Yearly Archives: 2018

TSMF opener

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The Toronto Summer Music Festival opened last night at Koerner Hall with a concert by the Escher Quartet who came in at quite short notice for the venerable Borodins who had to pull out due to illness.  The theme of this year’s festival is “Reflections of Wartime” as perhaps befits the 100th anniversary of the Great War.  That said, I’m not sure how last night’s programme fitted the theme.  None of Schumann’s Quartet no.1, Shostakovich’s Quartet no. 9 nor Tchaikovsky’s Quartet no. 1 have any obvious war references.

escherquartet

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The Canadian Nightingale

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crawfordThe Canadian Nightingale: Bertha Crawford and the Dream of the Prima Donna is a biography by Jane Cooper of early 20th century Canadian coloratura soprano Bertha Crawford who became, rather improbably, an “A” list opera star in Poland before returning to Canada to die in relative obscurity.  It’s the story of an unusual life but it’s also the story of how opera and vocal music was impacted by war, revolution, depression, jazz and the cinema.  It offers interesting insights into the Toronto (and wider) Canadian musical scene in the first quarter of the 20th century which was curiously similar to today in some ways and very different in others.  There was neither opera nor a symphony orchestra in Toronto in that period so professional opportunities were few and far between but then, as now, most aspiring singers first professional gig was a section lead in a church choir and a main route to fame and fortune was to head for Europe.  At least steamers had bigger baggage allowances than Air Canada.

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I Call myself Princess

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I Call myself Princess is a new “play with opera music” written by Métis playwright and actor Jani Lauzon which will première at the Aki Studio in Toronto in September in a production directed by Marjorie Chan.  I heard about this project a while ago from Marion Newman who will headline the new production and was intrigued.  I knew it was going to be about American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman and his Creek/Cherokee collaborator Tsianina Redfeather.  I knew they did a touring show including Cadman’s song cycle From Wigwam to Tepee and that’s about it.  It sounded like the worst kind of late Victorian cultural appropriation and “Redsploitation” so why would serious and intelligent Indigenous artists like Lauzon and Newman be interested? Today I spoke with Jani in an attempt to find out.

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Marion Newman as Tsianina Redfeather.
Photo by Dahlia Katz. Design by Mariah Meawasige

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Hytner’s Così

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Nicholas Hytner’s production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, seen at Glyndebourne in 2006, is about as traditional as it gets.  The story is straightforwardly told and the settings and costumes are 18th century Naples, or at least some operatic approximation of it.  That said, it’s immensely enjoyable and, just occasionally, goes beyond the superficial.  The strength lies in the casting and in the director’s decision to allow his young singers to behave like young people.  Miah Persson as Fiordiligi and Anke Vondung as Dorabella are close to perfect in their exuberant girlishness.  Naturally Vondung gets to be a bit ditzier than the angstier Persson because that’s how the thing is written.  Both of them sing extremely well too and there’s nothing lacking in the big solos or duets.

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Farewell to Oundjian

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Wouldn’t that make a really good title for a pipe tune?  But that aside Peter Oundjian is marking the end of his long run as Music Director of the TSO with a series of three Beethoven 9ths with Kirsten MacKinnon, Lauren Segal, Andrew Haji, Tyler Duncan and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir joining the TSO.  I caught the second yesterday evening.  It’s always a bit odd listening to a piece one has been familiar with for years.  Will I hear or learn something new tonight?  Will this performance probe the nature of the piece like I have never heard it probed?  The Tafelmusik performance and recording of this piece did just that.  I felt I was hearing it for the very first time.  Alas, the only new thought I had last night was about how repetitive certain sections are.  So there it was, an OK run through but no more.  The soloists were fine, though perhaps possessing a weight of voice better suited to Tafelmusik at Koerner than the TSO in full cry in the unforgiving sonic deserts of Roy Thomson.  I did think Ms. MacKinnon and the sopranos of the choir managed the fiendishly high setting of their part (probably a good job that Beethoven didn’t have to listen to complaints from his sopranos) very well.  Nice work from the piccolo accompanying them too.  Otherwise it was a bit unremarkable though that didn’t stop the obligatory idolatry from the RTH audience.  Heaven knows what would happen if they ever heard a truly great performance…

MacKinnon, Segal, Haji, Duncan, Peter Oundjian (@Nick Wons)

Photo credit: Nick Wons

McVicar’s Entführung

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I think I’ve got used to David McVicar productions or, at least, what he’s produced in the last ten years or so.  The director’s notes will sound erudite and convey the impression that he’s gained some vital new insight into a well known work.  The actual production on stage will be almost entirely conventional with maybe the odd visual flourish but nothing to start the synapses firing.  This is very much the case with his 2015 production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail from Glyndebourne.  The “big idea” is that Bassa Selim is caught between two worlds; the ‘west” and the “east”.  Well duh!  This is as revelatory as pointing out that Mimi has TB.  This “revelation” is the reason/excuse for presenting the work with dialogues unaltered and uncut.  This is very much a mixed blessing.  Yes, it does allow some character development that’s otherwise missing but on the other hand it emphasises the fact that without some interesting new angle Entführing is basically dramatically a bit feeble.  Is she faithful?  How dare he doubt it?  Please forgive me.  Why should I?  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Enter Osmin.  Hang them.  Impale them. Daggers and poison.  Over and over.

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Opera 5’s Barber of Seville

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Opera 5 opened a run of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville at the Factory Theatre last night.  It’s arguably the most conventional thing Opera 5 have done.  It’s a (very) mainstream piece.  There was no accompanying themed food or drink (a glass of Rotsina?).  There was no audience participation.  There weren’t even Aria Umezawa’s characteristically minimalist touches.  What there was a carefully constructed Barber for reduced forces directed by new Artistic Director Jessica Derventzis and conducted by Evan Mitchell.

O5 Barber #2_preview

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Queer of the Night

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queerofthenightSo you have sung the Queen of the Night exactly 2,327 times; high Fs and all, and you are sick to death of it and the Misogyny it rode in on.  What do you do?  Well, obvs you create a one woman show that teeters between mocking opera stereotypes of women and something much darker.  At least that’s what Teiya Kasahara did as part of Tapestry Opera’s Tap This: A Queerated Opera Series presented in conjunction with Pride.

So our favourite inked butch dyke coloratura comes on in a foofy dress complete with Dollarama coronet and wand and starts to sing the heck out of that aria – you know, the one they sing at weddings.  But then it rapidly morphs into a diatribe; first in German, then in heavily accented English, about the role, how women are portrayed in opera, occasionally veering into how women; sopranos in particular, are seen/treated in the opera world(*) before switching up into dress pants and a wing collared shirt with studs (despite pianist David Eliakis’ increasingly frantic pleas of “no pants”).  Along the way there are jokes, some killer singing and some very sharp reminders of what it’s like to be a strong, athletic, queer woman in a world that expects its sopranos to behave as if they are romantically dying of TB on-stage and off.  It’s a very moving and rather disturbing 45 minutes that I really can’t do full justice to.  It’s a very brave show and  I hope Teiya puts it on again.  More people need to see it.

(*)It’s odd that it should come just after I first encountered Kiri Te Kanawa live for surely few sopranos have been as sexually objectified.  I don’t know how many people remember Bernard Levin’s Times column written after her ROH debut in 1971 but it’s probably the only time the Thunderer was printed using drool.