So here we go with a round up of the best things I saw and listened to in 2024.
Opera
The Toronto opera scene is still a bit flat and lacking the vibrancy of pre-pandemic with Against the Grain pretty much invisible and Tapestry wrapped up in building out their new digs. Still, there were some good shows. The best of the CCC’s offerings, IMO, were Cherubini’s Medea in the spring and Gounod’s Faust in the fall. Beyond the COC, William Christie and co’s presentation of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at TSM was refreshingly different, Opera 5 bounced back with a rather good production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and let’s throw Art of Time Ensemble’s reimagining of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale into this category too. There were a couple of excellent student shows. The GGS produced a very good Dialogues of the Carmelites early in the year and UoT Opera chipped in with their Three Islands show featuring three one act operas directed by Tim Albery. Continue reading
2022 was the year when live performance in Toronto rose from the dead. It almost didn’t happen though. It’s a bit weird to remember just how strangely 2022 started. The theatres and concert halls had reopened in late 2021 and it looked like “normality” was returning. Some venues had masking policies or vaccine mandates and there were some “50%” performances but my calendar was starting to look something like pre plague. Then the government lost its marbles. Two weeks after a spike in COVID cases and at a point where all the indicators were actually heading south at the speed of a Messerschmidt in a power dive they closed everything down again. And although the shutdown was brief it was extremely disruptive causing all manner of cancellation and rescheduling. But get going again we did eventually and here’s a summary of the best things that came my way in 2022. 
2021 was another year of parts. Pretty much no live indoor performances before September then a few chances to get to the theatre and now, well who knows? So what stood out for me in 2021? Here’s a round up by category.
What a truly strange year! Going back over my writing looking for highlights just made it seem stranger! I see now that it fell into three chunks. The first started perfectly normally with the usual run of operas and concerts and that all ended abruptly on March 13th. 
The COC had a decent year but two of their shows stood out for me. David McVicar’s production of 
At the COC nothing really blew me away in 2018. Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian was better than I had feared and, I think, with revisions could be rather good. In the form we saw it, it felt somewhat overblown and didactic. It was also great to see Robert Carsen’s Eugene Onegin finally get an airing in Toronto; especially with a very good, young, largely Canadian cast. Nothing from Opera Atelier really floated my boat this year though. Are Against the Grain or Tapestry major companies now? One could argue that they are sailing under false colours in describing themselves as “Indy”. In any event they each provided one of the year’s highlights with the spectacular Orphée from the former and the best new work of the year; The Overcoat, from the latter. 
It’s that time of year when it’s traditional to do best of the year lists. Fortunately this is all about music because in most other respects 2016 was a bit of a horror show. So here goes. As far as opera proper was concerned it was a pretty good year. There were no real howlers in the COC’s season. It was solid and, at its best, better than that, For me, Ariodante was the standout; an intelligent, thought provoking production backed up by extremely good acting and singing. I was really expecting to like the Claus Guth Marriage of Figaro more than I did. I enjoyed it but I was a bit perplexed by the lightening up that had taken place since Salzburg in 2006. Opera Atelier had their best show in quite a while with Lucio Silla but even Wallis Giunta couldn’t save a misconceived Dido and Aeneas.
operaramblings 