I don’t really associate Bryn Terfel with bel canto comedies but why not? He’s a good actor and he’s certainly funny in recitals so why not in opera? So, what’s he like in the title role of the production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale recorded at Covent Garden in 2019? Short answer, excellent, and pretty much everything about the show is highly satisfactory.
On Saturday evening the COC presented a teaser concert for their 2023/24 season on the outdoor stage at Harbourfront. The weather stayed fair and there was no more than the usual aural background to distract a little from the music. The full orchestra under Johannes Debus was on display along with half a dozen members of the Ensemble Studio.
So, you may ask, what is Opera Ramblings doing reviewing a recording of Rodgers & Hammerstain’s Oklahoma!? Well, it’s a project in the same vein as my reviewing the Bru-Zane recordings of more or less forgotten late 18th and 19th century French operas. It’s an attempt to put the piece in the context of its early performances and also to look at how it was originally performed for, like many early 19th century French operas, if and when Oklahoma! does get performed it’s usually in a style very different from the original The occasion for doing so is a new Chandos recording that attempts to reconstruct the sound of the original 1943 Broadway run. That the recording is very high definition and released in SACD format only increased my interest.
Saturday afternoon at 27 North Sherbourne Rachel Krehm and Janelle Fung presented an art song recital entitled The Enticing Sky. The material chosen was interesting with a heavy bias to women composers, living composers and Canadian composers; sometimes all three at once.
We got extracts from Come Closer; settings of the poetry of Elizabeth Krehm by Ryan Trew, Ethel Smyth’s Three Songs of the Sea, Dorothy Chang’s Songs of Wood and Water, Anna Pidgorna’s Amphráin Eibhlín (the only non English language text) and Cecilia Livingston’s luna premit. Continue reading
Canoe; libretto by Spy Dénommé-Welch, music by the librettist and Catherine Magowan, had its world premier at Trinity St. Paul’s on Friday evening. It’s a complex work and adopts some interesting approaches to telling an Indigenous story within the conventions of European opera. It’s effectively directed, on quite a minimal but functional set (Lindy Kinoshameg), by Dénommé-Spy and Moynan King.
(L-R): “Gladys” Nicole Joy-Fraser, “Debaajimod” Michelle Lafferty, “Tree Spirit” Conlin Delbaere-Sawchuk, “Constance” Kristine Dandavino
The Master Plan by Michael Healey opened last night at Crow’s Theatre in a production directed by Chris Abraham. It’s based on Josh O’Kane’s book Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy and deals with the tortuous relationship between Google subsidiary Sidewalk Labs, Waterfront Toronto and the various other stakeholders involved in developing the (relatively) small parcel of land, Quayside, at Parliament and Queen’s Quay and the wider future of the Eastern Portlands.
There are a few adds for September. This Saturday (16th) you can catch Rachel Krehm in recital with Janelle Fung. That’s at 3pm. Details here. Saturday 30th is a busy day. At 7.30pm at Church of the Redeemer The Happenstancers have a concert.of mostly 20th century music for soprano and chamber ensemble. Details and tickets here. At the same time and repeated at 4pm on the Sunday Confluence Concerts have a concert of Irish music, both traditional and modern art song. That’s at Heliconian Hall. Details etc. Also from the 22nd to 24th Tafelmusik are performing Beethoven’s 4th and 5th symphonies at Koerner Hall. Their take on Beethoven symphonies is unusual and very interesting. And while Tafelmusik are absent from Jeanne Lamon Hall on the 22nd and 23rd, ther Toronto Mendelssohn Singers are presenting a programme including dance. A choreographed version of Handel’s Dixit Dominus is a rare event!
Back in 2015 I reviewed a 2006 recording from the Royal Opera House of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro directed by David McVicar. It’s very good and has a super starry cast; Finley, Persson, Röschmann, Schrott, Shaham. There’s even a cameo by Philip Langridge as Basilio. So, when I saw that a new recording of the same production, made in 2022 with a young and less obviously starry cast, had been released I was in two minds whether to bother. I’m glad I did.
The story of Salome and John the Baptist may be the most twisted tale in the Western canon. Oscar Wilde’s take on the story, with music by Richard Strauss added, didn’t make it any less twisted. Nor did Atom Egoyan’s production of the opera for the COC and its several remounts. How, one might ask, could one ramp the twistedness up a notch? The answer, and a very successful one, is to have Egoyan make a film based around his production. And so, Seven Veils, which had its avant-premier, ahead of TIFF, at the Four Seasons Centre last night.
Ambur Braid as Salome (top left), Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Jochanaan (below), and Frédéric Antoun as Narraboth (top right) in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Salome, 2023. Photo: Michael Cooper
Factory Tneatre opened the season last night with The Waltz by Marie Beath Badian in a production by Nina Lee Aquino. It’s a one acter that’s partly a sort of classic “coming of age” story and, rather more, about what identity and belonging mean in Canada today. Our two characters are Bea Klassen (played by Ericka Leobrera); sixteen years old, part filipina, part Scandawegian growing up in Saskatchewan; currently on her own at a remote cottage armed with a crossbow, and RJ Alvarez (played by Anthony Perpuse); second generation filipino, clever and nerdy, has lived all his life in Scarborough but is off to UBC to be as far as possible from his family. He has made a diversion from his trip to meet someone from his mother’s past who is somehow connected to Bea but that character never shows up.
operaramblings 