There was a time when site specific productions were very much part of the Toronto opera scene but, like much else, they seemed to disappear with the pandemic. So it was especially pleasing to see Tapestry Opera, Luminato and Metropolitan United Church combining for just such an event.
Nigamon/Tunai is part ritual, part performance, part narrative. It’s based around the fight of an Indigenous group in the Colombian Amazon to prevent a road being built through their land in order to exploit a copper deposit but it interweaves this with water lore and creation myths from all over the Americas. It’s playing in the Ada Slaight Hall at the Daniels Spectrum as part of Luminato.
My review of the CD recording of Bernard Foccroulle and Matthew Jocelyn’s new opera Cassandre is now up at La Scena Musicale. It’s one of the best new operas I’ve come across recently.
My review of the Bru Zane recording of Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys is featured in the latest issue of La Scena Musicale.
I’ve been following the development of MISSING; an opera with text by Marie Clements and music by Brian Current since early 2017. There’s an article principally about the project in the Summer 2017 edition of Opera Canada. But I’ve yet to see the opera on stage. It’s had multiple productions in Western Canada but this July will see it’s first performance east of the Lakehead when Toronto Summer Music present it in concert format. That’s at Koerner Hall on July 24th.
Marion Newman in MISSING at Pacific Opera Victoria – Photo: Dean Kalyan
This year’s Canadian Children’s Opera Company main show is a new production of Alice Ho and Marjorie Chan’s The Monkiest King which the company previously performed in 2018. This time it was at Harbourfront Centre Theatre which offered some additional opportunities and some challenges with its multi level configuration but also some sight line issues.
The last concert of the season in the COC’s free concert season took place in the RBA on Thursday. It was the farewell concert for Queen Hezumuryango and Wesley Harrison plus a second farewell for Brian Cho and Mattia Senesi.
My review of the TSO’s concert on Wednesday night with Stewart Goodyear and Kristiina Poska is now up at Bachtrack.
Photo credit: Allan Cabral, courtesy of the TSO
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“…it’s weirder and less funny and less charming than the plays I like to write, and also I’ve taken out a lot of the conventions, conventions that I like, the ones that make us want to watch plays.” So writes Hannah Moscovitch about her 2024 play Red Like Fruit which opened at Soulpepper on Thursday night as part of Luminato in a production directed by Christian Barry.
Gyorgy Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments of 1986 is a pretty weird piece. It sets forty short fragments (anything from less than a minute to maybe six and a half) from Kafka’s diaries and journals for soprano and violin, which is unusual enough. But it’s the range of techniques involved for both musicians which i think contributes to why people want to perform them and some people at least to listen to them.
Just about every technique fior violin, short of smashing it, is called for; very rapid staccato phrases, pizzicato, percussive effects of various kinds etc. The vocal part is perhaps even more varied; singing (but with crazy intervals and very high notes), Sprechstimme, speaking, whispering, chattering, screaming ad more. Each fragment basically deals with an emotion (mostly negative!) and is set accordingly so the emotional range is pretty much as wide as the range of techniques. Continue reading
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