Davide Livermore’s production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, performed and filmed at Barcelona’s Liceu in 2018 moves the setting of the piece from the 1700s to the 1880s and includes a spoken prologue (in English). In the prologue the elderly Des Grieux is visiting Ellis Island just before its closure and is reminiscing. The meaning of this will eventually become clear but what we get from the beginning is this elderly figure as a silent spectator to the action. We may even be seeing the whole thing narrated as a flashback by Des Grieux.
Rose in Bloom is a new recital CD from coloratura soprano Erin Morley accompanied by Gerald Martin Moor. It’s a bit of a mixed bag. There’s some really nice singing and playing but some of the music choices leave me a bit cold.
Thursday’s concert by members of the Ensemble Studio in the RBA was an all French affair (at least as far as language went) and it was rather good. Karoline Podolak iniated proceedings with Mattia Senesi at the piano with Kurt Weill’s “Youkali”. Now I’ve heard this sung by everybody from Barbara Hannigan to Benjamin Appl and I’d have to see that Ms. Podolak is right up there. There was 
Serious Cabaret is an album by singer Mary Carewe and pianist Philip Mayers who is also responsible for the arrangements. It’s an eclectic mix of cabaret material from the 1920s to the 1970s. There’s classic material from the Weimar Republic, including songs by Hollaender (“Oh just suppose”) and Spoliansky (“Maskulinum/Femininum”, “It’s All a Swindle”) and one I hadn’t heard before; Zemlinsky’s “Herr Bombardil” about a man who eats until he explodes. 
love to my liking is an album of 13th century Trouvère music from Brooklyn based ensemble Alkemie. It’s in many ways similar in style to the music of the troubadors of what is niow Southern France but being from the North the texts are in medieval French rather than Occitan. There’s a range of songs, dances and motets on the record including some in a form I hadn’t encountered before; where two, or even three, distinct texts are sung simultaneously by different singers. 
