On Wednesday evening I went back to the Four Seasons Centre for another look at the COC’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck. I was really impressed with the show on opening night (my review on bachtrack.com) and was interested to see whether a second look would give some insights into a production that is visually fascinating almost to the point of overload.
Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Wozzeck and Anthony Robin Schneider as the Doctor
My review of the COC’s revival of the Robert Carsen production of Eugene Onegin is now posted at bachtrack.com.
Photo: Michael Cooper
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My review of the COC’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck that opened on Friday is now up at bachtrack.com.
Wozzeck continues at the Four Seasons Centre until May 16th.
Photo credit: Michael Cooper
#bachtrack
My review of Bilodeau/Bouchard’s La Reine-garçon at the COC is now up at Bachtrack.
TL:DR everything I want in a new opera pretty much.
Photo credit: Michael Cooper
The Canadian Opera Company opened it’s “new to Toronto” production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on Friday night. It’s a production that’s been around for a while having premiered in Houston in 2010. It’s almost entirely traditional. The one concession to critics of Puccini’s rather sordid tale is that Butterfly’s age is raised from fifteen to eighteen. The original concept was Michael Grandage’s but it’s revival directed here by Jordan Lee Braun.
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The Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Gounod’s Faust, which opened on Friday at the Four Seasons Centre, is the first main stage show created at the COC since Joel Ivany’s Hänsel und Gretel in 2020. It’s worth the wait!
My review of the COC’s season opener; Verdi’s Nabucco, is now up at @bachtrack
Photo credit: Michael Cooper
Slug Meal, part of Summerworks, is a one woman show presented by Camille Huang at Theatre Passe Muraille. It’s a sort of dance X performance art piece inspired by unfortunate childhood memories of her mother’s eggplant dish, Western ideas of immigrant food and the idea of “dirt” as “matter out of place”
The highly athletic Huang performs an hour long routine, occasionally talking to herself in (I guess) Chinese and accompanied by a soundtrack that ranges from body noises to a kind of Chinese muzak. Along the way she: Continue reading
I attended the third and final performance of Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White by HAUI x Sean Hayes at the Canadian Opera Company Theatre on Sunday afternoon. It’s a very ambitious piece which has some really excellent ideas and scenes but perhaps bites off a bit more than it can chew.
Tuesday night at the Four Seasons Centre it was the turn of the Ensemble Studio cast to give us Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. It’s the same Barbe et Doucet production of course but director Marilyn Gronsdal, conductor Simone Luti and an excellent cast definitely gave it their own twist. Everybody seemed to have their own bit of business that we didn’t see on opening night and they all worked.
