This year’s Toronto Summer Music; theme “Metamorphosis”, kicked off on Thursday evening in a packed Koerner Hall. It was TSM at its best; the concept a bit odd, even a bit mad, the execution brilliant and the result exciting and very enjoyable. Basically take two seriously virtuosic pianists and as the late, lamented Humphrey Lyttleton might have said “given then silly things to do”. Well they weren’t really silly, just a bit unusual.
Achtung, Aufnahme! is a short opera by Wilhelm Grosz. It’s an absurdist, “Tragicomedy” with a libretto by Béla Balázs, who also wrote the libretto of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. It’s very silly and really quite funny. Basically it’s set on a film set. A student who has been dumped by the leading lady shows up intending to kill her. The director thinks he’s part of the cast and coaches him in his role despite repeated warnings from the pianist. Finally the student realises what’s happening and makes a lucrative film deal with the director. The music is heavily jazz inflected and fun to listen to. Continue reading
One of the strangest records of Kurt Weill’s music that I have ever listened to has just come my way. There are two pieces involved; Propheten and Four Walt Whitman Songs. Propheten has its roots in Weill’s six hour long, Old Testament inspired, opera The Eternal Road which premiered at the Manhattan Opera House in 1937 with a cast of 245 and which ran for 153 performances before, perhaps unsurprisingly, disappearing for a long,long time. Propheten is a 1998 adaptation of the last act by David Drew using the original German text by Franz Werfel plus biblical quotations and additional orchestration by Noam Sheriff. It basically deals with the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and comes in at a more digestible 45 minutes.
Mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and pianist Joseph Middleton have produced a CD with three of Mahler’s best known song cycles; the Rückert-Lieder, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the Kindertotenlieder. It’s a very fine recording. Both performers are, of course, expert recitalists and they take quite an individual way with these well known pieces. In general they are quite slow (less so in the Rückert songs than the other two sets) but very clearly articulated. The phrasing, by both singer and pianist, is very deliberate and sometimes quite individual. This is most pronounced in the Rückert songs. It’s an interesting approach which I enjoyed.
VOICEBOX:Opera in Concert announced their 2023/24 season. It’s quite interesting; three Verdi rarities:
And for something completely different, Alice Ho’s The Phantom Bird of Han, performed by Symphony Nova Scotia, is now available on Youtube. Definitely worth a listen!
I don’t review a lot of full length audio only recordings of mainstream operas. Generally I think video makes more sense but sometimes something comes along that attracts my attention. The recent recording of Handel’s Serse by the English Concert with Harry Bicket was one such. This time it’s the cast that caught my attention. There’s Emily d’Angelo (are we allowed to call her “young” or “emerging” any more?) in the title role but also such fine Handel singers as Lucy Crowe as Romilda and Mary Bevan as Atalanta. As it turns out there’s not a weak link in the cast and while these three turn in fine performances so do Daniela Mack (Amastre), Paula Murrihy (Arsamene), Neal Davies (Ariodata) and William Dazeley (Elviro). Continue reading
Stacie Dunlop’s film of Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child, which I reviewed here, is now available on Youtube for free.
The remastered SACD release of Siegfried from the Solti Ring cycle is now out. There’s only so much I can add to my reviews of Die Walküre and of the sampler disk of the whole cycle. Overall observations about the technical side of the record remain valid and the Vienna Philharmonic is again fabulous. The packaging is as with Die Walküre… luxurious.
The singing is also very fine and I didn’t have any reservations about anyone sounding “dated”. Hotter and Nilsson are again fantastic and Wolfgang Windgassen’s Siegfried combines beauty and power in full measure. Gustav Neidlinger and Kurt Böhme are back as Alberich and Fafner to good effect. Gerhard Stolze is effective (and not too affected) as Mime and there’s the famous cameo as the Woodbird by Joan Sutherland. Solti’s conducting is once again thrilling. He’s not afraid to take things at pace but can also be intensely dramatic and lyrical; sometimes at the same time. Culshaw’s “soundstage” effects come off really well, especially in the Fafner’s lair scene. This is another impressive instalment in an impressive project.
The version I listened to is the the four SACD disk release. It’s also available (for roughly the price of a Nibelung’s horde) as five vinyl LPs or much, much cheaper digitally in formats ranging from MP3 to 192kHz/24 bit FLAC which I suspect will be very good but not quite up to SACD quality.
Catalogue number: Decca 4853161
Rossini’s Otello is an interesting piece with a completely different plot to the Shakespeare/Verdi version. It’s entirely set in Venice for a start. For more details on the plot and the not insignificant casting demands you might find the first few paragraphs of my review of a 2012 recording from Zurich helpful.
Opera Revue is at it again. This time they give us a takedown of Doug Fraud’s plans for Ontario Place. Something to Chow down on?
And a reminder… they have a show at Granite Brewery on Sunday at 5pm
operaramblings 