It’s that time of year when I look at what the Met will be offering in cinemas in the coming season. Once again they will be offering eight shows and they are a mix of fairly bold, quite interesting and frankly dull. Here goes…
October 18th: Bellini – La Somnabula. Rolando Villazon directs a new production which is interesting. I haven’t seen any of his work as a director so don’t really know what to expect. It does have Nadine Sierra as Amina which is a big plus. Continue reading
Things slow down just a little bit in June but with both Luminato and Opera 5’s Opera festival it’s not that quiet. Here’s what’s coming down:
Male soprano Samuel Mariño was back in town for another concert with Tafelmusik; this time at Koerner Hall. There were three concerts and I caught the last one on Sunday afternoon. The repertoire consisted of opera recitatives and arias from the 18th century interspersed with related instrumental numbers.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Barrie’s Talk is Free Theatre so I was very happy to be able to catch one of their shows on tour in Toronto. The show is Tales of an Urban Indian and it’s playing in the basement of Hope United Church on the Danforth. I think the show originally toured on a converted bus which would explain the set up; which is a narrow space with a row of chairs either side (actually two rows on one side) so the space seats about thirty five. It’s been around since 2009 and has toured across Canada, the US and overseas nad, despite the things that have happened on the “Reconciliation” agenda since then it still feels fresh and timely.
On Friday night the COC presented a one-off concert style performance of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Concert style, in this case, meaning the orchestra on stage with the chorus behind them and the soloists singing from music stands at the front of the stage. There were some projections behind the stage.
Last Wednesday’s lunchtime recital was given by soprano Lauren Fagan; currently appearing as Tatyana in the COC’s Eugene Onegin, and pianist Rachael Kerr. Things kicked off with a selection of three songs from Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder. What struck me here, apart from some really nice expressive singing, was Lauren’s ability too spin a line out coherently.
Genrefuck is a double bill that opened on Wednesday at Buddies in Bad Times. It consists of two one performer shows; Reina written by Augusto Bitter and performed by Jaime Lujan, and Never Walk Alone written and performed by Julie Phan.
The first of this year’s Les Adieux concerts for departing members of the Ensemble Studio took place Tuesday lunchtime in the RBA. It was supposed to feature Brian Cho, Mattia Senesi, Korin Thomas-Smith and Karoline Podolak but Karoline was indisposed so Emily Rocha (not leaving) jumped in at the last minute.
The rearranged programme worked pretty well with maybe a bit more opportunity for the pianists. Sio, Mattia played the Intermezzo from Brahms’ Op 118. No. 2, which was very nicely done and Brian closed things out with just the piano part from Schumann’s Widmung which works surprisingly well, at least if one is familiar with the song. Continue reading
Rossini’s Adina was written in 18i8; two years after Barber of Seville, but wasn’t premiered until 1826 in Lisbon, after which it pretty much disappeared. It’s a bit difficult to see why it fell out of favour, unless it’s because at 90 minutes or so it was considered too short, because it’s a pretty classic Rossini comedy with a silly but amusing plot and enjoyably frothy music.
It’s quite a story really. Schmaltz and Pepper started life in November 2023 and played their first gig exactly a year ago. They have become, dare I say it, a bit of a cult and their first CD is now on the street in CD and vinyl (really!?!) format with digital to come. My review of the CD is here.
operaramblings 