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livThere aren't as many amazing livecast versions of plays and shows now as there were in the first lockdown, partly because venues either tried to reopen for in-person shows when restrictions were lifted, or because the long dragged out pandemic has closed them altogether. But we did find a semi-staged Duke Bluebeard's Castle, from the London Symphony Orchestra, which amazingly enough was recorded this summer.
It's a glorious performance. You have to like Bartók, which I do. And Gerald Finley in the title role is just out of this world. I hadn't heard of Karen Cargill who sang Judit before, but she's also very very good. And there's some super atmospheric lighting, and along with the really good character acting of the two soloists, it almost felt like a full opera experience.
Slightly annoyingly they've decided to broadcast it without subtitles, so we ended up searching for the libretto and following along on our phones. I mean, it's not like the plot is the point of the opera, they open a lot of doors and everything behind them turns out to be dripping with blood. But I think I would have missed out if I'd just tried to listen to the Hungarian lyrics with no understanding.
It's available for 90 days from 1 November, and I do recommend it if you like Bartók. It's quite a short one-act opera, so fits quite nicely into an evening.
The thing is, I couldn't get past the fact that they rehearsed and performed and recorded it in 2020. In the middle of pandemic. In a concert hall that doesn't have any obvious ventilation. They had the orchestra sitting 2m apart, and cases were pretty low in London over the summer, but even so. I felt almost ghoulish watching it, and I just hope that all the musicians were ok.
Reading the programme notes it turns out that the première of this opera was... in May 1918 in Hungary. So not only was there also a pandemic on, but it was the middle of WW1. We were looking at the history of the flu pandemic and it does seem that by May it hadn't really started to kill civilians, but the whole thing just seems surreal.
It's a glorious performance. You have to like Bartók, which I do. And Gerald Finley in the title role is just out of this world. I hadn't heard of Karen Cargill who sang Judit before, but she's also very very good. And there's some super atmospheric lighting, and along with the really good character acting of the two soloists, it almost felt like a full opera experience.
Slightly annoyingly they've decided to broadcast it without subtitles, so we ended up searching for the libretto and following along on our phones. I mean, it's not like the plot is the point of the opera, they open a lot of doors and everything behind them turns out to be dripping with blood. But I think I would have missed out if I'd just tried to listen to the Hungarian lyrics with no understanding.
It's available for 90 days from 1 November, and I do recommend it if you like Bartók. It's quite a short one-act opera, so fits quite nicely into an evening.
The thing is, I couldn't get past the fact that they rehearsed and performed and recorded it in 2020. In the middle of pandemic. In a concert hall that doesn't have any obvious ventilation. They had the orchestra sitting 2m apart, and cases were pretty low in London over the summer, but even so. I felt almost ghoulish watching it, and I just hope that all the musicians were ok.
Reading the programme notes it turns out that the première of this opera was... in May 1918 in Hungary. So not only was there also a pandemic on, but it was the middle of WW1. We were looking at the history of the flu pandemic and it does seem that by May it hadn't really started to kill civilians, but the whole thing just seems surreal.
