EIF: A powerful performance of Suor Angelica
The bar has been set very high by previous concert performances of operas at the Edinburgh International Festival. Most recently there was last weekend's superb addition to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's Mozart sequence, but also with Wagner in earlier years.
The Usher Hall audience is accustomed to singers having memorised their roles and bringing their theatrical skills to the concert platform. The new Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Antonio Pappano, and the dozen, mostly young, female voices from Covent Garden he brought for the last concert of the orchestra's residency at this year's Festival can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing that.
Read More:
With the proviso that the singers were, for the most part, restricted by being behind their music stands, there could be no complaints about their performances. Suor Angelica, the middle work of Puccini's Il Trittico, is enjoying a notable return to favour, with many staged performances. Its journey from the fun banter of the opening convent scene through the confrontation between the tragic titular figure and her imperious aunt, the Principessa, to the anguished liturgical dilemma of its conclusion was as powerful here.
Carolina Lopez Moreno was vocally superb in the title role, which she paced with skill, leaving the revelation of the full power of her voice, secure at challenging pitch, until the opera's climax. The smaller roles of the other nuns were all characterfully portrayed by 10 singers, mostly recent graduates of the Royal Opera's Jette Parker emerging artists programme and a testament to the selection standard for that scheme.
The one singer clearly 'off the book' – to the extent of dismissively pushing down the music stand nearest her at her first entrance – was Ukrainian mezzo Kseniia Nikolaieva as the Principessa. The Covid pandemic apparently denied us her Carmen for Scottish Opera, but here was a role for which she was as perfectly suited as our own Karen Cargill, with her richly-toned contralto voice. The dynamic exchange between herself and Morena's Angelica was ferociously intense.
With Edinburgh Festival Chorus filling the choir stalls and these instrumentalists, led by former Scottish Chamber Orchestra leader Benjamin Marqise Gilmore, providing a gold-standard interpretation of Puccini's masterful orchestration, the evening was a perfect illustration of what Pappano is bringing to the LSO. The first half featured two stunning concert-openers: the youthful Puccini's Capriccio Sinfonico, with themes he would later repurpose on the opera stage, and the even rarer Juventus by 20th century Italian conductor/composer Victor de Sabata.
For festival tickets see here
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
3 hours ago
- Spectator
The decline of Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival was established to champion the civilising power of European high culture in a spirit of postwar healing. But its lustre and mission have now been largely eclipsed by the viral spread of its anarchic bastard offspring, the Fringe. In competition with the latter's potty-mouthed stand-ups and numberless student hopefuls, the dignified old Festival proper struggles to make much mark on the hordes who descend on the city in August, inflating prices and infuriating the residents. Nicola Benedetti, a splendid woman and a wonderful violinist, is now in her third year directing this beleaguered institution. She hasn't at her disposal the generous budgets financing comparable festivals in Salzburg and Aix, and she's been charged with 'bringing in younger audiences' without antagonising the conservative loyalists. Both these challenges make it more difficult for her, and I don't feel her programming has yet struck gold. The shortfall is most evident in opera – expensive and complicated to import, and in any case not a lot that's any good is available in August. But her immediate predecessor Fergus Linehan landed, among much else, Cecilia Bartoli in Norma and Asmik Grigorian in Barrie Kosky's production of Eugene Onegin. Certainly nothing of that quality was on offer this (or last) year. The one fully staged opera was Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, sung in its Italian version and presented in that grim barn of a theatre, the Edinburgh Playhouse. It received three performances, each lasting 80 minutes. The cast consisted of two soloists and a chorus largely made up of students, complemented by a troupe of Australian acrobats who somersaulted over tables, dangled from ropes and formed towers and pyramids of themselves. I was not convinced that their presence was anything but a distraction, but this was opera à la mode – the cast barefoot in black suits, framed by a white box, its walls latterly smeared with blood-red graffiti. Lazy cliché, in other words, albeit crisply directed and designed by Yaron Lifschitz. The musical execution, fortunately, was a delight. As Orpheus, Iestyn Davies seemed undaunted by the vast proportions of the Playhouse and managed to project his beautiful countertenor with stylish confidence and rich variety of expression. Samantha Clarke doubled impressively as Eurydice and Amor, the chorus was enthusiastic and Laurence Cummings conducted the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with muscular vigour. A full house responded with wild applause, but the acrobats stole the show from the singers, which didn't seem right. If staged opera is at a premium, the Festival has a long and rich tradition of superb concert performances in the dear old Usher Hall: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in Les Troyens, the young Jonas Kaufmann in Meistersinger, Maria Stuarda conducted by Charles Mackerras, and the recent Ring cycle, are among many such in my personal treasury. This year brought Puccini's larmoyant one-act masterpiece Suor Angelica, an adorable work but one not really suited to concert presentation. Set in a convent and climaxing in a vision of the blessed Virgin Mary, it loses something of its emotional impact when the drama is being conveyed by an assortment of ladies in décolleté frocks and extravagant coiffures lined up behind music stands. But Antonio Pappano was on hand to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in a reading of delicate sensitivity and the glamorous Carolina Lopez Moreno sang gorgeously and piteously as the eponymous nun with a guilty secret, so there was much to jerk the tear ducts. Among the smaller roles, the veteran Elena Zilio gave an exemplary display of italianità, and Sarah Dufresne sang prettily as perky Suor Genovieffa. (You can hear a repeat performance from the Proms, with the same cast, on BBC Sounds.) Dance has recently been the weakest feature of the Festival menu (except when Brian MacMaster bagged Mark Morris's company in the 1990s) and I feel that Scottish Ballet's Mary, Queen of Scots smacks of desperation. Heavy on plot if not on historical fact (Bothwell is entirely redacted), it opens with the dying Elizabeth (Charlotta Ofverholm), presented as a crazy old crone dancing through a snowstorm in a bra and big knickers as she revisits a haunted past. In yet another white box (come on, Soutra Gilmour, you can design better than this), a mash-up of the familiar story unrolls to the accompaniment of a crude electronic score I can only describe as my idea of aural hell. Mary, with a garçon haircut, makes oddly little impression in Roseanna Leney's pallid performance, but then she hasn't been given anything very characterful to dance – Sophie Laplane's choreography is brutally ugly and sexualised, all kicks and thrusts, much more convincing on the men than the women. Evan Loudon is rather good as devious Darnley, as is Javier Andreu as his boyfriend Rizzio – even if I kept muddling him up with Thomas Edwards's Walsingham. And who on earth was this bizarre gender-fluid popinjay, dressed to evoke a Nicholas Hilliard miniature, walking on tippity toes with a stuffed dog on a leash? On consulting the programme, he-she turns out to be the young Elizabeth, danced with aplomb by Harvey Littlefield. It is all incoherently pretentious and over-emphatic, crucially lacking in any sense of what dance can and cannot communicate. Perhaps the kids will love it, but if this is the future of ballet, then count me out. Still when all else in the Festival fails, there is always the balm of the daily 11 a.m. chamber concert at the Queen's Hall to bring restorative joy. I heard the Old Etonian and BBC Young Musician of the Year Ryan Wang playing Chopin: unadulterated great music, delivered with wonderful elegance and panache, provided two hours of serious bliss.
The Guardian
8 hours ago
- The Guardian
Twelfth Night Or What You Will review – knockabout comedy eliminates the anguish
It is festival time in Illyria, with masked revelries alongside the music and song in Robin Belfield's staging of Shakespeare's comedy. A period-dress production with passing modern-day asides, it is extremely knockabout, steering away from the play's anguished layers. That might be enough for a summer show, but it has little to add to Sean Holmes's roisterous, post-pandemic romp of a Twelfth Night in 2021. The dyspeptic crew comprising Sir Andrew Aguecheek (played by Ian Drysdale as a flouncy Oscar Wilde type), a Lady Belch (Jocelyn Jee Esien) and Maria (Alison Halstead) works well. But the angst around the central romances is swallowed up by laughter and lightness. Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ is an upbeat Viola/Cesario, whose repressed passion for Orsino (Solomon Israel) is summarised in comic gurns. Orsino's lovelorn self-indulgence is skimmed over and his vital speech 'If music be the food of love, play on …' whizzes unnoticeably by. Laura Hanna's Olivia is well played, but her character is sent up for the clownish nature of her mourning and too-quick switch to romantic desire for Cesario. You do not feel the pangs of unrequited desire, and much of the verse is dampened by unremarkable delivery in general. Belfield brings same-sex love to the fore by turning the devotion expressed by sea captain Antonio (Max Keeble) towards Viola's twin brother, Sebastian (Kwami Odoom), into explicitly homosexual passion. That makes less sense when the latter marries Olivia. Does he swing both ways? It becomes another unresolved element in a baggy production whose japery spills into messiness, leaving some plot points opaque. There are none of the sharper elements that give the play its complexities. Malvolio (lugubriously played with Quaker-ish beard by Pearce Quigley) is a puritanical killjoy but almost loveably crabby. He breaks up late-night revelries wearing a cute nightcap while clutching a teddy bear, and his gartered yellow stockings are not especially funny, although Quigley gives his persona a sexual energy after reading the trick letter. But his gulling never enters the realm of the tragic. Jos Vantyler as Feste is a highlight with a beautiful singing voice and Simon Slater's compositions are infectious with occasional 'olés' added to Shakespeare's songs. There are touches of the music hall in the movement, including the can-can in a funny scene involving audience participation. Jean Chan's set features a gigantic bronze sun beaming its rays across the stage, while her outfits give characters the look of garish peacocks or circus acts. So there is oodles of charm and midsummer madness ushering away the play's darkness. Make of it what you will, I suppose. At Globe theatre, London, until 25 October
BreakingNews.ie
9 hours ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Hundreds of ships and boats sail into Amsterdam to mark city's maritime history
Crowds packed vantage points along a major canal and took to the water themselves on Wednesday to watch a flotilla of hundreds of historic ships sail into Amsterdam at the start of a five-day festival celebrating the Dutch capital's maritime history. Ships from all over the world, many with their masts and rigging decorated with flags, sailed from the North Sea coastal town of IJmuiden on an hours-long journey up the North Sea Canal and into Amsterdam's IJ waterway for Sail 2025, the first edition in a decade. Advertisement A puff of orange smoke erupted into the sky and ships' horns sounded as the replica, three-masted clipper Stad Amsterdam passed through a lock to mark the official start of the event. Each ship is greeted with two cannon shots and its country's national anthem as it enters the harbour. Orange smoke signals the start of the parade of hundreds of tall ships sailing into Amsterdam's harbour (Peter Dejong/AP) Hugo Peek was one of the thousands of people who sailed in smaller boats together with the tall ships. Along with his grandfather and several other family members, he travelled on a smaller boat that accompanied the tall ship Europa. 'There was almost no water. It's almost all boats, ' the 21-year-old student said. Advertisement Mahek Singahl was waiting in Amsterdam's central train station, looking onto the harbour with her two small children and several large suitcases. Her family was headed back to Ivory Coast after a holiday in Iceland and had stopped in Amsterdam for a few days. They had no idea what the crowds were for. 'My husband went to look at the boats and left me here,' she said, laughing. 'He loves this stuff.' The event, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors, is held every five years. The 2020 edition was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Advertisement Wednesday's parade culminates in an evening fireworks display. The ships will remain in Amsterdam, many open for visitors, through the weekend. The first event was held in 1975 to celebrate Amsterdam's 700th anniversary and this year's edition coincides with the city's 750th birthday.
