Author Archives: operaramblings

Unknown's avatar

About operaramblings

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

Mother Earth

Posted on by
Reply

Whetung_Mother_Earth_Coasters_grandeThe Vocalis series from the UoT’s graduate students tends to fly under the radar a bit.  Perhaps because it’s usually lost in the abundance of free university linked concerts in Walter Hall.  Sunday night’s performance though was at the Extension Room; always an interesting venue, with more room for actor/singers to move around and interact with the audience.  The theme was Mother Earth, and our responsibility to nurture the planet that nurtures us.  Coal Barons and Big Oil can switch off now.

Continue reading →

Glenn Gould School Vocal Showcase

Posted on by
Reply

It’s always an interesting evening.  It’s the first chance of the year to see what the Conservatory has to offer.  The first thing I noticed was that the tenor famine seems to be over.  There were four tenors on offer to two baritones.  Just the one mezzo though and more sopranos than I could count.

GGSVS

So many sopranos..

Continue reading →

Opera Atelier 2019/20

Posted on by
Reply

Opera Atelier has announced its 2019/20 season.  As usual there are two main stage shows.  The first is a revival of their 2011 production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.  It runs from October 31st to November 9th, 2019, in the Ed Mirvish Theatre.  It’s a production that plays up the comedy and the elements of the commedia dell’arte in the piece while pretty much eschewing anything deeper or darker.  The cast includes Douglas Williams as the Don with Stephen Hegedus as Leporello, Colin Ainsworth, as Don Ottavio, Meghan Lindsay as Donna Anna, Carla Huhtanen as Donna Elvira, Mireille Asselin as Zerlina, Olivier Laquerre as Masetto, and Gustav Andreassen as Commendatore. beautiful Ed Mirvish Theatre.  David Fallis conducts.

Opera-Atelier__Don-Giovanni-Meghan-Lindsay-and-company_Photo-by-Bruce-Zinger-2019_11

Continue reading →

Wagner with Sir Andrew Davis

Posted on by
2

The main event in last night’s programme at the TSO was the first act of Die Walküre in concert performance but it was preceded by The Ride of the Valkyries and, more substantially (if not louder) Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra Op.6.  It’s an interesting piece; post tonally expressionist with obvious homages to both Wagner and, especially, Mahler.  Sir Andrew gave it one of the best introductions of the kind that I have heard; situating it not just in the Viennese musical lineage but also drawing helpful parallels with the visual arts; Klimt, Kokoschka etc.  He also produced a reading of great clarity from the orchestra.  It’s easy for a big piece of this kind to dissolve into a sort of aural mush and thereby give the “I don’t like this modern stuff” crowd ammunition that it’s just “noise”.  Here the various strands, the references and even the musical jokes of the three movements were clearly delineated.  Lovely stuff.

Lise Davidsen, Sir Andrew Davis, Simon O'Neill (@Jag Gundu)

Continue reading →

(Re)thinking about the House of Atreus

Posted on by
3

iphigenia_15729_lgI just read Leslie Barcza’s very thoughtful review of the current COC Elektra.  It’s an interesting take and, in it’s way, entirely reasonable and please do go and read the whole thing.  There was though one theme where I just couldn’t agree and it took me some thinking to figure out why.  Paraphrasing a bit brutally, Leslie yearns for an Aegisth and a Klytemnestra he can hate and, as part of that, an Elektra who is more obviously degraded.  This had me thinking about my recent experience with a retelling of the last stage of the whole saga; Saga Collectìf’s Iphigenia and the Furies (on Taurian Land) and how that had impacted how I reacted to Elektra.

Continue reading →

Hook Up

Posted on by
Reply

Hook Up is a 95 minute musical theatre piece from composer Chris Thornborrow and librettist Julie Tepperman.  It’s been a while coming.  I saw the first inklings of it at Tapestry Briefs in September 2013.  That morphed into Selfie seen in workshop in October 2015.  Now it’s morphed again.  The basic characters are still there and some of the plot elements but the focus has shifted from cyber-bullying to sexual consent and the context from high school to first year university.

hookup-photobydahliakatz-8889

Continue reading →

TSO 2019/20

Posted on by
Reply

symphonie-fantastique-sir-andrew-davisThose season announcements just keep on coming.  This time it’s the TSO.  Here are my top picks.

  • Dynamic Duo: Hannigan & Storgårds – September 19th and 20th 2019. Barbara Hannigan conducts John Storgårds in Dutilleux’s Sur le même accord for Violin and Orchestra.  He conducts her in Brett Dean’s “And once I played Ophelia” from Hamlet.  There’s also some Beethoven, Haydn and Sibelius.
  • Massenet’s Thaïs (in concert) – November 7th and 9th 2019.  Sir Andrew Davis conducts with Erin Wall in the title role and Lucas Meachem as Athanaël.  Not a huge fan of this piece myself but I know there are Massenet fans out there.
  • Handel’s Messiah (in the Mozart arrangement) – December 17th to 22nd 2019.  Alexander Shelley of the NACO  conducts with Jane Archibald, Emily D’Angelo, Isaiah Bell, Russell Braun and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
  • Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, K. 543 and Requiem, K. 626 – January 15th to 18th 2020.  Sir Andrew Davis conducts with a vocal quartet from the Equilibrium Young Artists mentoring initiative, which I think is a Barbara Hannigan thing.

There’s also a ton of Beethoven.  Apparently it’s a big anniversary.  Full details here.

 

The Three Tenors

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s RBA lunchtime concert featured the three tenors; Kammersinger Michael Schade, currently appearing as Aegisth in the COC’s Elektra, Irish tenor Mick O’Schade and Scottish folksinger Michael McSchade.  They were most ably supported by COC Concertmaster Marie Bérard and Sandra Horst at the piano.  The concert was billed as a tribute to John McCormack and Fritz Kreisler but sad events had morphed it into also being a tribute to the CBC’s Neil Crory.  I hope, and believe, that he would have appreciated the combination of whimsy and serious music making.

2019-01-29-homage-9815

Continue reading →

Highlights of the 2019/20 season at the Royal Conservatory

Posted on by
Reply

There are a few interesting items in the initial announcement of the RCM’s 2019/20 season:

  • The Amici Chamber Ensemble with Russell Braun and the Elmer Iseler Singers offer a celebration of the 150th birthday of Armenian composer Komitas Vardapet. That’s on October 25th 2019.
  • Karina Gauvin and the Paciifica Baroque Orchestra have a programme called Russian White Nights: Opera arias from 18th century St. Petersburg.  That’s on November 1st 2019.
  • Phillipe Sly and Le Chimera Project are presenting a staged version of Schubert’s Winterreise with chamber ensemble.  That’s on January 17th 2020.
  • Perhaps the biggest deal of all is Peter Sellars directing the Los Angeles Master Chorale in a staged performance of Orlando di Lasso’s final work, Lagrime di San Pietro; 27 madrigals sung a cappella in seven parts by 21 singers.  That’s on February 1st and 2nd 2020.
  • And after all the fancy stuff there is a classic Liederabend with Matthias Goerne and Jan Lisiecki in an all Beethoven programme on April 24th 2020.

All of the above are at Koerner Hall.

Predictions for COC 2019/20

Posted on by
16

soothsayer_traits_advisingIt’s that time when I go through the ultimately pointless exercise of trying to predict what the COC season for 2019/20 will be.  In some ways it’s an interesting intellectual enterprise not unlike what an Intelligence Officer would do.  What do past patterns reveal?  What can we glean from published sources?  What have prisoners told us?  (No I don’t really interrogate captured opera singers tempting as it might be).

Continue reading →