Paolo Santalucia’s first production as Artistic Director of Soulpepper is a pretty bold choice. It’s Frank Wedekind’s 1891 drama Spring Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen) and it’s presented in English in Santalucia’s adaptation; not in the form of the Broadway musical adaptation which is probably better known in the anglosphere.
And now, as they say, for something completely different. Swedish band Louisa Lyne & di Yiddishe Kapelye are touring their show Leonard Cohen in Yiddish and it made its Toronto stop at Lula Lounge on Tuesday evening as part of the Ashkenaz Festival. It makes sense right? Cohen’s roots were in the Yiddish speaking community in Latvia and somehow Yiddish seems apt for his typical subject matter.
Every year around this time Confluence Concerts work with a group of young artists to curate and present a concert at Heliconian Hall. This year’s took place on Thursday evening. There were twenty two pieces of music on the programme; some written or arranged by members of the group with composers ranging from Henry Purcell and Barbara Strozzi to Libby Larsen and Sting. There was classical vocal and instrumental from the baroque to yesterday, jazz, fado and genre defying pieces. I’m just going to single out a few (to me at least) highlights.
Opera Queens have a six month residency at the Tranzac and they handed over their slot this Saturday to Opera Sustenida who put on their show Women in Arms. It’s a series of “chapters” each of which features a few arias illustrating a typical female role in opera e.g. sisters, lovers, queens etc. The singing is shared between coloratura soprano Nicole Dubinsky and her dramatic colleague Stephanie DeCiantis; with several duets, plus Suzanne Yeo on the piano. They also included two of their short films from the COVID era.
Wednesday’s lunchtime concert at Heliconian Hall; part of Toronto Summer Music, featured two pieces of chamber music by Beethoven and Shostakovich. The first was the third movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op.132. It was played by Justin Saulnier, Ashley Tsai, Bill Ko and Claire Park. It’s an unusual movement, especially taken out of context. It intersperses intricate, very slow passages where phrases are passed between the players without too much in the way of obvious clues for where the music is going. It’s profound and quite ethereal. These sections arr interwoven with livelier sections where the “cues” are more obvious. I would think it’s difficult to get just right at the best of times and for what amounts to a “scratch” quartet to handle it as well as they did is admirable. It feels like the sort of music that one needs to play with the same colleagues for twenty years! Incidentally, the same team is playing all four movements of this work tomorrow at noon.
Once in a while it’s good to take a chance on a concert or play that’s outside one’s normal sort of thing. Sometimes that turns out really well. For example, I’m no great fan of musicals but I loved Tiger Bride at Soulpepper. So t was in that spirit that I went to see Council at Walter Hall on Monday evening.
It’s not often that one attends a recital that is so stunning that one struggles to find words to describe it but The Golden Age recital given by soprano Erin Morley, tenor Lawrence Brownlee and pianist Malcolm Martineau at a packed Koerner Hall on Thursday evening, as part of Toronto Summer Music, was in that class. Most of the rep was drawn from the Golden Age album released last year with a few change ups. It’s basically all highly virtuosic material in the bel canto style (plus a couple of piano pieces).
This year’s mentors for Toronto Summer Music’s Art of Song programme are mezzo Sasha Cooke and pianist Warren Jones. On Monday evening they teamed up to give an American themed recital in Walter Hall.
My review of William Christie and Les Arts Florissants’ Charpentier double bill that opened TSM 2026 on Thursday evening at Koerner Hall is now available at bachtrack.com.
Photo: Lucky Tang
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Toronto City Opera opened a two show run of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld at (a very steamy) Trinity St. Paul’s on Saturday evening. It was auspicious in several ways. It, technically, marked the 80th anniversary of the organisation, which apparently had its origin at Central Tech in 1946 followed by many years as a TDSB Adult Ed programme at the Bickford Death Trap Centre. But really, TCO as we know it began life with the split from TDSB in 2018 and what’s notable about this latest production is that it’s their first with orchestra; the North York Concert Orchestra to be precise. And that really is a milestone!
