It's the week of July 13th - Week 18 of a wealth of free live streaming operas from crippled companies all over the locked down world. We should be so lucky. As you pick and choose from these amazing offerings, remember they will all take a donation in lieu of that ticket you can't buy.
And this week – all this week – Glyndebourne is livestreaming their acclaimed performance of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd for free on YouTube. The opera will be available until Monday 20 July. Details, preview video and images are here.
The story, Billy Budd, Sailor by American writer Herman Melville (author of Moby Dick) was adopted largely unchanged, and the libretto written primarily by E. M. Forster and E. Crozier. Read about the construction of the opera here.
This opera is riveting and challenging and the production won huge praise for the lead singers in an all-male cast, and for the orchestra - handling Britten's complex, melodious, dense, dramatic, light and dark, beautiful music. It was praised also for the set and lighting, holding the audience in the claustrophobic insides of an ship of war in the Napoleonic era. Britten's operas are all in some way about claustrophic settings, the British class system and Victorian morality and justice. Even Albert Herring, his comedy, is in a claustrophobic village in his Suffolk. Who else could take Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream into the class system? (For more on that opera, visit our notes during our opera and Shakespeare term.) They are also all in some way about the meeting of innocence, beauty and good with evil and injustice - and the meeting of helpless individuals with loveless authority - and the psycho-sexual drama in such conflicts. As a local commentator puts it: The text is so fraught with contemporary moral dilemmas of great import that the opera provides great cause for thought and discussion. Its relevance is disturbing.
A word about the riches to be found online, and why we pack this blog with links to many interpretations and sources of information. If you haven't met this opera, approach it through some of the reviews and blogs. Start with the Guardian review, offering a thoughtful comment on the characters and thereby of the story
Jacques Imbrailo's Billy is a total joy – slight, lithe and wonderfully guileless, singing his farewell to life with immense dignity and pathos. Phillip Ens's John Claggart is the epitome of curdled malevolence, but the tone is just a little too ugly, the weighting of the words sometimes not precise enough. As Vere, though, John Mark Ainsley is much more problematic. His Vere is never an assertive figure, so it's hard to understand why his crew revere him, and his refusal to intervene when Billy is condemned to death seems like more of the same passivity.
Edward Seckerson, reviewing this production in the Independent describes and praises the production’s sets and lightings – setting the scene for viewers. And there’s more to be learned in his review of the second, 2013, production. On his own site is an account of the development of the singers and roles.
Glowing reviews follow the 2013 performance - Bachtrack here, Music Criticism here .
The production travelled to the US in 2013 to rave reviews. WQXR, New York City’s only classical music radio station, called it electrifying. Hey, why don't our classical stations have websites like this!!? (They also commented In a rare visit to New York, England’s Glyndebourne Festival, far from its grazing sheep in rural Lewes, left little up to chance ... This time, its own London Philharmonic Orchestra was in tow, brought in at such expense that one wondered if flying the audience to England might've been cheaper.)
But it was clearly worth while; there's a thoughtful account in NYTimes here. 'Unforgettable' said NYClassical review, exploring the music and characters. And I found on this blog a brief think-piece about Britten's overwhelming score: Pay no attention to clichés that Benjamin Britten “has no melodies.” Billy Budd is densely packed with expressive and psychologically telling melodies, but they don’t necessarily do your work for you; they require active, open listening, and an absorbance of the shattering drama they illuminate.
A note about our opera world. For Australian operagoers, the brilliant music and moral complexity of Britten's work seems to be disappearing from our stages. Opera Australia staged a highly praised production by Neil Armfield of Billy Budd in 2008 with Teddy Tahu-Rhodes playing the young, innocent, beautiful Billy (see below). The production, with a stark set, was first seen at Welsh National Opera in Cardiff in 1998. Not seen here since (though I see the production is still available for hire!) OA ventured into the Midsummer Night's Dream with Baz Luhrman in 2010. and Albert Herring in 2013. Sydney had a triumphant performance of Peter Grimes in 2009 and last year a concert performance.
Right now, there's more live streaming from Britten. His last opera, and very autobiographical one, was Death in Venice. The much praised English National Opera production is available thru OperaVision till end of September. In a different way from Billy Budd, it's relevant to today – While a mysterious illness spreads in Venice, an ageing writer on holiday finds himself dangerously infatuated with a young boy. As his moral convictions give way to his increasing obsession, everything he holds true begins to tumble around him.
Here's the Guardian review of this much praised production.
Go to this page to find what else is streaming from OperaVision.
Meanwhile, at Covent Garden
The Royal Opera House is still live screening lots - go here for their events.
And here’s something different! If your eyes have tired of livestreaming video, there are some gems available for listening on radio from ROH. One is an instant opera course – indeed 3 sessions. The ROH is streaming this week the BBC’s series titled Opera Italia by the amazing Antonio Pappano, conductor and music director at the Royal Opera House. There are 3 Episodes – and it seems they will all be available from 10 July to 1 August.
And the BBC radio broadcast of Tristan und Isolde from the ROH with Nina Stemme is available from 10 July to 28 July.
The ROH La Boheme (see our earlier post) screens till end of this week.
Back home
A reminder that Opera Australia has added to their online operas their 2013 Carmen from the Sydney Harbour – go to our earlier post for reports of the star performance from then ‘rising’ star Nicole Car as Michaela.
That continuing debate about body image
Picking up from the debate last week, we have another production received with body-image criticism - but this one is way back in 1999. How different then! It’s a classic performance of Tristan und Isolde from the Met, cast for splendid Wagner voices, not fashionable appearance. The performance is highly praised in NYTimes – acknowledging the ‘hefty’ stars. ‘Here were singing and orchestra playing of exceptional beauty and power together with staging marked by simplicity, dignity and intelligence. Opera has found its new Tristan and Isolde, and I wonder if we have ever had better ones. ‘
Charles Michener’s description in the Observer was more direct. Isolde is Jane Eaglen, ‘she of the stupendous size, power and stamina’. Compare those 1999 pieces – absolutely non-PC – with the 21st century outcry over reviews of Glyndebourne’s ‘chubby’ soprano Octavian in their 2014 Rosenkavalier (see our last week post). Which epoch was right?
Back to Billy Budd. Teddy Tahu Rhodes, interviewed about his role, cheerfully agreed that 'being a believable looking sailor as Budd, or Stanley Kowalski (the role made famous on film by Marlon Brando, in Streetcar) also helps in an era where fat ladies are finding it increasingly difficult to find a place to sing. He is relaxed about the headlines about his good looks. If it improves his marketability, then good. "We can be politically correct and say casting is not about that, but ..." He hastens to add it's ultimately about the voice, but in an increasingly mobile world if a director has to choose between two singers of the same level, "I guess they'd go for the package they thought was right."
At the Met (dates are for Melbourne)
There's a variation of timing for the July 18 stream of La Cenerentola, which will be available for an extra 4 hours on July 19 . The July 19 stream of Le Nozze di Figaro will begin at the normally scheduled time.
Monday, July 13 Viewers’ Choice: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde Starring Jane Eaglen, Katarina Dalayman, Ben Heppner, Hans-Joachim Ketelsen, and René Pape, conducted by James Levine. From December 18, 1999. (See above). Our notes on the opera are here.
Tuesday, July 14 Puccini’s Manon Lescaut Starring Kristine Opolais, Roberto Alagna, Massimo Cavalletti, and Brindley Sherratt, conducted by Fabio Luisi. From March 5, 2016. See our discussion of this opera earlier in the blog.
Wednesday, July 15 Verdi’s La Traviata Starring Ileana Cotrubaș, Plácido Domingo, and Cornell MacNeil, conducted by James Levine. Transmitted live on March 28, 1981.
Thursday, July 16 Puccini’s Turandot Starring Maria Guleghina, Marina Poplavskaya, Marcello Giordani, and Samuel Ramey, conducted by Andria Nelsons. From November 7, 2009. Our notes on the opera are here.
Friday, July 17 Berg’s Wozzeck Starring Peter Mattei, and Elza van den Heever, This production is from Jan 2020 - and designed by William Kentridge - listen to him discussing it here. Reviews were unimpressed by his familiar techniques. 'Brilliant but somehow hollow', judges The New Yorker. A 'sensory overload', says the Operawire reviewer . 'Soulless staging' concludes Observer. But does that fit the bleak opera? Synopsis here.
Saturday, July 18 Rossini’s La Cenerentola
Starring Elina Garanča, Lawrence Brownlee. Australian Rachelle Durkin does a brilliant ugly sister. Alessandro Corbelli is a superb ugly Papa. From 2009. A great think-piece about the voices here. Lawrence Brownlee hailed for his leading bel canto singing. Great singing and lots of fun with a sly critique of class systems if you're a bit over tough tragedies.
Sunday, July 19 Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro Starring Amanda Majeski, Marlis Petersen, Isabel Leonard, Peter Mattei, and Ildar Abdrazakov, conducted by James Levine. From October 18, 2014.
And to start our next week - Monday, July 20 Puccini’s La Bohème Not another Bohème! but this one - from 1982, is Franco Zeffirelli’s staging Teresa Stratas and José Carreras (above), Renata Scotto, Richard Stilwell, and James Morris, conducted by James Levine. NYTimes felt the production had already lost it innocence.