VIVA VIVALDI! THE LOST OPERAS / AN EVENING WITH MR JOE GREEN / Lirica Arts / Review

VIVA VIVALDI! THE LOST OPERAS

Lirica Arts & Red Dot Baroque

School of the Arts Concert Hall

Saturday (14 January 2023), 7.30 pm

 

AN EVENING WITH MR JOE GREEN

Lirica Arts & Beatrice Lin (Piano)

Esplanade Recital Studio

Thursday (19 January 2023), 7.30 pm

 

This review was published in The Straits Times on 24 January 2023 with the title "Soprano showdown in two concerts celebrating Vivaldi and Verdi's music".

 

Everyone loves Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, four out of his 500 concertos, but did anyone know that the prolific Italian also wrote no less than 94 operas? Only 20 of these are ever performed, thus this sparkling 140-minute concert by Lirica Arts and Red Dot Baroque led by violinist Alan Choo was a revelation as virtually none of this music has ever been heard in Singapore.

 

Excerpts performed included numbers from operas such as Motezuma (composed 1733) and Orlando Furioso (1714), only discovered within the last twenty years. In these baroque arias, Vivaldi’s mythological characters come across as personable and relatable humans with real feelings and emotions, including pain, anguish and joy.   

 

Soprano Joyce Lee Tung

Among the seven singers who performed, a battle royale emerged between two sopranos, locally-based Joyce Lee Tung and Taiwanese soprano Cheng Szu-Yun. Both were winners in high stakes on who could sing faster notes, hit higher pitches, emote and bring the house down. In Alma Oppressa (Soul Oppressed) from La Fida Ninfa, Lee projected vehemence in high registers, with furious running passages looking forward to coloratura divas of the future.

 

Soprano Cheng Szu-Yun

Cheng lapped up virtuoso runs in Qual Guerriero (As A Warrior) from Bajazet with great relish, culminating with siren-like whoops, reminding listeners of Wagner’s valkyries of over a century later. Complementing their heroics were visually-impaired soprano Claire Teo, who echoed Lee in Zeffiretti, Che Sussurate (from Ercole Sul Termodonte), mezzo-soprano Rebecca Chellappah, tenor Jonathan Macpherson and baritone Martin Ng, founder-director of Lirica Arts.

Countertenor Chan Wei En

 

Some of the evening’s best moments were offered by countertenor Chan Wei En with two of the orchestra’s solo instrumentalists. Nuttakamon Supattranont’s trumpet lit up the stage in Lucio’s Aria from Tito Manlio while Rachel Ho’s flute was the sublime presence in Ruggiero’s Aria from Orlando Furioso. There were simply no dull moments.

Photo: PianoManiac

 

Joe Green is none other than the Anglicised name of great Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, whose many operas are already well-known. But trust Lirica Arts to showcase familiar numbers from La Traviata and Il Trovatore alongside arias from Simon Boccanegra, The Sicilian Vespers, Don Carlo and Macbeth, not exactly household names. The close proximity of this concert with the Vivaldi gig was to harness the outsized talents of soprano Cheng, the evening’s undisputed star.

 

Verdi heroines are truly close to her heart, with no better example than Desdemona’s Willow Song and Ave Maria from Otello. Her beautiful voice brought a fragile pathos to the innocent and tragic figure whose premonition of death by her husband’s hand was simply chilling. Elena’s Bolero from The Sicilian Vespers, by contrast, was joyous and rhythmically charged by her ringing vibrato.

 

Her chemistry with baritone Martin Ng and tenor Jonathan Charles Tay was also clearly palpable in the highly dramatic Ciel! Mio Padre! (Heavens! My Father!) from Aida and waltz-inflected closing duet Parigi O Cara (Paris, My Dearest) from La Traviata respectively. The singers’ ability to listen to each other yet hold their own was the essence of operatic duets.

 

Pianist Beatrice Lin, a most sympathetic accompanist, was afforded a solo spotlight in a reduction of the Overture to The Force Of Destiny, which had the audience enraptured. In lieu of programme notes, host James Poole provided brief but coherent synopses of each number, which were helpful and much appreciated.

 

The evening closed with all three singers in Tace La Notte (The Night Is Silent) from Il Trovatore, a passionate romp which was so well received that its ecstatically-charged ending had to be encored. Viva Verdi, or Verdi lives, indeed.

All photos courtesy of Lirica Arts

unless otherwise stated.

 

TURN! TURN! TURN!... by re:mix / An Interview with FOO SAY MING

TURN! TURN! TURN!... 

The Twelve Seasons
By re:mix / FOO SAY MING, Violin
1 May 2011, 

Esplanade Concert Hall, 7.30 pm

This very interesting concert by re:mix, Singapore’s hippest chamber orchestra presents The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, Four Seasons of Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzolla and four new Seasons by Singaporean composers. PianoMania catches up with violinist FOO SAY MING, leader of re:mix for his thoughts on his latest musical escapade.

Q: Your chamber ensemble re:mix has developed quite a reputation in exploring new vistas of classical and popular music, and literally remixing them together. How did a classical violinist such as yourself arrive at this state of affairs?

re: mix has been asked this many times before, and the replies have always been surprising and often hilarious, such as: “We’re an outrageous group with exuberance and wild ideas... " and "Being fun-loving musicians, it is only natural that we have super fun in our concerts..."

There is just so much great music out there. The biggest limitation for any musician who loves good music is to play just one instrument. We ask ourselves: Why does good music have to be confined to the instrumentation it was originally conceived? Would such music still be great if presented in any other form?

In a nut-shell, we want to explore music within the chamber orchestra genre, and even exude the energy of a rock concert in the concert hall! We hope to continue to having fun, and have our audience join us in sharing this fun.

Do tell us what the pop song Turn! Turn! Turn!... has to do with The Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi (left).

Back in the 60's, singer-songwriter Pete Seeger adapted verses from Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes as the lyric of the hit-song "Turn, Turn, Turn". The whole chapter is summed up by its first verse: "To everything, there is a season". While Vivaldi's almost programmatic Four Seasons may not find resonance with these verses, we can see some common ground. Vivaldi’s Seasons graphically describes scenes of the Italian seasons from about 300 years ago, such as dances of love, harvest, festivities, solitude, mourning and rejoicing. Through this thought, we find a musical thread that in life, there is a time for everything.

Now you’ve done the Gidon Kremer thing by combining Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (left), and you’ve added four more Singaporean seasons to this mix. Will this sound like some kind of rojak?

If it does turn out to be one, we hope that it would be a good rojak, after all, it still is a signature Singaporean dish! Jokes aside, what re: mix hopes to achieve and convey in this very exciting programme is that life has its rhythm and a line, and for some, a line that has no end. What better way to present this concept with a Singaporean angle, by featuring Singaporean composers expressing their thoughts through music. In the four new works, we hope to invite our audience to ponder about the ups and downs of life’s journey. Hence, "To everything, there is a season".

Who are these Singaporean composers, and what can they offer our listeners?

At the helm of this project is veteran composer Kelly Tang, who is also advisor for this re:mix special commission. The works of four composers are combined into one uniquely Singaporean canvas. We are excited to feature three rising Singaporean composers: Chen Zhang Yi, Denise Lee, and Derek Lim. Excellent in their own right, they are as diverse in their styles as their strengths! We "assigned" various movements and ideas to each in hope that these may become a vessel for their best composing skills, character and temperament. Their scores are trickling in, and we are already impressed and excited about performing these works. Our listeners can expect to experience an incredible palette of emotions and creativity!

How has working on these Twelve Seasons with re:mix enriched your life? Why should the audience come?

On a musical level, the pieces have a strong resonance with us performers. While the melodies in the Vivaldi Seasons have become evergreens, they nonetheless still evoke very universal emotions such as joy, love, and fear. Piazzolla's tangos are beloved because of the palpable beat and raunchy dance steps, but the music is laced with sorrow and frustration.

The Singapore "Seasons" boast the best of Singapore's young composers, and their style is nothing shy of intense and diverse. The concert will be a roller-coaster of emotions, intensities and colours, for both performers and listeners.

There is a season for everything. And on Labour Day, we invite all to lend an ear and supporting hand for some of Singapore's talented composers. And also to spend a relaxing evening with re:mix in some of the most beautiful music written for the string orchestra.

This interview was first published in SMA News (March 2011).