Author Archives: operaramblings

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About operaramblings

Toronto based lover of opera, art song, related music and all forms of theatre.

Tapestry moving forward

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Curbside-Concerts-Square-WebI think last night’s virtual conference with Michael Mori and Jaime Martino of Tapestry marks the first real announcement of intention for the 2021/22 season by any Canadian company and it offers insight into what may and may not be possible in the next year to eighteen months.  Tapestry adapted quickly and creatively to COVID conditions and so I think their read on the future is important.  So here’s my take on what was said.

They are planning for live performances with an audience from January 2022.  That sounds about right to me.  In their case they are looking at two site specific works.  Gould’s Wall by Brian Current; libretto by Lisa Balkan, is to be performed at the Royal Conservatory.  I thought this was a great idea when I first heard about it from Brian four years ago and I’m really looking forward to it.  The other piece, to be performed at OCAD, is Nicole Lizée’s Rossum’s Universal Robots with libretto by Nicolas Billon.  I think this originated in the LibLab in November of 2014.  There are a number of other new works in the pipeline for future seasons.

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Gracias a la vida

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What I really like about the Confluence concert series is that sometimes they do music that I love and sometimes they do stuff that’s completely unfamiliar to me and which I almost invariably enjoy.  Last night’s streamed concert came into the second category.  It was curated by Patricia O’Callaghan and featured the music of Astor Piazzolla who reinvented the tango and the Andean roots influenced music of Mercedes Sosa.  Tangos are great fun of course but I was more struck by the music of Sosa who spoke for the voiceless and oppressed of dictatorship Argentina in the same way that Victor Juara spoke for the Chilean underclass.  Fortunately for her she didn’t share his fate though she was forced into exile.  The music was interwoven with spoken texts from the likes of Borges read by Diego Matamoros and the visual art of Kevork Mourad.  All in all a very intriguing program.

gracias

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Harnoncourt 2 – Don Giovanni

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Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 2014 cycle of the Da Ponte operas continues with Don Giovanni.  The recording has much in common with his Le nozze di Figaro, even down to the same essay in the booklet, and I’m not going to repeat what I wrote in that review.  If you haven’t read it, I recommend a look before reading the rest of this.

1.donnaelvira

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Distorted mirrors

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Watching the recently released recording of the 2017 production of Giodarno’s Andrea Chénier from La Scala had me wondering why this piece isn’t done more often.  If it had been written by Puccini, and it might well have been, it would get done as often as Tosca, with which it has many similarities.  In the conscience stricken revolutionary Gérard it has one of the few multi-dimensional characters in verismo opera and the music, for Chénier in particular, has all the qualities that people listen to Puccini for.  I guess perhaps one needs at least a rough understanding of the events of the French revolution to really follow the plot as Giodarno, unlike Puccini, roots his work in actual history but still.  Opera fashion is very odd.(*)

1.ball

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Threepenny Submarine

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Rachel Krehm and co’s latest project Threepenny Submarine is now live on the Opera 5 Youtube channel.  It’s a collaboration between Opera 5 and Gazelle Automations and features two (puppet) singers on a quest in a submarine.  It stars Caitlin Wood as a Rossini singing cockatiel with a tidiness fetish, which doesn’t seem terribly like Cait (at least the tidiness thing.  Of course she can sing Rossini), and Rachel Krehm as a messy Wagnerian vixen, which sounds about right.  It’s designed for kids but it’s quite funny and very cute and should work for kids of all ages.

threepennysubmarine

Also on the tubes, The Crossing have produced an animated watercolour video of one of the tracks from their recent recording of Gavin Bryars’ A Native Hill.

Harnoncourt’s Mozart cycle

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Back in 2014 Nikolaus Harnoncourt launched a project to present all three Mozart/da Ponte operas, concert style, on the stage of the Theater an der Wien in a single month.  They are now being released on DVD/Blu-ray.  The first is Le nozze di Figaro and it comes with a 52 minute documentary by Felix Breisach; Nikolaus Harnoncourt – Between Obsession and Perfection – part 1.

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