So what’s in store for Toronto early in the New Year?
So here we go with a round up of the best things I saw and listened to in 2024.
Opera
The Toronto opera scene is still a bit flat and lacking the vibrancy of pre-pandemic with Against the Grain pretty much invisible and Tapestry wrapped up in building out their new digs. Still, there were some good shows. The best of the CCC’s offerings, IMO, were Cherubini’s Medea in the spring and Gounod’s Faust in the fall. Beyond the COC, William Christie and co’s presentation of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at TSM was refreshingly different, Opera 5 bounced back with a rather good production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and let’s throw Art of Time Ensemble’s reimagining of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale into this category too. There were a couple of excellent student shows. The GGS produced a very good Dialogues of the Carmelites early in the year and UoT Opera chipped in with their Three Islands show featuring three one act operas directed by Tim Albery. Continue reading
The Excursions of Mr. Brouček is a rather odd opera by Leoš Janáček. It’s currently being streamed on the Opera Vision Youtube channel in a production at the National Theatre Brno directed by Robert Carsen.
Lines of Life is a CD produced out of a deep collaboration between German baritone Benjamin Appl and Hungarian composer György Kurtág. It’s a mixture of works by Schubert and Kurtág (with one song by Brahms at the end). It centers on Kurtág’s Hölderlin-Gesänge Op.35a but there are other Kurtág works on the disk too, Most of these are sung a capella but there are four settings of texts by Ulrike Schuster that have piano accompaniment (Pierre-Laurent Aimard). The Schubert songs feature James Baillieu on piano except for the last one, and the Brahms, where Kurtág himself accompanies. Continue reading
Rachel Fenlon is a very rare, perhaps unique, talent. She’s the only Lieder singer I know who accompanies herself on the piano. I saw her perform live in Toronto back in 2018. It appears she spent lockdown isolated in a forest near Berlin studying Winterreise (as opposed to be eaten by goblins or kidnapped by elf kings) which she has now recorded. Many people would consider Winterreise as one of the epic challenges of the Lieder repertoire. It’s an hour and a quarter of songs that cover pretty much the whole technical and emotional range of Schubert’s Lieder. One might say the Everest of Lieder singing. To perform it self accompanied is kind of the equivalent of climbing solo without oxygen instead of with a bunch of mates and Sherpas to carry the gear. By that token perhaps we should consider Rachel the Reinhold Messner of Lieder singers!
Michael Healey’s The Master Plan is currently playing in a collaboration between Crow’s Theatre and Soulpepper at the Michael Young Theatre. It’s basically the same production and mostly the same cast and creative team as at Crow’s last year so I’ll not repeat everything I said in my rather long review of opening night at Crow’s. There are two cast changes; Rose Napoli comes in as Kristina Verner and others and playwright Michael Healey replaces Peter Fernandes (who is off at Crow’s playing, appropriately enough, a dodgy real estate broker) as the Tree etc. It’s still staged, very effectively, in the round and the lighting and projections haven’t changed. What I want to concentrate on is how well does the piece stack up on a second viewing and in the light of other stuff that has happened/is happening in Ontario.
Transpositions is an unusual album in more than one way. For starters, the music is composed by a duo; Unsettled Scores consisting of Spy Dénommé-Welch and Catherine Magowan. These are the folks responsible for Canoe last year. The new album, like the opera, explores the theme of environmental degradation; this time coupled with the idea of chronic illness, through the medium of instrumental chamber music; albeit a most unusual ensemble. It’s a trio of Alyssa Delbaere-Sawchuk – Viola, Justin McLean – Bass Trombone and Tuba and Christine Cheongyeong Bae – Piano..
Sunday night at the Redwood Theatre featured Opera Revue’s antidote to Christmas shows, Bach Humbug! As a card carrying Grinch I could scarcely fail to attend. Plus the beer is good at the Redwood. So what did we get?
I’ve enjoyed the music of Drew Jurecka and Rebekah Wolkstein in a variety of genres and formats; Payadora Tango Ensemble, Schmaltz and Pepper etc, but I’ve never heard their string quartet; the Venturi SQ. But now I’ve had a chance to listen to their debut album which is due to be released next year on Leaf Records. It features a new quartet by Drew Jurecka plus the Ravel String Quartet in F. Besides Jurecka and Wolkstein the Venutis comprise Shannon Knights on viola and Lydia Munchinsky on cello. Continue reading
Arrigo Boito is better known as Verdi’s ibrettist on several well known operas but he did write a couple of his own. Mefistofele is probably the better known of the two but it feels like the one he put pretty much heart and soul into is Nerone. Now it’s a matter of some controversy whether he finished the opera or not. Four acts were completed and the composer is on record, in 1911, as describing the opera as “finished” but there’s a prose summary of a possible fifth act which is generally regarded as so unstageable that the composer couldn’t possibly have made opera out of it. In any event the version staged at Cagliari in 2024 and recorded for video is the four act version.
operaramblings 