Against the Grain Theatre revived their 2013 choreographed Messiah last night Harbourfront Centre. It’s quite heavily reworked from the 2013 edition and I think the changes are an improvement. The creative team of Topher Mokrzewski (Music), Joel Ivany (Stage direction) and Jenn Nichols (choreography) remains the same as does the overall “look and feel”. The soloists are supported here by a 16 strong chorus and 18 instrumentalists.
Sir Andrew Davis is in town conducting his own orchestration of Handel’s Messiah. In the modern world this is probably as close as it gets to Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Huddersfield Choral Society. He conducts the TSO with brass and woodwinds that Handel never saw and lots of percussion including snare drum, sleigh bells, tambourines and marimba. He also has the not inconsiderable heft of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
The invitations to the big bash are out. The COC will announce the 2016/17 season on the 13th of January. So it’s time to crack the shoulder blades, eviscerate the chickens and check that spread sheet I’ve been running for the last few years. After all what’s the holiday season without a little humiliation?
Le Rossignol et la Rose is Collectif’s first show. It’s another take on how to make art song more interesting and attract a new audience. The formula this time is to stage a series of songs with an implied linking narrative in a funky space. It worked pretty well. The B Lounge is a basement lounge/club next door to a boxing gym. It’s scruffy but comfortable with enough space for performance in and around the audience. There’s a bar.
The imminent death of the art song recital is perhaps an even more prevalent trope than “opera is dying” doomandgloomery. It reached something of a crescendo in Toronto when the Aldeburgh Connection shut up shop after thirty years. Oddly enough there still seem to be plenty of recitals of various kinds but unquestionably there has been something of a shift away from “two dudes in tails with a piano”.
So this week is the big Messiah week. I’ll be seeing two; the TSO’s “big, fat” Messiah on Tuesday and Against the Grain’s choreographed version the following night. The TSO version uses Andrew Davis’ “large scale” orchestration and has a great quartet of soloists. It’s playing at Roy Thomson Hall Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday through Sunday. The AtG version also has great soloists, it’s on a smaller scale and features Jenn Nicholls’ choreography. It plays at Harbourfront Wednesday through Saturday. There’s also Tafelmusik’s baroque take at Trinity St. Paul’s, also Wednesday through Saturday.
There are, I think, some really interesting trends emerging in the classical vocal scene in Toronto. On the one hand there’s the consolidation of the Neef/Debus era at the COC that has taken the company from decidedly provincial to being a first rate international opera capable of offering us, its audience, the best singers, directors and conductors in the world. I know that not everyone welcomes that change but it seems to me infinitely preferable to death by musical and dramatic sclerosis. But that’s not what this piece is about. What I wanted to explore was what’s happening at a more grass roots level. This probably need to be taken in two parts; opera and art song, though curiously the cast of characters overlaps in some interesting ways. This piece looks at opera.
Here are a few photos from last week’s production of L’Homme et le Ciel. Some are from the dress and some from opening night and there were a few costume adjustments. I think they give a pretty fair idea of the “look”.
Soundstreams’ high concept show Electric Messiah opened at the Drake Underground last night. So what is Electric Messiah? It’s a potent mix of Handel/Jennens, four exceptional singers from varied backgrounds, electronics, turntable artists and electric guitars. It’s “staged” in the round in a dive bar with the audience and artists mixed up all over the place. Curator Kyle Brenders, dramaturg Ashlie Corcoran and lighting designer Patrick Lavender have created something that’s weird and dynamic and exciting and, just occasionally, a bit self indulgent and I really enjoyed it. Probably my biggest complaint would be that it’s too short at around an hour.
This week sees holiday season events beginning. The main one on my calendar is Electric Messiah; tonight and tomorrow night at the Drake. It’s a Soundstreams presentation described as “a stripped down, surround sound electro-improv Messiah for today’s Toronto”. Other than that the Calmus Ensemble have a Christmas concert at Walter Hall on Sunday afternoon.
operaramblings 