Last night saw the launch of the first triennial Maureen Forrester Memorial Prize tour. Sponsored by Jeunesses Musicales Canada, soprano Simone Osborne and pianist Anne Larlee will tour some forty cities across Canada over the next two years performing material on the theme “Songs of Life and Love”. Each recital will include a new work; Birefringence, by Brian Current, commissioned by the Canadian Art Song Project. Continue reading
Handel’s Belshazzar, written as an oratorio, was staged at the Aix-en-Provence festival in 2008. It works really well as a stage work. The plot is straightforward but dramatic. Impious Babylonian king Belshazzar is being besieged by the virtuous Cyrus of Persia. Babylon is impregnable but a combination of Babylonian impiety and divine intervention on behalf of Cyrus(*) leads to Cyrus’ capture of the city, the death of Belshazzar and, almost incidentally, the liberation of the Jews.
I’ve been watching a few staged versions of Handel oratorios recently and I’ve come to the conclusion that, in general, I prefer them to his Italian operas. It’s not just that they have really good plots they are also musically much more interesting than the operas. For the stage Handel stuck pretty firmly to the conventions of opera seria. Da capo aria succeeds da capo aria and only occasionally does a chorus or a duet break out and that bit is often the musical highlight of the piece, to my mind at least. Think of Io t’abbraccio in Rodelinda; surely the highlight of the whole work. In the oratorios Handel seems to feel much freer to use multiple forms and, of course, he writes magnificent choruses. Continue reading
Cherubini’s 1797 opéra comique Médée was one of the first to use the form for serious drama. Krzysztof Warlikowski’s 2011 production filmed at La Monnaie in Brussels is certainly that. Jason, Medea and the rest are very contemporary characters though we often see them against a backdrop of 1960s style home movies and the chorus too, which tends to remain in the background also seems to be from the same period.The meaning of this juxtaposirtion isn’t clear and there is nothing on the disks or in the documentation to help. We are also told that the libretto was adapted by Warlikowski and dramaturge Christian Longchamp but nothing more than that. This is definitely a production where the director’s notes would be a major plus.
It’s a curious thing how some works get over recorded and others are almost entirely neglected. For example, there’s only one video recording of Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper and that a 1931 film that omits huge chunks of the stage work. It’s inspiration fares little better. There’s only one video recording of The Beggar’s Opera by Johann Pepusch and John Gay. It’s a 1963 BBC TV production of Benjamin Britten’s reworking of the piece for the English Opera Group based on a stage production by Colin Graham. [ETA: There are actually two other versions; a 1953 movie version with Lawrence Olivier and a 1980s version with Roger Daltrey and John Eliot Gardiner].
So Toronto’s weather took a weird twist pushing the Humidex into the 40s just in time for the Opera Five movie themed fundraiser at Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu last night. And some people still managed to wear suits and ties and stuff. Made of sterner stuff than me I tell you. And even more props to the ladies who were sporting Rosemarie’s creations. They looked great but some of them must have been hell in the heat.
It was an interesting format with seven singers and two pianists appearing in various combinations and guests having an opportunity to sponsor a singer to sing their “feature” aria. It was fun and there were some fine singers on display. Two I’ve seen and enjoyed in the past were baritone Geoffrey Sirett and coloratura soprano Teiya Kasahara. Both were on good form with some fine Escamillo from Geoffrey and the mad scene from Lucia from Teiya in a rather good arrangement for voice, flute and piano. The other five were new to me but I’d happily go see any of them. Favourite moments for me would be some fine Carmen from the unpronounceable Olenka Harasymowycz (who looks disturbingly like Maria Ewing), a very cute “Poor Wandering One” from Caitlin Wood and a very fine “Ebben…” (from Catalani’s La Wally) from Calgary’s Krista de Silva. Accompaniment was from music director Mai Nash and Jo Greenaway on piano with flautist Amelia Lyon.
So, a fun event which seemed to be raising quite a bit of much needed cash. The first show it will be helping fund is In Pace Requiescat; a trio of one act operas based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. There will be The Cask of Amontillado by Daniel Pinkham, La Chute de la Maison d’Usher by Claude Debussy and the world première of The Masque of the Red Death by Cecilia Livingston. Performances will be at the Arts and letters Club on Elm Street on the 27th, 30th and 31st of October. Tickets are available from 05inpace.eventbrite.ca and are $30 ($25 concessions).
La tragédie de Carmen is a stripped down version of Bizet’s opera originally created by Peter Brook some thirty years ago. It dispenses with the chorus and most of the minor characters to focus in on the central drama of Carmen, Micaëla, Don José and Escamillo with some support from Zuniga and Lillas Pastia. In Loose TEA Theatre’s version the action is transferred to New York in the 1920s and given a night club/mob setting which stretches the libretto but allows the rather striking Cassandra Warner to appear in some quite stunning outfits.
The piece is very condensed. It runs maybe 80 minutes. Presented in a small space like Buddies in bad times it becomes almost unbearably intense, especially when presented by fine actors as it was here. Central to the whole thing is Warner’s stunning Carmen. She is very good looking in a rather angular 1920s sort of way. She can act and she has a really good voice. The tone is genuine mezzo but she seems quite comfortable well up into soprano territory. The overall effect was extremely sexy.
Toronto Masque Theatre has announced the line up for the 2013/14 season. There are three main stage productions. First up is Patrick Garland’s now classic play Brief Lives, based on John Aubrey with song and music from 17th century London. Second is a revival of Tears of a Clown, under a new title, Arlecchino Allegro. Finally, there is a reinterpreted classic from the world canon teamed up with a contemporary interpretation in the Myth of Europa. Details for the shows are as follows:
Die Meistersinger is a problematic opera, particularly for Bayreuth. It has rather disturbing elements of German nationalism and a performance tradition at the festival of those being used for ends that most people would rather be able to forget. No surprise then that Katharina Wagner’s production, recorded in 2008, tries to deal with both. It’s a bold effort. Like Robert Carsen’s Tannhäuser it tries to use visual art as a metaphor for music and art in general.
The Toronto opera world’s newest and cutest newly weds – Topher Mokrzewski and Caitlin Coull
operaramblings 