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About operaramblings

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

Infinite Life

Infinite Life, by Annie Baker, in a production directed by Jackie Maxwell, opened at Coal Mine Theatre last night.  It’s a play that has garnered acclaim in both London and New York.  It’s not hard to see why.  It’s the sort of play that perhaps appeals to theatre people (including critics) more than it does to the general public, though it’s not without wider appeal.  It requires great skill and precision to bring off precisely because nothing really happens.  There’s no narrative thread for a general audience to grasp.  That said it is remarkably effective on its own terms.

Brenda Bazinet, Kyra Harper, and Jean Yoon in InfiniteLife_CoalMineTheatre_byElanaEmer_EE_1589

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So is that it for Against the Grain?

question_markEdmonton Opera today announced that Robin Whiffen, Executive Director of Against the Grain (though on mat leave for a while now) is joining as their new Executive Director; teaming up again wiith Joel Ivany, Artistic Director, in Edmonton.

Now all the original forces behind AtG have left and what was supposed to be the stability and continuity team has lost its leader (and pretty much everyone else as best I can tell)..  AtG have only produced one live show since COVID and that wasn’t really their’s, it was Theatre of Sound’s production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle which played in Toronto in March 2023.  Add to that that they have been without artistic leadership since Ivany left in July 2023 and that’s officially.  He took up his Edmonton post in November 2021. Continue reading

Almaviva’s gangster gang

Martin Kušej’s production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Salzburg in 2023 came 20 years after he had last directed a Mozart opera at Salzburg.  My reviews (and follow up pieces) of his productions of Don Giovanni (2002, revived 2006) and La clemenza di Tito (2002) are probably two of the most commented on on this blog.  So I’m interested to see where this goes.

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The Wild Goose

A couple of months ago I reviewed Jennifer Nicholls’ film of Sweat by Anna Chatterton and Juliet Palmer.  It was the main feature in a double bill that also included an animated short from the Canadian Art Song Project of Cecilia Livingston’s arrangement of Wade Hemsworth’s The Wild Goose performed by Lawrence Wiliford and Steven Philcox with animation by students from OCAD.

wildgoose

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September 2024

sept2024Well late August has been a bit thin in terms of live performances but September. sees things back with a bang.

    • Opera Revue has a Verdi and Weill show at the Redwood Theatre.
    • Coal Mine Theatre is opening with Annie Baker’s Infinite Life which played to rave reviews in London and New York.  Previews are on the 6th to 8th with opening on the 10th.  The play runs until the 29th.
    • Crow’s opens their season with Ibsen’s Rosmersholm.  Previews run from the 3rd to the 10th with opening night on the 11th.  The run continues to October 6th.

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freezing

freezingI guess I’ve learned never to expect the predictable from Emily D’Angelo (except for the black clothes and boots).  Her new album; freezing, is as unexpected as enargeia was four years ago.  This album is even less “classical”.  The seventeen tracks cover a range of genres.  I think I’d classify them as contemporary art song, traditional folk song, singer/songwriter covers and English renaissance.  All in all there is a total of 47 minutes of music. Continue reading

The Greek Passion

Bohislav Martinů’s The Greek Passion is a 1961 opera based on the novel Christ Recrucified by Nicos Kazantzakis.  The English language libretto is by the composer.  It was staged in the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg in 2023 in a production directed y Simon Stone and recorded for video.

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Ukrainian Art Song Intensive 2024

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Ukrainian Art Song Project and the sixth time a summer intensive for young singers has been held in Toronto.  The final concert on Sunday afternoon in Temerty Theatre was run on similar lines to the previous year.  There was a piano in the middle of the room with the audience “in the round” and singers singing from different places in the room.

building exterior

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Picture a Day Like This

PictureadayPicture a Day Like This is the latest operatic collaboration between George Benjamin and Martin Crimp (Written on Skin, Lessons in Love and Violence).  It’s basically an hour long chamber opera written for five singers and chamber orchestra and it’s now been recorded for CD by Nimbus.

The basic plot line is that a child has died but her mother can revive her if, within 24 hours, she can obtain a sleeve button from a truly happy person.  She is given an itinerary to follow to find the likely candidates.  In the course of six scenes she encounters two lovers whose relationship is apparently idyllic until the question of what “open” means comes up.  (It’s possibly the first serious use of the idea of polyamory in the modern sense in an opera.)  There’s an artisan who is superficially happy though he turns out to be going nuts because he’s been replaced by a machine.  There’s a composer who is immensely successful but full of self doubt and a collector who owns everything he admires but is utterly alone.  The only truly happy person is the enigmatic Zabelle… who turns out not to exist. Continue reading

A fascist Macbeth

Krysztof Warlikowski’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth; recorded for video at Salzburg in 2023 is certainly not short of ideas.  Whether it all hangs together is another matter.  There seem to be two main ideas in play.  We are in a 1940s-ish fascist state with party armbands and so on.  This gets more explicit as the piece develops.  On top of this there’s a foregrounding of Lady Macbeth as the real driving force of the drama coupled with the idea that what’s driving her is her inability to provide an heir.  For example, she’s clearly the one being crowned after Duncan’s murder and babies are a recurrent visual motif.

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