I went to Opera Revue at Castro’s on Sunday afternoon.  It’s the first time I’ve been to a regular Opera Revue show in a while because of geographic and scheduling constraints plus, of all their locations, I prefer Castro’s and they haven’t been there in a while.

It was good.  There was the usual mix of opera, musical theatre, Weill and other stuff.  Dani did those haiku songs.  I can’t believe it’s been five years since I saw them last at Castro’s.  The usual gang of Dani Friesen, Alex Hajek and Claire Elise-Harris were there plus mezzo Dorothea Unwin.  Her first number was Schumann’s Widmung which was not only quite beautifully sung but also quite a gutsy choice for a first number at an opera-in-a-bar thing.  There was a new TTC parody too.  Three sets too, so quite a long afternoon.  Fortunately Castro’s has good beer.

So, all in all, what one goes to these sorts of events for which got me thinking about opera in bars and why I haven’t been going so much.  I think the gold standard was Against the Grain’s Opera Pub when it was at the Amsterdam Bicycle Club.  It was the right size.  Big enough to get a real crowd in but not too, too big and always jammed, so great atmosphere.  As well as the usual suspects there were often people visiting town for COC shows either in the audience or sometimes even performing and it had a predictable regular time slot.  The food was lousy and the beer so-so but it didn’t seem to matter.  AtG moved first to the Tranzac, which was OK and then to The Drake.  At that point it really stopped being “Opera Pub” and became “Opera in an Expensive Cocktail Bar” with about as much atmosphere as the surface of the moon.  Not my thing.

At this point I find Opera Revue‘s shows much more fun but never quite manage to keep up with when and where they are and the venues vary a lot.  Castro’s and the Emmet Ray work well.  Others are a bit harder to get too or not very pubby.  Maybe somebody could organise something at C’est What.  I’d be up for that!