Yearly Archives: 2018

Russell Braun and Carolyn Maule at Mazzoleni Hall

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8b440c574ff48428011373a5639b_GalleryYesterday’s Mazzoleni Songmasters concert featured Russell Braun and Caolyn Maule in a generous and varied program anchored on Schumann’s Dichterliebe; a setting of sixteen poems by Heine.  It was framed by three Mendelssohn songs and a varied and intriguing second half program.

Russell is a singer at the height of his powers.  He has a lovely instrument and perfect control of pitch, dynamics and tone colour.  He’s also a sensitive and musical human being.  Throw all that at text and music as rich as Dichterliebe and the result is inevitably quite wonderful.  One could just luxuriate in an emotional journey through the highs and lows of romantic love and a physical one up and down that magical river, the Rhine. The Mendelssohn was rather lovely too.

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Rigoletto at the COC

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If anybody is wondering why I haven’t yet posted a review of the Rigoletto that opened at the COC on Saturday it’s because, for the first time, I was reviewing for Bachtrack; a London based classical music site.  The teaser is:

Christopher Alden’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto returned to Toronto tighter, more focussed and with fewer dramatic incongruities. Add to this that every aspect of the music making was top notch and it made for a fine evening at the theatre.

The full review can be found here.

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Photo credit: Michael Cooper

Signal boosting

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Out of the Cold Benefit Concert For Toronto Homeless – January 27th at 8pm at the Church of the Redeemer.

Toronto musicians are getting together to play a concert to raise funds for and awareness of the homelessness crisis in our city.

Program: Chamber music, vocalists, and a grand finale led by David Bowser of a few opera favourites.

All proceeds to the Sistering and Fred Victor shelters.

The sistering: http://sistering.org/
Fred Victor: http://www.fredvictor.org/

Church of the Redeemer is easy to get to by transit: Museum or Bay subways. The church is at the corner of Bloor and Avenue Rd./University Ave. across from the ROM.

I don’t have any more details at this point but there’s a Facebook page

Don’t take that baritone with me!

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baritone-hearts-women-s-v-neck-t-shirt

Probably not

To the Four Season’s Centre last night to check out one of the COC’s adult education events.  This time it was about the baritone voice in all its aspects and featured Liz Upchurch at the piano and, mostly, doing the talking with Ensemble Studio members Sam Chan and Bruno Roy plus ES graduate Neil Craighead back in Toronto to sing Ceprano (not soprano) in Rigoletto doing some singing.

Besides the singing, of which more later, I think there were two takeaways from the evening though it was not actually divided up that way.  One, fascinating, dealt with the development of the voice and the sheer number of years it takes for bigger voices to more or less grow up.  Also, how do you develop and stretch the voice while staying vocally healthy.  Neil is 34 and his voice is really just beginning to get where one can see it going, which is likely big to very big.  Sam and Bruno, much younger, are still going through the process of figuring out what Fach (see below) they really are.  This seems to happen to everyone except maybe genuine basses, high sopranos and the really obvious tenors.  It was pretty cool for instance to heat Bruno sing a tenor aria though not, of course, something like Pour mon âme.

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Looking ahead to February

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groundhog-day-usaFebruary is going to be really busy so I think I’ll take the previews in chunks.  First up though one event in January I haven’t yet had opportunity to mention.  This coming Sunday 21st Fawn Chamber Creative have a PWYC fundraiser for their in process  opera-ballet project.  It’s from 2-6pm at The Smiling Buddha.  It will be party, silent auction and some performance.  Previous ones have been fun but I’m booked Sunday.  Details at: http://www.fawnchambercreative.com/events/upcoming/. Also in January and missed off the radar, on the 28th at 3pm at Mazzoleni Hall,the Amici Ensemble have a Strauss inspired concert featuring the lovely but tiny Sasha Djihanian who is current holder of the loudness to weight record for a soprano.

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My armour is transformed into wings

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I’m usually a bit leery of watching older recordings of 19th century Italian opera.  The aesthetic is rarely my thing.  But, when I came across a recording of Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco directed by Werner Herzog I had to take a look.  It was a pretty weird experience.  It would hardly have been odder if Klaus Kinski had sung the title role.  It’s a production from the Teatro Communale di Bologna and it was recorded in 1990.

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The actual, for real, COC 2018/19 season

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chemistexplaThis just in:

The fall season will open with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in the Carsen production as predicted yesterday.  The (pleasant) surprise is that Gordon Bintner will sing the title role.  Joyce El-Khoury sings Tatiana and Joseph Kaiser is Lensky.  Johannes Debus conducts.

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Norma with string

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I rather like recordings from the Macerata Festival where the performances take place in the enormous amphitheatre of the Arena Sferisterio.  Bellini’s Norma is a good choice for such as setting and the 2016 production directed by Luigi di Gangi and Ugo Giacomazzi makes good use of the space.  It also uses string.  The sets are stringy.  The very scruffy Gauls wear shapeless tunics with lots of string over them.  The slightly smarter Romans also wear string.  And everybody plays with string.  There are more strings than in the Princeton Physics Department. There’s lots of face paint too.  The production also makes use of a spectacular multi-coloured lighting plot but, apart from the visuals, is pretty conventional and straightforward.

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More fun with DVD statistics

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bad-news-statistics-1Thinking about the analysis I did of my DVD reviewing habits, by individual work, just after Christmas, I wondered if a different pattern would emerge if I looked by composer instead.  In a way it does show a different picture though some things remain the same.

Here’s the ranking based on the number of reviews of works by each composer with at least ten reviews (note this includes staged oratorios etc so may not be strictly comparable with Operabase).  The Operabase ranking, based on performances in the 2015/26 season, follows in brackets.

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