Author Archives: operaramblings

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About operaramblings

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

Michael Powell directs Herzog Blaubarts Burg

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I recently got my hands on restored versions of two Powell and Pressburger opera films.  The first is a film of Bartók’s Herzog Blaubarts Burg broadcast on Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963.  It’s directed by Powell alone I think.  The current version was restored by the BFI from an original Eastmancolor negative in their archives and a sound master on magnetic tape from SDR under the supervision of Martin Scorsese and Powell’s widow Thelma Schoonmaker.  It was subsequently released on Blu-ray by BFI in 2023 but currently seems very hard to find!  It doesn’t help that the BFI on-line shop is currently off-line!

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Microtonal music for string quartet

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The first release from new record label Mnémosyne Records contains three microtonal pieces for string quartet by young Montreal based composers played by Quatuor Mémoire; Bailey Wantuch and Meggie Lacombe (violins), Marilou Lepage (viola) and Audréanne Filion (cello).

The first piece is by Florence M. Tremblay and is titled Insides.  It’s slightly under twelve minutes and uses a fairly wide range of sonorities without, I think, going into any of the weirder types of extended technique.  Most of what I was hearing hear were a drone like ground at varying pitch and volume on which more solid segments of both bowed and plucked notes were superimposed.  The dynamics are quite complex and one section even sounded weirdly like what you hear inside a plane when it’s taking off.  Plenty there to maintain interest across a fairly short piece. Continue reading →

Exemplary Tales of Hoffmann from the Royal Opera

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Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann is a rather difficult opera to stage.  There’s no definitive performing edition and there’s a lot of (too much?) material to work with so decisions have to be made about what to cut.  There’s also the fundamental problem of how to frame the stories of Hoffman’s three great loves as he’s supposed to be recounting them in a bar, while drunk, some years after the events described.  Plus, there is some sense that all three are really just projections of his current infatuation; the opera singer Stella.

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Robin Hood at the Winter Garden

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So, Saturday night I reacquainted myself with pantomime after a gap of sixty years or so.  I think the last panto I saw was Aladdin at the Alhambra in Bradford c.1965.  Well why not?  Much has changed and Canadian Stage’s Robin Hood; written by Matt Murray and directed by Mary-Francis Moore discards much that would once have been seen as de rigueur.  I guess much more fluid gender roles, general acceptance of same sex relationships and, maybe, less familiarity with the canonical stories means that what once seemed risqué now seems passé and absent a general idea of how the story should go there’s more freedom to experiment.

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Moonlight Schooner

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Moonlight Schooner, by Kanika Ambrose, is currently playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in a production directed by Sabryn Rock.  It’s set on May Day 1958 and a group of Black sailors have been stranded on St. Kitt’s by a storm.  It being a holiday they decide to have a night on the town.

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Operamania

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Wednesday evening at The great Hall witnessed a seminal event in the history of opera; Operamania.  Our beloved art form; courtesy of the indefatigable Opera Revue, mashed up with pro-wrestling; in the persons of Junction City Wrestling.  What could possibly gio wrong you ask?  Well how about Mango Mussolini showing up during the Anthem to claim his 51st state?  No worries!  Danie Friesen despatched him with a whack over the head with a chair.

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Tapestry announces new main stage production

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This season’s main stage production from Tapestry Opera will be Ten Days in a Madhouse; music by Rene Orth, music by Hannah Moscovitch.  It’s based on the true story of 19th century journalist Nellie Bly who pretended to be insane in order to expose the conditions women patients were being kept under at New York’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum.  It’s the Canadian premiere of a Tapestry/Opera Philadelphia commission co-presented with the COC and Luminato.  This follows a critically acclaimed run last year at Opera Philadelphia.

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Honour is satisfied

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Alessandro Scarlatti wrote at least sixty operas but only one of the extant ones is a comedy; Il Trionfo dell’Onore which premiered in Naples in 1718.  Cunningly Scarlatti insisted on an Italian, rather than Neapolitan, libretto so it soon got productions further north.  It’s a piece of its time.  It had only just become allowable to produce operas that weren’t based on classical myth or history.  Even Cavalli’s most tongue in cheek works like Il Giasone had roots in the classics!  But here we have an opera whose characters are quite ordinary though clearly based on the typical types of the commedia dell’arte.

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Looking forward to December

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‘Tis the season of family holiday shows and Messiahs.  Not that I’m planning to do much of either but here are some shows that you might be interested in…

  • On December 7th, the earliest of the Messiahs.  Toronto Choral Society have a matinée performance at Koerner Hall.  Soloists include Quinn Kelsey and Teresa Tucci .
  • The Ensemble Studio have a noon hour concert on December 9th in the RBA
  • Rogers vs Rogers opens at Crow’s Theatre on December 10th.  This is another adaptation by Michael Heaney of a book about Toronto shenanigans.  He was also responsible for The Masterplan.  Previews are the 2nd to the 9th with the run extending to January 3rd.

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What one calls a happy marriage

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Richard Strauss’ Intermezzo is a very strange semi-autobiographical piece apparently dealing with the married life of Richard and Pauline Strauss thinly disguised as Court Composer Robert Storch and his wife Christine.  What is really a bit weird is how these two characters are presented.  Herr Storch is a bit stuffy and self absorbed but Frau Storch is just awful.  She is rude to everyone, especially her long suffering maid and other servants, and she overreacts bizarrely to just about everything.  She’s spoiled, self-centred, vain and generally a giant PitA.

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