Author Archives: operaramblings

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About operaramblings

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

Coming up

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strangerWith Easter almost upon us it’s not surprising that the upcoming week is a bit light.  Tonight Danika Lorèn and friends at Collectìf have a show at Heliconian Hall at 7.30pm.  It’s called As a Stranger and is their take on Schubert’s Winterreise.  I’ve been quite taken by this young group’s efforts to date.  Tickets are available here.  Then tomorrow night Andrew Haji, Megan Quick and a chamber orchestra drawn from the university faculty have a concert in Walter Hall at 7.30pm.  Featured works include Schoenberg’s Die Waldtaube from Gurrelieder and Mahler’s (arr. Schoenberg) Das Lied von der Erde.  Tickets from the MacMillan box office.

 

Wozzeck in Moscow

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In 2010 Berg’s Wozzeck was produced in Russia for the first time since 1927.  The production, at the Bolshoi, was directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov.  Few people familiar with his work will be surprised to learn that Tcherniakov does not see Wozzeck as a  down trodden and impoverished soldier.  In fact he doesn’t see him as downtrodden and impoverished at all (unlike, say Calixto Bieito who transplants the action to a chemical plant but leaves the power relationships pretty much intact).  Rather, Wozzeck is a sort of 21st century salaryman leading a life of modest prosperity but crushing boredom with Marie and their son in a city inhabited entirely by other such families.  What’s missing is anything that resembles sensation or “life”.

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Underdone Alcina

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There’s not that much Handel on offer in Toronto so it seems really rather odd that Alcina should get two productions within eighteen months.  The attraction of the piece for Opera Atelier was obvious.  It’s Handel’s only opera that incorporates dance.  Why the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory should think it’s a good choice for a student production is less clear.  Dance aside, it’s classic Handel; written for an audience who expected great virtuosity from the star singers (in this case Giovanni Carestini and Anna Maria Strada) plus the very latest in analogue SFX.  Neither of these could reasonably be expected at Koerner Hall.

Photo: Nicola Betts

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More thoughts on the ending of The Devil Inside

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Now that the run is over I can deal with issues that would have been spoilers for anyone going to see the show later in the run.  I think what is most striking about how Welsh has reconstructed Stevenson’s story really comes out in the ending but it’s there all the way through as she constructs different relationships between the three main characters and the bottle.  In the original story only Keawe has any complexity as a character and the ending is something of a cop out; a character who considers himself already damned just shows up and makes the, fatal, final purchase.  Louise Welsh handles this quite differently.

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Knocking at the Hellgate

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Brett Dean 6235 (Mark Coulsen) LOW RESThe TSO’s New Creations Festival wrapped up last night at Roy Thomson Hall with a concert featuring Brett Dean’s suite Knocking at the Hellgate, drawn from his 2004 opera Bliss.  But first came a piece by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.  Water is a tone poem (if one can still use that term) inspired by soome lines from Philip Larkin:

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Written for a chamber orchestra including two tanpuras and amplified piano, it’s an atmospheric piece mixing elements of minimalism and dissonance with extended techniques in the strings and note bending in an extremely competent way.  A fairly gentle introduction to what was to follow!

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The week in prospect

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alcina_365sqBack to relative quiet!  The main event in the coming week is the GGS spring production.  They are doing Handel’s Alcina.  The cast includes Meghan Jamieson, Irina Medvedeva, Christina Campsall, Lillian Brooks, Joanna Burt, Asitha Tennekoon and Keith Lam.  Leon Major directs and Ivars Taurins conducts.  The publicity material suggests a 1920s setting.  Anyway it’s at Koerner Hall at 7.30pm on Wednesday and Friday.

There are a couple of kid friendly March break concerts in the RBA.  Tuesday sees what seems to have become an annual event; Kyra Millan’s Opera Interactive.  This year she is joined by Tina Faye and Charles Sy.  Then on Thursday Cawthra Park Chamber Choir and conductor Bob Anderson, one of the GTA’s leading school choirs, present various choral traditions and styles from the Renaissance to contemporary Canadian works.  Charles Sy, a Cawthra Park alumnus also features in this one.  Both at noon of course.

Then at the  Newmarket Theatre on Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm opera Luminata are performing.  This is a rather odd spectacular thing with taped orchestra and pyrotechnics.  I haven’t seen them but they got a rather more positive reception than I expected last time around.  www.operaluminata.com for details.

I am Way, I am Act

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This spring’s main opera production from UoT Opera is Britten’s Paul Bunyan.  It is a really peculiar work.  The libretto is by WH Auden and is, well, weird.  It mixes up the (apparently) profound with the absurd and the downright silly.  There’s a Swedish lumberjack fish slapping dance, talking cats and dogs, trees that aspire to be product and a philosophical accountant (*).  There are also countless pronouncements from the off stage voice of Bunyan along the lines of the closing:

“Where the night becomes the day, Where the dream becomes the fact, I am the Eternal guest, I am Way, I am Act“

Walt Whitman meets Dr. Seuss meets a lot of drugs?  One of those 1970s English public schoolboy prog rock bands?

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The Devil indeed

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Scottish Opera’s The Devil Inside, presented by Tapestry Opera opened last night at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre.  Expectations were high I think.  This was Scottish Opera’s North American debut and the Glasgow premier of the piece had received enthusiastic reviews in the British press.  How would it  cope with being translated from the relative sophistication of the 1200 seat Theatre Royal Glasgow to the rather spartan 250 seat Harbourfront Theatre?  How would an updating of a short story with Scottish roots by a Scottish composer and librettist translate culturally?  The short answer is very well indeed.  It’s a fine piece and it was very well presented; musically and dramatically.

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Scott of the Amazon

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Apparently the Amazonas Festival is on this year which means a chance to see opera in the perhaps the world’s most unlikely opera house, the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, 1000 miles up the Amazon.  Iain Scott of IS Opera Tours is looking to organise a trip, if there is enough interest, to see Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur in Manaus on the evening of Friday 27th May with a couple of days sightseeing either side. Basically the deal is that you get yourself to Manaus and Iain organises accommodation, sightseeing, opera tickets etc.  Anyone up for an unusual opera adventure should contact Iain for more details at iainscott@opera-is.com.

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Le travail du peintre

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Yesterday’s concert in the Songmasters Series at Mazzoleni Hall featured Mireille Asselin and Brett Polegato with Peter Tiefenbach and Rachel Andrist in a program of songs more or less related to painting and painters.  The first half of the program was all French; Fauré and Debussy.  Mireille and Peter gave us two songs from Fauré’s Cinq mélodies de Venise plus three pieces from Debussy’s Fêtes galantes and Pantomime from Quatre chansons de jeunesse.  I thought the Debussy generally suited Mireille’s voice rather better than the Fauré.  The first three songs were beautifully and charmingly sung while Pantomime gave full rein to Mireille’s considerable comedic talents.  The highlight of the first half for me though was Brett’s singing of the Poulenc work that gave the concert its title.  Seven songs by Paul Eluard; each a brief portrait of a painter.  Written at the same time as Dialogues des Carmélites, these pieces have the same sort of intensity and drive (and decided non trivial piano parts!).  They were most expertly sung with fine diction and legato and a keen sense of the varied moods of each piece.

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