Author Archives: operaramblings

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About operaramblings

Toronto based lover of opera, art song, related music and all forms of theatre.

A black hole in Florence

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Carlus Padrissa’s (of La fura dels baus) take on Verdi’s La forza del destino for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is nothing if not ambitious.  He interprets this rather banal and meandering melodrama as a tale of cosmic inevitability.  Leonora and Alvaro are metaphors for two stars, which after an epic journey through time and space, will collide and form a black hole extinguishing each other.  FWIW the recording was made in June 2020 under COVID restrictions so the chorus is masked and it sounds as if the theatre is a lot less than full.

1.calatravas

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An unusual lunchtime recital

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Luca Pisaroni, currently singing in the COC’s The Marriage of Figaro, and pianist Timothy Cheung performed in the RBA at Tuesday lunchtime.  It was unusual and what was unusual was the choice of repertoire; rarely heard 19th century songs by composers who are much better known for opera.  In fact I’m not sure I had heard any of the programme before.

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Film of Salome

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It kind of makes sense I guess.  Atom Egoyan is making a film about a production of Richard Strauss’ Salome using the current COC production and cast as part of the process.  It’s to be called Seven Veils and is backed by Rhombus Media and will star Amanda Seyfried as Jeanine, a young woman who has been given the task of remounting a production of Salome originally created by her mentor.  One press release describes Jeanine as a “tortured opera director” which is an idea that might appeal to a certain section of the local opera audience.  No word on a prospective release date.  I guess this is about the only way many people will experience (at least part of) Ambur Braid’s amazing portrayal of the title role.

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Quilico Awards 2023

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Last evening saw the first post-plague edition of the Christina and Louis Quilico Awards competed for by the singers of the COC Ensemble Studio. Six of Ensemble’s seven singers competed with Vladimir Soloviev and Brian Cho providing piano accompaniment.  It wasn’t the most thrilling Quilico Awards ever.  The judges; Perryn Leech, Carolyn Sproule and Steven Philcox probably had a pretty easy time of it.  So herewith how it came out.

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Mavra/Iolanta

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The 2019 production from the Opernstudio der Bayerischen Staatsoper (basically their young artists programme) was a bit unusual.  Director Axel Ranisch created a kind of mash up of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Stravinsky’s very short opera Mavra.  Iolanta is about a blind princess who doesn’t realise she is blind.  It’s only when she meets her future husband, a French count Vaudémont, that she realises this.  Her father the king employs a Moorish doctor to try and cure her, which fails, but believing that if she doesn’t pretend to be sighted her suitor will be executed she fakes it and is given to him in marriage.  He alone realises she is still blind and puts out his own eyes in sympathy (this is pretty hard to watch!). In the process they both realise that God’s creation is much greater than human eyes can perceive.

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Tu me voyais

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tumevoyais_coverTu me voyais is a new CD from soprano Christina Raphaëlle Haldane and pianist Carl Philippe Gionet.  It contains Gionet’s arrangements of Twelve Acadian Folk Songs plus a piece by Adam Sherkin setting poetry by Gionet and two pieces by Jérome Blais setting texts by Léonard Forest and Herménégilde Chiasson.

The twelve folk songs are all Acadien but unsurprisingly some of have roots further back in France.  There are songs from Poitou and Gascony (so they are really English….) and so on.  They are typically strophic songs with refrains and get a respectful treatment in the style of French chansons though this doesn’t mean the piano part is straightforward!.  I like the simplicity of this approach because many of these songs are just gorgeous and Christina sings them with beauty and humour and, in some places, considerable agility coupled to a command of standard international French, Acadien and Poitevin.  She really has a lovely rich yet flexible instrument.  Gionet is a very sympathetic and accomplished accompanist too.

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Unruly Sun

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Matthew RickettsUnruly Sun is a song cycle in 19 parts with music by Matthew Ricketts (left) and words by Mark Campbell (below).  It’s inspired by Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature and was performed last night in Mazzoleni Hall by tenor Karim Sulayman accompanied by piano and string quintet.  I was much more affected by this piece than I expected to be.  The text covers a lot of ground; Jarman’s cottage at Dungeness with it’s bleak shingle beach and nuclear power station, AIDS and the loss of friends, a bad porn movie and, of course, Jarman’s garden (which also of course inspired Tm Albery’s Garden of Vanished Pleasures), and anger at Thatcher’s Britain and her indifference to those suffering from AIDS (c.f. Jarman’s The Last of England).  These ideas are linked together by sections about plants and flowers and quotes from (I think) John Donne.  So, the AIDS crisis and the burning tire fire of Thatcherism meets the Georgian tradition that links the Elizabethans to Edmund Blunden and beyond.  It’s beautifully constructed and the somewhat minimalist, evocative and rather beautiful music supports without imposing itself.  And the performance was stunning; beautiful singing, beautiful playing and cool projected images. Continue reading →