It’s coming towards the end of the traditional “season” but there’s sill plenty happening. Here’s how I see may shaping up at present (I expect more theatre listings will come in. They tend to be somewhat less notice!):
It’s pretty difficult to judge whether or not a high concept production of Wagner’s Ring cycle is going to work or not just from Das Rheingold but I thought Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production for Staatsoper unter den Linden recorded in 2022 was pretty promising. His world is a large research complex designated ESCHE for reasons that aren’t clear. The time period seems to be 1970s or thereabouts. The research is essentially psychological and the characters are variously executives, scientists and experimental subjects.
I went to Opera Revue at Castro’s on Sunday afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve been to a regular Opera Revue show in a while because of geographic and scheduling constraints plus, of all their locations, I prefer Castro’s and they haven’t been there in a while.
The Met HD in cinemas line up has been announced for 2024/25 so here’s my take on it. The first thing to notice is that there are only eight shows. There have been ten per season since 2012/13 and twelve before that. This is likely a reflection of the problems with audience numbers that all North American opera companies have been having. In the same time period the COC has cut back from 65-70 main stage performances per year to 42 and the Met’s “in house” audience problem has been well publicised. So what does that leave us with?
Barbara Hannigan’s latest recording project is a CD of Messiaen’s vocal music with pianist Bertrand Chamayou. It’s very much an equal partnership with some superb musicianship on display. It starts off with two cycles written for/inspired by Messiaen’s first wife. Chants de Terre et de Ciel celebrates the marriage and the birth of their young son. There’s some very dramatic singing here but what really stood out for me was Hannigan’s ability to float a note with perfect control and apparent ease. It works beautifully with the more delicate parts of the piano part.
Woking Phoenix is a play developed and performed by Silk Bath Collective. It opened at Theatre Passe Muraille on Thursday night. It deals with that perennial Canadian issue; the immigrant experience. In this case it’s essentially a single Chinese mother with three children running a Chinese restaurant in small town Ontario. So one has the usual dynamics of kids growing up coupled with being “different” in a very homogenous community. It’s a co-creation of Aaron Jan and Gloria Mok , who also co-directed, and Besse Cheng who appears in the play as the elder daughter.
A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney by Lucas Hnath opened last night at the Young Centre in a production by Outside the March and Soulpepper. It’s one of those pieces that is perhaps easier to admire than enjoy. Technically, everything about it is excellent but sitting through ninety minutes of egotistical bullying is not a whole lot of fun.
Project Earth: The Blue Chapter is the first in a projected series of CDs from the Iris Trio (Christine Carter – clarinet, Anna Petrovna – piano, Zoë Martin-Doike – viola) dealing with environmental issues. This one blends music by Florian Hoefner with poems by Don McKay. The longest piece on the CD is the multi-movement Bird Island Suite inspired by the bird life of nesting islands around Newfoundland but really dealing with broader issues of how we interact with and influence the natural world for good or ill. Usually the latter. Continue reading
Les Génies ou les Caractères de l’Amour is an opera/ballet of 1736 by one Mademoiselle Duval who was 22 at the time. Almost nothing is known about Duval except that she was at one time a chorus member at the Royal Opera in Paris. It seems reasonable to deduce that she was from a family of professional musicians and that’s how she got her training. FWIW Les Génies was only the second opera by a woman to be produced by the Royal Opera. It’s recently been recorded for CD under the auspices of Château de Versailles Spectacles. Continue reading
How different were sensibilities in seventeenth century England (at least after the Restoration) to contemporary mores? Perhaps less than one might think. Unless you are a woman. And you want to be famous. And you aren’t a queen. All of which presents a problem for young Margaret who leaves her dull, impoverished, gentry family to try her luck at court just as Cromwell and co finally get around to giving Charles I a rather drastic haircut.
operaramblings 