{"id":3578,"date":"2017-05-22T09:56:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T08:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=3578"},"modified":"2017-05-22T09:56:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T08:56:53","slug":"brighton-festival-les-talens-lyriques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=3578","title":{"rendered":"Brighton Festival: Les Talens Lyriques"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Dome, Brighton, 21 May 2017<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the 450<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of Monteverdi\u2019s birth it was understandable that there would be celebrations this summer, but Brighton has excelled itself. After I Fagiolinni\u2019s magnificent <em>Vespers<\/em> at Glyndebourne come <strong><em>Les Talens Lyriques<\/em><\/strong> with secular works. Surprisingly, after the opulence of the liturgical settings, these vocal pieces \u2013 settings of \u00a0classical age stories &#8211; are far more sparse in their orchestration and harmony, with an intense attention to the text and emotional detail.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Les-Talens-Lyriques.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3579\" src=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Les-Talens-Lyriques.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>They opened with <em>Ballo delle ingrate<\/em>, a court scene which would originally have involved members of the audience in costume. Here we had to concentrate simply on the score, but what a wonderful piece of understatement it is. Valeria Girardello\u2019s moving Venere pleads with Nathanael Tavernier\u2019s hard-edged Pluto to allow the shades of arrogant women, doomed to eternity in the gloom of Hades, to be allowed out to warn their living relatives. It is a none-too subtle piece of social engineering but so masterfully sung it almost convinces us.<\/p>\n<p>Magdalena Pluta\u2019s Arianna is far more open in her emotional turmoil and genuinely moving. The constant gentle return to <em>O Teseo<\/em> makes us realise that she will never let go of her love for him. Given the simplicity of the orchestration this is a miracle of detail.<\/p>\n<p>After the interval we heard <em>Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. <\/em>Though more familiar, the setting still surprises with the intensity of its emotional changes and the ferocity of the writing. The narrative was succinctly handled by Nicolas Maraziotis\u2019 powerful and precise diction. The final baptismal scene alone allows for gentler tones from the organ and strings.<\/p>\n<p>There was a time when the Brighton Festival would have brought us fully staged versions of Monteverdi\u2019s operas. Perhaps the costs are too high today \u2013 but if we had had to swap either of these events for one of the more familiar operas it would have been a great loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dome, Brighton, 21 May 2017 With the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi\u2019s birth it was understandable that there would be celebrations this summer, but Brighton has excelled itself. After I Fagiolinni\u2019s magnificent Vespers at Glyndebourne come Les Talens Lyriques with secular &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=3578\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3580,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions\/3580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}