Wednesday evening at The great Hall witnessed a seminal event in the history of opera; Operamania. Our beloved art form; courtesy of the indefatigable Opera Revue, mashed up with pro-wrestling; in the persons of Junction City Wrestling. What could possibly gio wrong you ask? Well how about Mango Mussolini showing up during the Anthem to claim his 51st state? No worries! Danie Friesen despatched him with a whack over the head with a chair.
Soundstreams’ opening concert of the season at Trinity St. Paul’s on Saturday evening featured Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered and an intriguing selection of 20th and 21st century music on related ecological themes.
A few months ago I reviewed a recording of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices which I had never heard “live”. On Sunday evening I got the chance to hear Lindsay McIntyre perform it at Arrayspace. It’s a roughly one hour long piece in which the soprano performs with two tracks that she has recorded in advance. It was really interesting to hear the nuances of two recorded voices versus live which, of course, doesn’t really come across the same way on a recording, however good. It’s the subtlest of textural difference but it’s definitely there.
Soprano
Two pre-recorded tracks
Opera in Concert opened their season at Trinity St. Paul’s on Saturday with the Canadian premiere of André Grétry’s 1784 opéra comique Richard Coeur-de-Lion. This is very loosely based on the story of Richard’s imprisonment by Leopold of Austria while returning from the Third Crusade. Richard’s man Blondel; disguised as a blind minstrel, discovers Richard’s place of imprisonment by playing a tune that Richard wrote. He then enlists the help of the Countess of Flanders, in love with Richard, (which would have come as a surprise to Berengaria of Navarre) and a Welsh knight; improbably styled Sir Williams, who his now (also improbably) running an inn in Austria and his daughter, Laurette. The governor of the castle where Richard is imprisoned, Florestan, in turn in love with Laurette, is tricked and Richard is freed to great rejoicing. (As opposed to a whopping ransom being paid!)
Viva la Mamma (also known as Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali) may be Donizetti’s most intentionally silly opera (though some of the “serious” operas rival it for silliness). It’s a farce and should be treated as such which is exactly what Maria Lamont’s production for UoT Opera, currently playing at the Elgin Theatre, does.
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.
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.
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.
So LIBLAB is back and the pick of the fruits of the latest version form Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? currently playing at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre. There are eleven sketches involving four composers, three librettists, three singers plus Keith Klassen who does all three. Also two pianists and two directors.
Opera Atelier opened a run of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (in English) at the Elgin on Wednesday evening. It’s basically the 1991 production (tweaked in 2013) and features a rather spectacular Queen of the Night. Full review at Opera Canada.
Photo: Bruce Zinger
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