The COC has announced “live” performances for the balance of the 2021/22 season and colour me massively underwhelmed. Obviously, the return to live performance is something we’ve all been waiting for but three dull revival productions of ultra-mainstream operas is not what I had hoped for. For the record here is what’s coming up:
Puccini – Madama Butterfly – February 4th – 25th, 2022. Tghis is the COC production that has been seen umpteen times already at the COC and it has absolutely nothing to say. One had hoped that if and when the COC did this piece again they would come up with a new production that wasn’t so transparently colonialist.
Verdi – La Traviata – April 23rd – May 20th, 2022. Another basically dull, traditional production though, at least, as Douglas Adams might say “mostly harmless”.
Mozart – The Magic Flute – May 6th – 21st, 2022. This is the production that the original director called “feminist” though anything “feminist” or, indeed, “anythingist” has escaped me on the multiple occasions I’ve seen it.
So there it is. Looks like a “lowest common denominator” approach to luring back the traditional crowd. It’s certainly hard to see how it helps with reaching out to new audiences or to achieving any of the bold goals of diversity, inclusion and telling stories relevant to today’s audience that were bruited so loud during lockdown.
Confluence Conerts has announced its 2021/22 season with some details to be firmed up when anyone figures out what the “new normal” actually is. First up is a presentation of the Bach suites for solo cello in conjunction with the Toronto Bach Festival. They are being performed at Heliconian Hall and recorded for later, free, Youtube streaming on Confluence’s channel. There will be some tickets available for the live performance but no details on that yet. The performances are as follows:
The Royal Conservatory of Music has just announced a real live season for 2021/22. Covid restrictions will likely be in place for at least the first part of the season but hopefully will ease up at some point. There’s the usual eclectic mix of classical, vocal, jazz, world music etc so I’ll just cover the classical vocal stuff which is actually pretty exciting. Let’s go through it chronologically. 
There’s a Met in HD season again with ten shows starting in October. All shows start at 12.55pm New York time. Three out of ten performances are 21st century operas which is as surprising as it is welcome. There are some interesting looking new productions and one or two that fit into a Met formula that doesn’t work for me usually. And there are two remarkably venerable productions that surely are past their sell by date. Here are my thoughts on each: