Author Archives: operaramblings

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About operaramblings

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

Like Flesh

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So another rather interesting chamber opera from Europe has come my way.  It’s Like Flesh; music by Sivan Eldar and English language libretto by Cordelia Lynn.  It’s 80 minutes long and uses three soloists, a chorus of six and an eight piece instrumental group plus electronics.  It’s sort of a modern ecological take on Ovid’s idea of a woman turning into a tree.  Here the woman is unhappily married to the Forester who buys into the basic idea that Nature exists to serve humans and is a willing accomplice in environmental degradation.  There’s also a female student who is studying the forest and is discovering much that isn’t covered in the classroom.  The transformation takes place against a back drop of destructive wild fires and the wanton felling of woodland to make way for concrete.  Given the subject matter, the libretto is really quite poetic. Continue reading →

The Far Side of the Moon

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The Far Side of the Moon opened at Canadian Stage on Saturday evening.  It’s a Robert Lepage production; written, designed and directed by him.  It’s very Lepage with the strengths and weaknesses one might expect.  We will come to that in more detail.  It’s a homage to Lepage’s childhood obsession with the US and Soviet space programmes and to the moon in general.  It plays out in two parallel narratives; the space programmes from Sputnik 1 to the Apollo Soyuz mission in 1975 and the tale of two brothers in Quebec City circa late 1990s.  The older is an introverted nerd working on a doctoral thesis about popular perceptions of the space programmes and narcissism.  The younger brother is a presenter for the Weather Channel and is shallower than the water over Dogger Bank at low spring tide.  Their mother has just died and they are clearing out her apartment in an Old People’s Home.

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Judita

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Frano Parać’s opera Judita is unusual in at least one respect.  The libretto is in Old Croatian and is based on a 1501 epic poem by Marko Marulić, in turn based on the Book of Judith so the story is the familiar one about Judith and Holofernes.  It’s quite short; around 70 minutes, and it follows the biblical story pretty closely.

It premiered in Split in 2000 (both Parać and Marulić are/were from the city) but the recording was made at a live concert performance in Munich in 2023.  It’s a pretty interesting piece.  The music is clearly modern but essentially tonal.  It’s got lots of energy and is sometimes quite grand and dramatic but also with quieter moments.  There are elements of minimalism, especially in the rather declamatory and percussive music given to the Assyrian soldiers. Continue reading →

Rainelle Krause’s Queen of the Night

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In my review of Opera Atelier’s production of The Magic Flute I had this t say about Rainelle Krause’s Queen of the Night… “Her coloratura was powerful and pinpoint, and as the applause died down she reappeared and reprised the most spectacular section with additional stratospheric high notes.”

Now you can see the reprise for yourself on Instagram.  I wasn’t kidding.

L’Empire Étrange

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The first concert in Soundstreams’ Encounters series took place at Hugh’s Room on Tuesday evening.  It was a presentation of Andrew Balfour’s L’Empire Étrange which is a sort of meditation on the idea of Louis Riel.  It begins “Comment chanter Louis Riel, Do you know me?” and that’s the only time his name appears so it’s not, in any way, a narrative of Riel’s life and it’s not hagiographic.

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Sky of My Heart

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New York Polyphony are a quartet of singers; Geoffrey Williams – counter-tenor, Steven Caldicott Wilson and Andrew Fuchs – tenors and Craig Phillips – bass.  On Sky of My Heart they mostly sing unaccompanied but are joined by the LeStrange Viols (Loren Ludwig and John Mark Rozendaal – treble viol, Kivie Cahn-Lipman – tenor viol, Zoe Weiss and Douglas Kelley – bass viol).

The album is a mix of Renaissance and contemporary pieces; most of the latter composed for NYP.  They are very good singers with terrific control and a very clean largely vibrato free sound that works well for most of the music on the disk.  Some of the material is religious; William Byrd’s setting of Ecce quam bonum, Becky McGlade’s setting of Prudentius’ Of the Father’s Love Begotten and Ivan Moody’s settings of three excerpts from the Song of Songs.  All of these are unaccompanied in a churchy sort of style. Continue reading →

Lohengrin with a twist

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Sometimes opera directors come up with a twist to a plot hat is illuminating without requiring pretzel logic to actually align it with the libretto.  I think Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabit’s production of Wagner’s Lohengrin for the Wiener Staatsoper in 2024 manages that pretty well.

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The Mikado revisited

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Toronto Operetta Company’s season opened with a run of a “modified” version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.  It had the by now traditional updates predictably featuring numerous references to Mango Mussolini and the odd dig at Metrolinx but the bigger change, and a sensible one I think, was to peel away the the fake japonerie that must have seemed a bit lame in 1885 and is as intolerable as a “traditional” Madama Butterfly today.

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An exploration of Irish song

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On Thursday evening at the Canadian Music Centre soprano Maeve Palmer and pianist Jialiang Zhu gave a recital that explored Irish song in many of its aspects from traditional sean-nós to English language art songs for voice and piano and points in between.  I don’t know if there is another country where traditional music and composed contemporary music co-exist in quite the same way, and produce such interesting fusions, so it was really interesting.

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Coming up in November

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Here’s what’s coming up next month as best I know.

  • Canadian Stage’s presentation of Robert Lepage’s The Far Side of the Moon opens at the Bluma Appel Theatre on November 1st and runs until the 16th.
  • In the RBA lunchtime series we have the Wirth Vocal Prize winner in recital on the 6th
  • Branden Jacob-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance is playing at Soulpepper.  Previews are October 30th to November 5th with opening night on the 6th and the run continuing to November 23rd.

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