Monthly Archives: May 2013

The knot is tied – Figaro’s Wedding at The Burroughes

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figaro

Photo credit: Roger Rousseau

Figaro’s Wedding music by W.A Mozart, libretto by Joel Ivany, opened last night at The Burroughes.  A full house, many dressed as if attending a wedding as requested, saw an extremely effective realisation of another ambitious project from Against the Grain Theatre.  This isn’t just another low budget production of a well known opera. Figaro’s Wedding is a complete rework of the piece.  The music is the familiar Mozart in a very effective piano quintet arrangement by Topher Mokrzewski, albeit with cuts to suit the new libretto,  The libretto is in English, cuts the chorus (and Barbarina) and reshapes the story around a wedding in today’s Toronto.  Gone are aristocrats, servants and hangers on.  Instead we have a young couple – Susanna and Figaro, his boss and boss’ wife – Alberto and Rosina, and the various arrangers and functionaries connected with the wedding.  Oh yes, and there’s a lesbian grad student called Cherubino living in Alberto and Rosina’s basement.  The story unfolds in a way that’s close enough to da Ponte for the twists and departures to add a little extra amusement for those who know the libretto well.  It’s very smart, extremely funny and surprisingly singable.

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Back to the future

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euphoniaIt seems I spend a lot of my time in physical and electronic conversations about the declining audience for classical music; especially song recitals and chamber music.  I understand where the doom and gloomers are coming from.  The figures don’t lie.  The number of people who will pay $60 to sit in a dark room for two hours listening to a middle rank act in reverent silence is unquestionably on the decline.  On the other hand there are newer forces at play.  Tonight Against the Grain Theatre open a new show, Figaro’s Wedding, that will be as far removed from the “opera house as temple of culture” idea as their ground breaking La Bohème and it’s pretty much sold out.  Today the following arrived in my in-box:

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Live from Oslo

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I’m just back from being in the audience for a live event that featured Stefan Herheim, in Oslo, and Atom Egoyan, in Toronto, discussing and answering questions about their respective productions of Strauss’ Salome.  It was set up with a live satellite link between the two cities which worked rather well.  The event also featured two rather dry academic presentations about the productions and productions of Salome in general.  This bit went on for nearly an hour and a half and reminded me of why one takes notes at university.  It’s because if you don’t this stuff goes in one ear and out the other.

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In which Dido doesn’t die

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Oddly enough, given the post previous to this, Reiner Moritz’s essay in the booklet accompanying this recording of Cavalli’s La Didone brings up the Harnoncourt/Ponelle Monteverdi recordings as a precursor to what he sees as Bill Christie’s similar championing of Cavalli.  I guess the big difference is that only three of Monteverdi’s operas survive while we have 27 of Cavalli’s.  I think he may have a point though.  It seems to me that 17th century Italian opera works on an aesthetic which is very in tune with today.  The relative spareness and clarity of the music seems closer to Britten than to Verdi and the cynicism and explicit sexuality of the libretti closer to Anna Nicole than La Bohème.

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Back to the beginning

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Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is one of the few 17th works still in the canonical opera repertoire though little performed before the “early music revival”.  So it was quite a bold step when the Opernhaus Zürich in the 1970s staged all three extant Monteverdi operas in productions by J-P ponelle and with Nikolaus Harnoncourt leading an orchestra of period instruments.  All three productions were subsequently made into lip-synched films and have been re-released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon as a boxed set.

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Herheim and Egoyan

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This Sunday afternoon (in Toronto) and evening (in Oslo) Brent Bambury of the CBC will interview Atom Egoyan (in Toronto) and Stefan Herheim (in Oslo) about their respective approaches to Richard Strauss’ Salome.  The Egoyan version is just finishing up a run at COC (my impressions here) while Herheim’s version, previously seen in Salzburg, opens at Den Norske Opera & Ballett on Saturday.  There will be live audiences in both cities connected by videolink.  Details for Toronto are under the cut.

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Bel Canto bliss

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annachristycdarioacostaIt’s one of the nicer things about Toronto that from time to time  a visiting star at the COC will agree to do a free lunchtime recital in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.  Today was the turn of American coloratura Anna Christy who is currently singing the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor.  It was an exceptionally fun sixty minutes.

I was a little worried when she and accompanist Liz Upchurch just took their places and started.  I need not have been.  We got a set of three bel canto art songs that were full of virtuosity and personality.  The sheer technical skill was obvious but so was the range of tone colour.  Those doomandgloomists who think modern singers can’t act with the voice should listen to Ms. Christy.  It’s all there.  After that opening she did open up and explain the middle part of her set; pieces by Bolcom and Copland that she sees as natural successors to bel canto.  Sung with exquisite attention to the texts one can see her point.  She was also very funny and very human.  I do like modern divas so much more than the one’s who get in a snit because the caviar isn’t the right temperature.

She finished up with arias by Rossini, Handel and Donizetti, all sung stylishly and with tasteful ornamentation.  It was really classy.  And to round things out her parents were there and it was her dad’s seventieth and there are no prizes for guessing how things finished up.

Another thought on offing nuns

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I was riding my bike in the Don Valley this morning and, as I passed underneath the Bloor Street Viaduct, a thought struck me.  Maybe Against the Grain Theatre’s next Toronto-centric opera adaptation coud be Dialogues des Carmélites.  The last scene could be staged with the nuns jumping, one by one, from the viaduct.  I don’t know whether enough people have read In the Skin of a Lion to get the reference but what could be more Toronto than Ondaatje?

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Another look at Carmélites

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It’s becoming a habit.  For the fifth time this season I went back to take a second look at a COC production.  This time it was Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.  We were in our usual seats at the front of the Orchestra Ring rather than at the back of Ring 3 where I was on opening night.  I still didn’t notice any real issues of orchestra/singer balance, which had been complained of by some reviewers.  Maybe it was an issue towards the front of the Orchestra where the press tend to be?

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