Gardner, Susan Gritton, Claire Booth

"It's a play about nothing happening. It's a play about women waiting. It's a little jewel, in that it's very short, it's about 45 minutes long. It's half the length of a Greek tragedy but it really has the essence of a Greek tragedy in it."
Fiona Shaw (from the ENO podcast)

Having always loved Vaughan Williams I was thrilled to discover this opera; however short. With the extra bonus of the great actress Fiona Shaw directing, and the mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon in the leading role of the mother, Maurya. It seems an odd play that the intensely English composer chose this tale by the Irish playwright J.M Synge about life and death on the barren Aran Islands.. but it strangely works. The opera's short length - about 50 minutes - might at first glance appear a problem but Fiona Shaw's decision to couple the opera with the Sibelius tone poem 'Luonnotar' which in itself lasts about 10 minutes was a stroke of genius. It sets Riders up in the context of the mythical world of the sea, land and heavens telling of Luonnotar, an air spirit, and the creation of the heavens, moon and stars..... Shaw only discovered later that Williams greatly admired Sibelius and indeed dedicated his fifth symphony to him; a fortuitous choice indeed.

The soprano Susan Gritton sung the Sibelius piece exquisitely, perched high-up in a suspended boat above the stage. This was a wild, electric piece to start with and set the tone for the upcoming opera.... The set and video projections by the artist Dorothy Cross and and designer Tom Pye complimented the two works and added another dimension. Behind the Sibelius work a video projection of an underwater scene of a woman swimming wih jellyfish formed a mesmerizing backdrop. Indeed you can find an excerpt on the Frith Street Gallery website - click on the video Jellyfish Lake.

In fact this production had the most intelligent and interesting sets I have seen so far in London... none of the traditional sets that you normally get at Covent Garden... this had some thought put into it. The backdrop to Riders was a rocky coastline... a trace of a house etched into the stone - apparently based on the real life rock formation in Ireland, Poll na bPéist or the Wormhole... a perfectly symmetrical rectangle cut into the coastline. Find a picture and an excellent article on Fiona Shaw and Riders in the Guardian. Boats hang above the stage and a single suspended figure of a man hangs in mid air. In the background a video of a man slowly falling into the sea like one of those Bill Viola video projections... this is telling the tale with the set.

And what of Riders... this tale of women waiting... a story of loss... well this has been the only live performance of an opera to make me cry and truly that was down to the wonderful Williams score and the emotional keening of Patricia Bardon as Maurya.... she sings 'My heart is broken as from this day' having a premonition of her son's death.... and you are bowled away by her grief. The rest of the cast was a restless mass of grief (perhaps too restless) with Kate Valentine as Cathleen putting a particularly competent performance. There are such lines in this opera that plough into your heart... it is evocative and insanely sad. In the score there are no big arias but only floating, repeating motifs; haunting and vibrant. Indeed it reminds me Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.

Leigh Melrose, Kate Valentine, Patricia Bardon

Truly a great opera; short, intense and beautifully tragic. Fiona Shaw describes it as a little jewel - well it is even more primal than that - it is a little pearl perfectly formed in the depths of the ocean; polished and rugged, smooth and pungent.

Riders To The Sea - Nov 28th 2008

Sibelius: Luonnotar

Soprano Susan Gritton

Vaughan Williams: Riders To The Sea

Maurya Patricia Bardon
Bartley Leigh Melrose
Cathleen Kate Valentine
Nora Claire Booth
A woman Madeleine Shaw

Conductor Edward Gardner
Director Fiona Shaw

Designers Dorothy Cross/Tom Pye


Notes

Fiona Shaw writes brilliantly on the opera and it's inception in the Guardian....

Bear At The Movies: La Damnation de Faust

This is the second instalment of the Bear at the Movies.... predominately looking at the MET's live simulcasts of their productions. Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust directed by Robert Lapage definitely ticks all the boxes of opera production in terms of stars and production values what with Susan Graham and Marcello Giordani, Robert Lapage's intricate conception and James Levine conducting; so why was I left underwhelmed.

Well it was not John Relyea's Méphistophéles, he was suitably devilish and raffish in his role though perhaps with less gravitas than previous productions I have seen. Susan Graham's Marguerite was truly emotional; great vocal acting but not quite as impressive as a production with Vesselina Kasarova I have seen. Still she shone out this night with her emotionally intense singing. I was disappointed with Marcello Giordani's static Faust with his beautiful but almost unemotional rendering.

It was the staging that took centre stage with it's acrobats (demons crawling up and down the extensive set), the exquisite video projections (a flock of birds in flight or Marguerite's image in flames), the intense choreography (soldiers walking backwards in slow motion).... This opera does need these sort of production values but they somehow took over to the detriment of the acting.... Visually it was stunning... with the set almost film like in it's grid set up. The video projections which reacted to the singers' voices was technically marvellous... and perhaps that was the problem; all pyrotechnics and no true emotion.

Again the live film direction was flawed... such an epic production with events occurring all over the stage should have meant a wider angle of the whole stage. Unfortunately we had more close-ups than wide shots.

All in all an epic production which was clearly defined, and dazzling but lacklustre apart from Susan Graham's impassioned performance....

La Damnation de Faust - Saturday Nov 22nd 2008

Faust Marcello Giordani
Méphistophéles John Relyea
Brander Patrick Carfizzi
Marguerite Susan Graham

Director Robert Lepage
Conductor James Levine