More May listings…
- Sarah Porter’s L-E-A-K opens tonight at the Theatre Centre and runs until Sunday. It’s described as “an absurdist and poetic lesbian love letter to the ocean”. I’m intrigued.
- Nightwood Theatre and Tarragon Theatre are jointly presenting Fatima Adar’s She’s Not Special. It runs at the Tarragon Theatre from May 24th to 28th. Here’s the blurb… “Leave expectations at the door. We are not putting on a play, we are throwing a party. This is a concert, comedy show, and confessional all in one. Come celebrate your mediocrity with us!”
- Soulpepper are opening a run of Athol Fugard’s 1972 classic Sizwe Banzi is Dead at the Young Centre on the 25th. That runs until June 18th.
- The weekend of the 26th to 28th is the Toronto Bach Festival.
- Finally, on the 26th and 27th Confluence Concerts have a concert at Heliconian Hall called All the Diamonds. It’s an eclectic mix of music about the night sky performed by the usual suspects.
Regular readers will know I’m something of a Peter Grimes completist so I was interested to get my hands on a recording previously unheard by me (one of only two such!). It’s a 1992 recording made in Watford Town Hall and, as far as I know, was not made in conjunction with a stage run. The Grimes is Anthony Rolfe Johnson with Thomas Allen as Balstrode and Felicity Lott as Ellen Orford. There’s also a young Simon Keenleyside as Ned Keene. Bernard Haitink conducts with Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House. 
Forbidden Fruit is a CD by baritone Benjamin Appl and Pianist James Baillieu due for release on June 23rd. It’s a sort of themed recital dealing with the Garden of Eden and the Fall. It starts with the English traditional song “I Will Give My Love an Apple” and finishes with “Urlicht” from Mahler’s setting of text from Das Knaben Wunderhorn. In between there are about 25 songs, some solo piano and quotes from the Bible which take us on a journey from all kinds of temptation, through consequences, to (maybe) some kind of redemption. In all there’s 69 minutes of music. 
Blaze is a record of (mostly) solo piano music by Alice Ping Yee Ho played by Christina Petrowska Quilico. There are eight pieces on the disk adding up to just over an hour of music. It’s quite varied. There are pieces like the title track which are colourful and intricate with others like “Shade” being slower and, perhaps, more lyrical. It’s all highly virtuosic requiring not just excellent orthodox technique but quite a bit in the way of extended technique. It needs more than technique too as this is music with a lot going on that needs to be interpreted sensitively. The performances are really impressive.
operaramblings 