I last saw a live show in a theatre on March 13th. Eight months later I’ve watched a lot of web content as well as continuing to review commercial opera recordings. A month ago I wrote in Opera Canada that “there’s no substitute for live” and I stand by that view. I do think though that there’s an opportunity and a need to rethink how opera and song is produced for webstreaming.
This is a bit of a belated plug for Opera 5 and Musique Trois Femmes’ virtual conference Opera Con. It’s on this Friday/Saturday so it’s too late to catch yesterday’s events live but they are all available on demand. There are more events this afternoon and evening where you can participate in the live text chat. All the sessions are on Opera 5’s Youtube channel. It’s mostly younger artists talking about how to make opera more diverse and accessible with everything from opera for younger audiences to whale song to virtual reality. Worth a look.
Elliot Madore’s recital with Rachel Andrist was supposed to have happened at Mazzoleni all with a limited live audience last weekend but that didn’t happen and the programme was recorded in an empty Koerner Hall and streamed last night. The programme’s first half was all French and the second half English.
There’s obvious irony in a Hungarian directing Wagner’s Lohengrin; even more so when that director sees in Wagner’s Brabant parallels with Orban’s Hungary. It’s quite interesting to see how this plays out in Árpád Schilling’s production recorded at Staatsoper Stuttgart in 2018. The first thing to say is that this is an extremely minimalist production with a circle on stage , a curved back wall and not much else, though a bed appears in Act 3. It’s very monochrome; the stage and the characters are all more or less in shades of grey until late in the second act when the Vier Edelknaben (here definitely women) and then the chorus appears in colourful but still eclectically modern, casual outfits. The only real device for telling the story, apart, from the words and music, is the way groups of characters are arranged on stage.
There are schedule changes to the RCM’s line-up of webstreams. The key ones are that last weekend’s recital with Elliot Madore and Rachel Andrist that went ahead without an audience will be streamed at 8pm tomorrow and it’s free.
The December 3rd concert with Adrianne Pieczonka, assorted vanishing tenors, Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra will go ahead sans tenors. That one is ticketed ($50 I think) and streams live at 8pm.
Unsurprisingly the programme at the RCM is in a state of flux as they try to cope with the gyrations of the provincial government so do check anything and everything close to the expected date.
The web address for all the RCM shows is www.rcmusic.ca/livestream
Last night Confluence Concerts streamed their latest offering; a tribute to Henry Purcell, preceded by a pre-show interview between Larry Beckwith and Andrew Parrott. There was beautifully played instrumental music from Victoria Baroque, songs from Lawrence Williford and Lucas Harris recorded at the Elora Festival and a couple of interesting takes on If Music Be the Food of Love plus Two Daughters of this Aged Stream featuring Daniel Taylor, Rebecca Genge and Sinéad White plus instrumentalists from the UoT Faculty of Music Historical Performance Department. I was less taken with Duo Serenissima (Elizabeth Hetherington, soprano and David Mackor, theorbo). I can’t tell whether it was the recording acoustic or a diction issue but the words were pretty much unintelligible which is a big problem with Purcell!.
Further to my post earlier today. The GGS Fall Opera streaming is not on for tomorrow. It’s been postponed until January. This was not communicated to me. The same thing happened with the Opera Atelier postponed show where it was still showing for the original date right up to that date on the RCM website but in that case OA’s PR people were able to give me the correct information. I’m not best pleased.
A quick reminder that tonight, tomorrow and Saturday see new streams from AtG (A Little Too Cozy prequel), The GGS Fall Opera (Seven Deadly Sins and Lucrezia) and Confluence (Purcell). There’s also new content on the appropriate Youtube channels from Domoney Artists and Alex Hajek.
Regular readers of this blog would probably expect that, faced with a Zeffirelli production of Il Trovatore from the Verona Arena, I would run screaming for the hills. The 2019 recording though piqued my interest. The geek in me wanted to see how much difference 4K ultra HD made, having only so far been able to get my paws on a couple of such recordings. I was also aware that it’s quite some time since I’ve heard Anna Netrebko and here she heads up a very appealing looking cast. So I succumbed.
I guess there are two ways one can approach “Gothic Horror”. Either one takes its conventions at face value as in, say, Bram Stoker’s Dracula or one treats it tongue in cheek; Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey of the BBC Dracula from earlier this year. It’s no surprise that in La nonne sanglante Gounod very much takes things at face value and, equally unsurprisingly chucks in a fair amount of Catholic religiosity complete with the unlikeliest characters wandering off to Heaven at the end.
operaramblings 