Toronto Operetta Theatre’s last show of the season is Johan Strauss II’s A Night in Venice with the libretto lightly updated by Guillermo Silva-Marin; who also directs. It opened on Friday evening at the Jane Mallett Theatre. Loyal fans will not be disappointed. It’s a typical frothy, colourful TOT offering with chamber ensemble and singing that ranges from very decent to really rather good.
Opera Atelier opened a production of Debussy’s symbolist opera Pelléas et Mélisande at Koerner Hall on Wednesday evening with direction by Marshall Pynkoski and choreography by Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg. Let’s start by making it clear that this is not an attempt to present the opera as it was seen or heard when it premiered in 1902 or even to try and reproduce that aesthetic with more modern technology which, I think, is what’s usually meant by “Historically Informed Performance” (HIP). The extent to which any recent Opera Atelier production is HIP is a discussion perhaps left for another day.
Canuck Cantatas is the first live show from Against the Grain Theatre since, I think, 2023. It’s good to see what was once a staple of the Toronto indy scene in action again. This show is three short monodramas. Each features a soprano singer who is also either composer or librettist and all are based around the story of one, Canadian, character. The accompanying ensemble consisted of piano (Spencer Kryzanowski), string trio (Julia Mirzoev, Russell Iceberg, Peter Eom) and bass clarinet (Brad Cherwin). Since the show was at the Redwood everybody was miked and amplified with speakers all around the performance space which was an interesting effect.
Soundstreams’ penultimate concert of the season at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Thursday evening featured “love songs” from a range of (more or less) contemporary Canadian composers under the overall direction of David Fallis.
On Saturday night I saw a double bill of works, inspired by memories of Hong Kong, for percussion, electronics and live video at That Art Box black box theatre on Dupont. It’s quite a large, very black space and for this show there were video screens on two adjacent walls wit the audience placed diagonally across from the corner between them. There were speakers all around and a drum and some other props in the middle of the space. The performers for both works were Thomas Li on stage acting and percussing withTim Roth and Fish Yu in the control booth doing live video and sound.
Back in the dark days of December 2020 Tapestry Opera and New Music Concerts collaborated on a filmed version of Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs featuring soprano Xin Wang. Thursday night, a quite different version opened at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre. It also features Xin Wang and is directed by Michael Mori but this time saxophone has been swapped out for a tap dancer Rumi Jeraj which fits with the body percussion elements of the score.
Handel’s Theodora may just be his best oratorio, even if nowadays it’s better known in fully staged versions. On Friday night it was presented by a combination of the Schola Cantorum, The Theatre of Early Music and assorted guests under the direction of Daniel Taylor at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene.
I have a very ambiguous relationship with Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. Britten’s music I love and there’s a pretty dramatic story (albeit nonsense historically) trying to escape from Ronald Duncan’s weird Christo-prophetic and somewhat overripe libretto. Centaurs casting their seed among the stars? Anyone? So I was most interested to see what Anna Theodosakis would do with it in her production for UoT Opera currently playing at Harbourfront Centre.
My second Walter Hall DMA recital on Tuesday featured one of Toronto’s most interesting, and least predictable, musical talents; countertenor Ryan McDonald. Having seen Ryan perform as Dido and as a rather menacing nightmare figure in Rebecca Grey’s Bus Opera (as well as in several more conventional capacities!) I was expecting the unexpected. The presence on stage of a drum kit rather reinforced that.
So, no big surprise that the opening number was “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Saint Saêns’ Samson et Delila (with Ivan Estey Jovanovic at the piano). It was some gorgeous singing as long as one wasn’t distracted by the shiny back outfit topped by a transparent rain cape (really sorry there are not more photos!). Then after a quick change to something that looked a like a very shiny vampire impersonating a boy in the lower school at Eton, we got a lovely account of John Dowland’s If my complaints could passions move which was bookended by electronics and some vocalising into the piano. This was followed by a straightforwardly lovely version of Schumann’s “Der Nussbaum”. And so to “Dido’s lament”. I did mention that I’d seen Ryan sing the role some years ago in Opera Q’s gender bending Dido and Belinda. Continue reading
The first of two DMA recitals I attended on Tuesday in Walter Hall was given by contralto Nicole Percifield. It’s always interesting to hear this comparatively rare voice type; especially in an interesting and well thought out programme.
The first half of the programme was songs scored for contralto, piano and viola. It’s intriguing because the range of the viola is very similar to that of a contralto. In this case Grace Kyungrok Moon played viola with Joel Goodfellow at the piano for Brahms’ “Gestillte Sehnsucht” (from Zwei Gesänge, Op. 91). The text is by Rückert and it’s definitely at the romantic/sentimental end of the spectrum. It was pleasant to listen to with Nicole’s rich lower register brought out nicely. Continue reading
operaramblings 