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About operaramblings

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

TSO 2019/20

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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

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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.

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Highlights of the 2019/20 season at the Royal Conservatory

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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

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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).

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Winter Words

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Yesterday’s Mazzoleni Songmasters concert featured mezzo Lucia Cervoni, tenor Michael Colvin and pianist Rachel Andrist in a varied programme of song.  It kicked off with two songs by George MacNutt; Take Me to a Green Isle, sung by Michael, and O Love, Be Deep, sung by Lucia.  Both songs are in a quite meditative mood and served to give us a pretty good idea of what we could expect later on.  Michael sings very much in the British manner, which comes as no surprise with his extensive work at ENO and the number of Britten roles he sings.  Lucia’s dark, smokey mezzo sounded rather more operatic.

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February

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nlightsHere are a few more February items of interest in addition to those mentioned here.  Tapestry’s new piece Hook Up opens on January 30th at Theatre Passe Muraille and runs for most of February.  Then on Sunday 3rd February at 2.30 pm VOICEBOX have a performance of Schubert’s rather rare opera Fierrebras.  Kevin Mallon conducts the Aradia Ensemble for this one.  Also there’s Opera Pub as usual on Thursday 7th February.

On February 16th at Gallery 345 at 8pm there will be an Against the Grain presentation of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine.  The “twist” here is that Elle becomes Lui and will be sung by tenor Jacques Arsenault.  Topher Mokrzewski at the piano.  Aria Umezawa directs the first in what is planned as a series of “twisted” concerts.

In free concert news there’s the Quilico Prize competition on February 11th at 5.30pm in the RBA.  Once again the members of theEnsemble Studio compete for cash.  At the nnon hour there’s Susan Bullock and Liz Upchurch on the 19th with a programme of Wagner, Strauss and Duparc and on the 20th there’s Samuel Chan and Stéphane Mayer with an all Schubert programme.  Then on the 21st there’s Lauren Eberwein and Rachel Kerr with a Messiaen and Ravel show.  Given that it’s the Jessye Norman Gala on the 20th as well I think I’ll just schlep my sleeping bag over to the Four Seasons Centre.

Also at the COC of course Elektra continues until February 22nd with Così fan tutte opening on February 5th and running until the 23rd.

Five star Elektra

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Richard Strauss’ Elektra opened last night in a revised version of James Robinson’s 2007 production.  The setting is fairly straightforward and a bit drab; vaguely Victorian, or perhaps Gormenghast, which seems about right for the hagridden House of Atreus.  The stage is severely raked; back to front. and stage left to right.  There are a couple of walls with entrances.  There’s a strange little hut which, it turns out, forms a sort of trap door to the palace.  Costumes are either shapeless (ladies) or vaguely reminiscent of evening wear (gentlemen).  In this setting the action plays out convincingly enough with even difficult scenes like Elektra’s “death dance” well handled.  The tricky scenes between Elektra and Klytämnestra and Elektra and Orest have the appropriate degree of tension and suspense.

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Król Roger

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Karel Szymanowski’s 1924 opera Król Roger is surely the only opera in Polish in anything like the standard rep.  Maybe that’s one reason it’s not performed all that often because it’s really rather good and Kasper Holten’s 2015 production at Covent Garden makes a pretty good case for it.  The story is set in 12th century Sicily, though as we shall see , that really doesn’t matter.  The Church is complaining to the king about a heretical prophet, the Shepherd, who is leading people astray with a strange doctrine of Love and Nature.  Roger’s queen is much taken with the Shepherd and helps protect him.  The king, who is clearly battling demons rooted in a bloody past, vacillates.  Eventually he’s persuaded and the opera closes with Roger singing an ecstatic hymn to the rising sun.

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Meet the Orchestra Academy

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Yesterday’s concert in the RBA, the first I’ve been to in a while, featured the five members of the Orchestra Academy; violinists Joella Pinto and Gloria Yip, violist Carolyn Farnand and cellists Erin Patterson and Alison Rich, with Joel Allison and Samuel Chan and Rachael Kerr on keyboards.  It was an interesting concert in many ways.  We don’t get to see the young instrumentalists much nor do we often see Ensemble members sing with a chamber ensemble.  It was also interesting to hear the contrast between Joel’s dark toned bass-baritone, often singing in a very low tessitura, with Sam’s much brighter, lighter baritone which sometimes was well up in tenor territory.

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Best Glyndebourne martyrdom since 1998

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I’m not, in the normal run of things, a huge fan of obscure bel canto operas.  A very long list of them languish in obscurity for very good reasons.  So, my hopes were not all that high when I stuck the 2015 Glyndebourne recording of Donizetti’s Poliuto in the player.  I was wrong.  This is probably the best martyrdom opera from Glyndebourne since Peter Sellars’ production of Theodora in 1998.

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