Most opera lovers will be familiar with the Drottningholm Palace Theatre near Stockholm. Less familiar is the Confidencen Theatre in the Ulriksdal Palace. It’s a small theatre (200 seats?) built in the 1650s and restored in the early 21st century. It now hosts concerts and operas and in August 2021 it played John Blow’s Venus and Adonis in a double bill with Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The operas were recorded and issued on Blu-ray and DVD.
Yesterday there was an early evening performance in Walter Hall by members of the UoT Opera. Fourteen singers and two pianists in various combinations presented a total of eleven scenes. The scenes were blocked with some basic props but concert dress, or rather whatever part of the singer’s wardrobe evoked their character for them, which is probably more fun if you are singing Musetta than Dr. Bartolo.
The latest release from the BBC Philharmonic and conductor John Storgårds is a generous coupling of two Shostakovich symphonies; Symphony No. 12 in D Minor (The Year 1917) and Symphony No.15 in A Major. That’s a total of 85 minutes of music. It’s also an SACD release from Chandos so technically it’s exemplary.
Really the quality of the music making and the quality of the recording reinforce each other. Shostakovich symphonies tend to be a combination of delicacy and detail coupled with stirring, even bombastic, climaxes. I was struck by just how delicate Storgårds makes his orchestra sound when he wants. There’s some really beautiful woodwind playing for instance. Then, just when I’m writing a note to myself that “this is a bit civilized for Shostakovich”, wham! In comes the brass and percussion in a shattering climax. And the contrast is so much more effective with the extended frequency and dynamic range that SACD affords. Tying it all together is a kind of restless energy that runs through both symphonies. It’s really good.
The recording was made at the BBC Media Centre in Salford in August and September 2022 and it was recorded, as Chandos do, in 24 bit, 96kHz resolution, which is what allows the full quality of SACD to emerge. The physical disk has the usual multi and 2 channel SACD mixes plus a standard res CD track. It’s also available digitally as MP# or standard and high res FLAC. The excellent booklet is also included in the digital release.
Catalogue number: Chandos CHSA 5334
Against the Grain Theatre’s presentation of Theatre of Sound’s production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle opened last night at the Fleck Dance Theatre. It’s in English translation (by director Daisy Evans) with chamber ensemble and it reimagines the piece as the story of an elderly man caring for a wife who has dementia. What’s extraordinary is that the libretto works extremely smoothly with no changes. The rooms in Bluebeard’s castle are replaced by a trunk with objects that evoke memories from the couple’s long life together. The “torture” of uncertain first love, military service, marriage, children etc. In each scene a silent, younger, Judith (there are three of them representing different ages and life stages) appears until at the end all three are on stage looking at themselves in mirrors. It’s very beautiful and very moving.
Ahead of Opera Atelier’s upcoming production of Handel’s The Resurrection (La resurrezione) at Koerner Hall next week (6th to 9th April) there was a lunchtime preview in the RBA on Tuesday. Later that day I sat down with director Marshall Pynkoski to find out more about the work, OA’s relationship to it and its rather tortuous journey to the Koerner Hall stage.
Here’s what’s coming up at Toronto Mendelssohn Choir/Singers next season.
There are a couple of shows for the TM Singers; the professional core of the TMC:
My review of Ian Cusson and Kanika Ambrose’s new opera Of the Sea is now up at Opera Canada.
Decca have just released a 3CD set of previously unreleased recordings made by the late Jessye Norman between 1989 and 1998 with various orchestras and conductors.
The first is a series of extracts from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde recorded in Leipzig in 1998 with Kurt Masur conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Besides the Prelude there’s most of the Isolde/Brangäne scenes from Act 1 (Hannah Schwarz is Brangäne). Then comes the huge Act 2, Scene 2 duet; “Isolde! Geliebte! – Tristan! Geliebte!” etc, with Thomas Moser as Tristan, and finally, and inevitably, the “Liebestod”. It all sounds really good with the duet properly ecstatic and the “Liebestod” very moving. It’s a studio recording made in many takes so that challenging final scene doesn’t have to be sung after many hours on stage which no doubt contributes but it’s all very fine and a good record of Jessye in the role.
I’ve listened to and liked a lot of Missy Mazzoli’s operatic and vocal music but hadn’t had much exposure to her purely instrumental writing so was interested to get hold of a copy of her new SACD release Dark with Excessive Bright.
The title track was originally composed as a concerto for double bass and string orchestra but here it’s given in two reworkings for solo violin; one with string orchestra and the other with string quintet. The soloist is Peter Herresthal and in the orchestral version he’s accompanied by the Bergen Philharmonic conducted by James Gaffigan. I think all the hallmarks of Mazzoli’s music, except perhaps the use of electronics, are present in this piece. There’s a baroque sensibility combined with 20th century minimalism but in the context of the 21st century’s embrace of individual voices rather than dominant fashions. So, largely tonal chords are recycled n different, fairly repetitive rhythmic patterns, but it never gets dull or new agey. I think I like the arrangement for string quintet even more. Here it’s players from the Arctic Philharmonic conducted by Tim Weiss accompanying. The textures are lighter and it seems to have more clarity. Good stuff.
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), played by the Arctic Philharmonic and Weiss, is fascinating. There are rococo loops, slow at first, then wilder, playing over a hurdy gurdy like wheezing, droning sound. It gets louder and more insistent and quite ominous before fading away into nothingness. Continue reading
Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s production of Metamorphoses 2023 opened last night at Crow’s Theatre. It’s an 80 minute show, written and directed by Michele Smith, (with, it’s clear, a lot of input from the cast) taking various stories from Ovid. Most of them involve women (or goddesses) revenging themselves on men for various failings ranging from being smug to violent rape. It’s also very concerned with gender fluidity. The principal narrator is Tiresias and along the way we also meet Hermaphorditus and Caenis.
operaramblings 