Opera Five’s Youtube channel is an irreverent look at the very, very serious world of opera. Here’s a sample:
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Author Archives: operaramblings
Full of sound and Furies
When I first encountered Richard Strauss’ Elektra as a teenager I found the music almost unbearably harsh. The more I listen to it the more erroneous that judgement seems. It has its “tough” moments to be sure. How could an opera about Elektra not? But it is also full of lush romanticism and there are some really quite lovely passages. In the 2010 Salzburg Festival recording Daniele Gatti explores both sides of the music in a rather thrilling reading of the score aided and abetted by the Wiener Philharmoniker and a pretty much ideal cast.
Shout out to Washington
Rihab Chaieb and Mireille Asselin
In February I attended a brilliant lunchtime concert of vocal music by Kaija Saariaho sung by three singers from the COC Ensemble Studio. I wasn’t the only one who was impressed. The composer was so taken with the standard of performance that she has arranged for them to perform a slightly different selection of her works in Washington DC in February.
If you aren’t from Toronto or Montreal (or perhaps Paris, Lyon, Dublin or Belgrade) you probably haven’t heard much about Mireille Asselin, Rihab Chaieb or Jacqueline Woodley (except maybe on this blog) but you will! Strongly recommended both for the music and the singers.
Feeding all the senses
Opera Five’s schtick is that they satisfy all five senses. In their current show that means matching a food offering with each of the three short operas on display. It’s a neat idea. In the current show a palindromic skewer of sausage, pickle and cheese is matched with the palindromic Hindemith work Hin und Zurück, assorted Russian pasty like objects are paired with Rachmaninov’s Aleko and some sort of chocolate on a stick thing with Milton Granger’s 1999 piece Talk Opera.
Grimmfest
It’s pretty Grimm in Toronto these days. Friday will see the 500th performance of Dean Burry’s 1999 opera for children The Brothers Grimm. Now, 500 performances for any recent opera is pretty remarkable. 500 performances for a Canadian work is extraordinary. Anyway, in the lead up to Friday there are a number of events scheduled including a concert yesterday lunchtime in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre with a Grimm theme.
Eric Domville introduced the music. He gave us a disquisition on the Grimm brothers, philology, the Great German Dictionary, folk tales and the oral tradition, his childhood, Romanticism as a reaction to Enlightenment, the plot of several folk tales in their English, French and German incarnations and a potted summary of the cultural, political and religious state of Germany in the mid 19th century. It was perhaps just a teeny bit more than one resally needed to explain three arias from Hansel and Gretel and one from Königskinder. Continue reading
Get your tickets now
Photo Credit – Kira Perov 2005
Word on the street is that there are only “a few hundred” tickets left for the COC’s February run of the Peter Sellars/Bill Viola Tristan und Isolde. It’s a fair bet that most of the available tickets will be for nights when Burkhard Fritz is singing rather than Ben Heppner. If you want to see Heppner I’d plan on buying now rather than expecting something last minute to turn up. I’d expect there to be horrific line-ups for the same-day nosebleeds and standing room tickets (and I don’t have the stamina to stand through Tristan!).
Christopher Alden’s production of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito apparently isn’t selling so well, despite a stellar cast and a production that got very good reviews in Chicago. This makes me a sad panda. Unfashionably, perhaps, I regard Clemenza as one of Mozart’s best operas, perhaps his very best, so the chance to see it with a wonderful cast is one I would not miss. My current plans call for me to see it twice; with the principal cast and with the Ensemble Studio, but I shall be sorely tempted to get in for an extra look earlier in the run than my current tickets!
Gerry Finley’s Don Giovanni
Jonathan Kent’s 2010 Glyndebourne production of Don Giovanni has a great cast and high ambitions but, ultimately, doesn’t really come off, largely because the relationships between the characters too often fall short of anything interesting. The concept, as explained in the two short bonus segments, is that Don Giovanni is set in a society in transition and that the title character is a sort of harbinger of the new mores. The “society in transition” chosen by Kent is a sort of hybrid of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and the last years of Franco’s regime in Spain. He might have done better to just pick one as the Fellini elements get pretty much reduced to the costumes and the Franco elements really don’t go anywhere.
Not a potato in sight
Today’s MetHD broadcast was Mozart’s last, and arguably best, opera La Clemenza di Tito. J-P Ponnelle’s production has been around for a while and offers nothing to offend traditionalists. There’s not a baked potato, muscle suit or child sacrifice in sight. The set, maybe more Italian Renaissance than Imperial Rome is elegant, undistracting and very singer friendly. The costumes are a rather eclectic mix of late 17th century and Republican Rome with a bit of Lady Capulet thrown in but only the black number with the big panniers that Vitellia gets in Act 2 would excite much comment. Direction then focuses rather on the characters and their relationships.
Chuck’s back
Earlier this week I fired up iTunes in search of the latest Melvin Bragg “In Our Time” episode and noticed that two podcasts were downloading. The other one turned out to be a new episode of Charles Reid’s “This Opera Life”. Now, Charles’ podcast had been on hiatus for months and I really missed it so I was delighted at this turn of events. I didn’t get a chance to listen to it until I was heading to the market at stupid o’clock this morning. Anyway, to cut to the chase, after an explanation of the hiatus, Charles goes on to say nice things about this blog and the Big COC Podcast. Which is awfully kind of him. Charles’ podcasts are mostly interviews with the ordinary working stiffs of the opera world. Occasionally he hooks a “big name” but mostly not and it’s all the more interesting because of it. I think his archive now has 59 episodes, curiously numbered two to sixty! The latest features director Jonathon Loy. I recommend it highly.
You can find Charles Reid’s podcasts at http://thisoperalife.charles-reid.com/ or on iTunes.
And in more competition news…
The lovely Simone Osborne has been announced as the winner of the first Maureen Forrester Award Tour. So Simone will be appearing with Anne Larlee in forty recitals across the country which will feature, among other things, a new work by composer Brian Current, sponsored by the Canadian Art Song Project. I guess recital tours have the advantage of there being no scenery to come crashing down on one’s head!
Maybe Gatsby should get himself a frequent flyer card and a really comfortable carrier.
