The Palazetto Bru-Zane’s video recording of Bizet’s Carmen; reviewed by me here, is going to be streamed (free) on the Opera Vision Youtube channel from January 10th.
Opera Vision streaming Bru-Zane Carmen
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Author Archives: operaramblings
Countess Maritza
This year’s New Year offering from Toronto Operetta Theatre is Imre Kálmán’s 1924 work Countess Maritza presented in Nigel Douglas’ English language version. It’s a pretty typical TOT offering. The work itself is a rather silly love story full of just about every cliché about central Europe bar vampires but it’s tuneful and the ten piece orchestra conducted by Derek Bate provides colour and volume enough for the Jane Mallett Theatre.
An operatic triptych
Resphigi’s 1931 work Maria Egiziaca was originally conceived as a concert work but very early on it became more common to perform it fully staged. That’s how it’s presented in a production earlier this year from Venice’s Teatro La Fenice though it actually took place in the smaller Teatro Maliban. It’s quite a short work; a little over an hour, and as the composer’s description of it as a “symphonic triptych” suggests it takes place in three scenes.
Metallic Mitridate
Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto is definitely one of his less often performed works even though it’s astonishingly accomplished for a fourteen year old composer. One can see why. It adheres very faithfully to the opera seria model. Far more so than, say, La clemenza di Tito. The libretto is based on a play by Racine which, frankly, lacks dramatic interest and has a contrived ending. The opera wraps all the loose ends up in about three minutes. Structurally da capo aria follows recitative follows da capo aria with little variation and the arias all adhere pretty rigidly to the formal range of baroque emotions. That said there is some spectacular vocal writing; both lyrical and dramatic, which allows the singers to fully display their skills.
January 2025
So what’s in store for Toronto early in the New Year?
- December 29th 2024 and January 3rd and 4th 2025, Toronto Operetta Theatre are presenting Kalman’s Countess Maritza at the Jane Mallett Theatre.
- Bad New Days are presenting Adam Paolozza’s Last Landscape; a meditation on environmental collapse, at Buddies in Bad Times. Preview is on the 12th with opening on the 14th and running until the 26th.
Best of 2024
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
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
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
Fenlon and Fenlon do Winterreise
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!
Revisiting The Master Plan
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.
