No, not a pandemic piss-up at No.10 but a newly released recording of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov recorded at Covent Garden in 2016. Funnily enough I remember Bryn Terfel, who plays the Tsar, alluding to learning the role during his Koerner Hall recital in April of that year.
Seventh Fire, part of the SummerWorks Performance Festival, is an immersive experience currently happening at the Aki Studio. It’s a ceremony/performance in which the participants are invited into a prepared, dark space where they can sit or lie down on cushions or chairs (lying down strongly recommended) and experience 90 minutes or so of a carefully constructed 3D soundscape.
Saturday evening in Walter Hall saw the conclusion of this year’s Toronto Summer Music with a concert that showcased different parts of the festival programme. There was the community element. The Community Choir, with their professional section leads and conductor Jamie Hillman produced very competent versions of Mozart’s Veni Sancte Spiritus and Lydia Adam;s arrangement of the rankin Family’s We Rise Again. The omnicompetent and omnipresent Rachael Kerr accompanied on piano.
A video recording of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex is a bit of an oddball really. It’s quite short (55 minutes) and it’s an oratorio rather than an opera. I guess it could be staged but the version recorded at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2022 isn’t. It’s a concert setting, in concert dress, with music stands. There’s not even minimal blocking.
August is looking less dead than it did a few days ago. Here’s a selection of what’s on. There’s a site specific production of Tennessee William’s Suddenly Last Summer at Sorry Studios. That’s presented by Riot King and runs August 9th to 13th. Hyejin Kwon has a DMA recital at Walter Hall on the 5th at 7.30pm with some interesting singers presenting various songs to texts by Goethe in a staged performance directed by Anna Theodosakis. (Free).
Sondra Radvanovsky was due to give a recital in Koerner Hall on Thursday night but she cancelled due to illness. Toronto Summer Music did extremely well to find a replacement of the calibre of American mezzo J’nai Bridges at such short notice. While many people turned their tickets in for refunds and others, it seems, just didn’t show up, those who did were treated to a performance by Ms. Bridges, accompanied by the ever reliable Rachel Kerr, that most certainly did not disappoint.
Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz might be the perfect antidote to an unsuccessful reimagining of Götterdämmerung. It’s short, uncomplicated, tuneful and nobody dies. It’s a simple love story in which an Alsatian landowner, who is a confirmed bachelor, makes a bet with the local rabbi that he can’t find him a bride. Then he falls hopelessly in love with the daughter of his tenant and they all live happily ever after.
It’s probably not ideal to begin the review of a new Ring cycle with Götterdämmerung but in the case of the cycle directed by Valentin Schwarz that premiered at Bayreuth in 2022 Götterdämmerung is the first to be released on video. Fortunately the generous two Blu-ray disk package includes a narrated summary (in English and German) of the whole cycle as seen by the director so it’s possible to put Götterdämmerung in context
Toronto Summer Music’s presentation in the Isabel Bader Theatre on Monday evening featured the Payadora Tango Ensemble and dance company PointeTango. It was very much a two part show. The first half featured typical Payadora fare; some original compositions, some arrangements of standards, all in a tango style. And all, of course, performed with the excellence we have come to expect from this group. The twist here was that many of the numbers were accompanied by dance by Erin Scott- Kafadar and Alexander Richardson of PointeTango.
TSM Wednesday night in Walter Hall featured the Isidore Quartet (Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon – violins, Devin Moore – viola and Joshua McClendon – cello). The first half of the programme featured two new works plus the first four fugues from Bach’s Art of the Fugue.
operaramblings 