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.
A couple of years ago I took a look at the Bru-Zane reconstruction of the “original”; never performed, five act version of Offenbach’s La vie Parisienne. That version was recorded live on stage in Paris; which was one stop on a multi-city tour. Now it’s got the full Bru-Zane audio recording treatment complete with a 240 page book with much more information about what they did (and why) to create the performing edition used. I won’t duplicate what I said in the review of the video but there are some things I noticed anew on the audio version. Continue reading
Comfort Food; written by Zorana Sadiq and directed by Mitchell Cushman, opened in the Studio at Crow’s theatre on Friday evening. Itdescribes itself as an exploration of “the delicacy of familial love” told via the intersecting stories of Bette (Zorana Sadiq) and her teenage son Kit (Noah Grittani). Bette is a single mother and the host of a TV cooking show that has seen better days. Kit is a high school student who is trying to be a climate change activist (mostly virtually).
I don’t pay as much attention to the free concert series at Metropolitan United as I should but yesterday I made it there to hear tenor Alexander Cappellazzo and pianist Narmina Afandiyeva in a programme of 20th and 21st century song.
On Wednesday evening I went back to the Four Seasons Centre for another look at the COC’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck. I was really impressed with the show on opening night (my review on bachtrack.com) and was interested to see whether a second look would give some insights into a production that is visually fascinating almost to the point of overload.
Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Wozzeck and Anthony Robin Schneider as the Doctor
operaramblings 