Author Archives: operaramblings

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About operaramblings

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

Threepenny thoughts

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I went to the first show of Soup Can Theatre’s presentation of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera at the Monarch Tavern yesterday.  It was an interesting take.  Three performers took all the roles in a much shortened concert version.  Quite a few numbers were cut and the dialogue was replaced by a very compressed spoken linking narrative.  This was a fund raiser and I think it’s fair to say that there was probably minimal if any rehearsal involved which showed in a presentation that had some nice individual touches but not a lot of cohesion.

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Into October

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220px-dreigroschenoperThings are still a bit slow on the Toronto opera front.  That said, today Soup Can Theatre are doing a concert version of The threepenny Opera at the Monarch Tavern.  Three actors; Christine Jeffries, Sarah Thorpe and Scott Garland, will sing all the roles.  There are three performances at 4pm, 6.30pm and 9pm.  Tickets are $13.  More details at http://soupcantheatre.com.

Then Thursday night sees the opening of the COC’s season with Sondra Radvanovsky in Bellini’s Norma.  There are eight performances.  By some weird scheduling quirk there is a nine day gap before the second on the 15th.  That’s also the night I have media tickets for so there won’t be a review until after then.  Sondra is singing the first four shows with Elza van den Heever coming in for the second half of the run.  Word is that it’s an inoffensively bland production but we’ll see.

A touch of Jamie in the night

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There must have been a lot of cash slopping around in the music world in Mahler’s day.  Imagine taking a new work to a symphony management today and saying “I’ve got this hour and a half long piece that needs a star mezzo and three choirs for about ten minutes.  Fancy giving it a shot?  Oh and it needs a bazillion players in the brass section.”  Anyway that’s Mahler’s 3rd symphony for you and the TSO did it last night with Jamie Barton as soloist and the ladies of three choirs plus a children’s chorus.  All in all it had far too much of the Mahler I don’t much care for; repetitively bombastic, and not enough of the kind I do; the bits with a kind of ethereal transcendent beauty.  And it really goes on a bit.  The last movement in particular has so many climaxes, and anti climaxes, that, at the end, the audience weren’t sure that it was really, finally over.  I’ll take the 2nd or the 8th or one of the shorter pieces over this one anytime.

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Here we go again

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The tenth season at the Four Seasons Centre opened with the, by now traditional, lunchtime concert by the COC’s Ensemble Studio.  Six of the eight singers and one of the two pianists are new recruits which is unusual and more of a chance to level set than see how anyone has developed.

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Season announcements

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adrianluciaBy an odd coincidence two season announcement pressers hit my in box today; Toronto Operetta Theatre and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.  Toronto Operetta Theatre have four shows:

  • The Waltz Rivals (November 6th at 3pm) is a Léhar and Kálmán greatest hits show featuring Lucia Cesaroni, Adrian Kramer, Holly Chaplin, Stefan Fehr and Greg Finney with Michael Rose at the piano.
  • Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance runs from December 27th to January 8th, 2017.  Colin Ainsworth sings Frederic, Vania Chan is Mabel and Curtis Sullivan is the Major General.  Derek Bate conducts and Guillermo Silva-Marin directs.
  • Oscar Straus’ The Chocolate Soldier, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, runs on April 26th, 28th, 29th and 30th, 2017. Peter Tiefenbach leads the orchestra and the cast includes Jennifer Taverner, Anna Macdonald, Michael Nyby and Stefan Fehr.
  • Finally there’s an Offenbach tribute concert on June 4th 2017.

All performances are at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.

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Saul og David

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Carl Nielsen’s operas don’t get performed much outside his native Denmark so it’s no surprise that the only video recording of his 1902 opera Saul og David was recorded in Copenhagen.  The libretto is a fairly straightforward telling of the familiar story of Saul, David, Goliath, Samuel and so on.  The music is very much of its time.  It’s bold and lyrical; perhaps reminiscent of Strauss in a conventional mood or, perhaps, Elgar.  There are some really good choruses and David and Michal get a gorgeous duet in Act 3.

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Coming up

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es1516The lunchtime concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre kicks off on Tuesday with the traditional opener; a concert by the members of the COC Ensemble Studio.  It’s always a good opportunity to level set for the season ahead.  Noon in the RBA.  Then on Wednesday and Thursday at 8pm the TSO are doing Mahler 3 with Jamie Barton as soloist.  I was tremendously impressed with Jamie’s Koerner Hall recital and am quite excited to see what she can do singing with an orchestra.

Renée Fleming at the TSO

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The TSO’s season opener on Wednesday night featured Renée Fleming in one of her rare visits to Toronto.  As one might expect for a crowd friendly season opener it was largely a collection of “lollipops” though the all Ravel first half of the program perhaps had higher ambitions.  The orchestra kicked off with Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso; a rather vulgar piece full of castanets, twiddly Spanish tunes and solo bassoon standing in for a clown.  I guess one could at least say that Peter Oundjian and the orchestra were well into the spirit of the thing.  It was followed up with Schéhérazade.  I’m not sure what the score markings on this are… perhaps “très langueurezzzzz”.  It was a very Renée performance with beauty of tone (even in the soprano killing acoustic) dominating over drama or diction (though again  I’m cognisant that the hall swallows words).  It was a bit understated and I heard comments in the interval from people less well seated than myself that “they couldn’t hear a thing”.

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Wozzeck as puppet theatre

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Wozzeck is a tricky piece for a director.  There seem to be two possible approaches.  One can find a character for Wozzeck himself that resonates with contemporary audiences and treat the piece more or less realistically.  That’s the approach taken by both Bieito and Tcherniakov.  Alternatively one can run with the overtly expressionist aspects of the piece and present it in a more abstract way as Peter Mussbach did.  Andreas Homoki’s 2015 Zürich production takes the second route.  The piece is presented as if the characters are puppets in a puppet theatre in a sort of ultra-grim version of Punch and Judy.  It’s visually quite arresting and there are some very well composed scenes.  To give just one example, immediately after Wozzeck has decapitated Marie the chorus appear as nightmarish Maries while Wozzeck sits nursing the severed head.  That said, the concept does pall and maybe hasn’t really got the legs, absent any other real directorial ideas, to carry the piece for two hours.

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Week of September 19th

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fleming_caaspeakers_photo-must-credit-decca_andrew-eccles-330x360This looks like the week the season really starts.  The big event is the season opener at the TSO on Wednesday where Renée Fleming is featured.  There’s Ravel’s Shéhérazade plus Puccini, Walton and others finishing up with three numbers from The King and I.  This one’s at Roy Thomson Hall at the slightly unusual time of 7pm.  The next night at the Alliance Française there’s a show called Singing Stars of Tomorrow.  It features ten young singers who will have been engaged in a day long workshop with Sondra Radvanovsky.  It’s organised by the IRCPA.  Tickets are $25 from ircpa.net.

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