This year’s New Year offering from Toronto Operetta Theatre is Imre Kálmán’s 1924 work Countess Maritza presented in Nigel Douglas’ English language version. It’s a pretty typical TOT offering. The work itself is a rather silly love story full of just about every cliché about central Europe bar vampires but it’s tuneful and the ten piece orchestra conducted by Derek Bate provides colour and volume enough for the Jane Mallett Theatre.
Sunday night at the Redwood Theatre featured Opera Revue’s antidote to Christmas shows, Bach Humbug! As a card carrying Grinch I could scarcely fail to attend. Plus the beer is good at the Redwood. So what did we get?
Thursday night at the Jane Mallett Theatre Soundstreams and Music Toronto presented a concert featuring the Gryphon Trio (Annalee Patipatanakoon – violin, Roman Borys – cello, Jamie Parker – piano) and others. Also two world premières.
First up was the première of Vivian Fung’s Prayer; a short piece for violin (Lara St.John) and piano. It’s a rather beautiful short piece with a melismatic beginning that gets more dramatic and then morphs to a kind of searching quality. It was followed by Amy Beach’s Invocation for violin and piano, Op. 55 of 1904. It’s a competent, melodic piece in the Romantic tradition. Pleasant enough. Continue reading
My review of Wednesday night’s concert by accordionist Michael Bridge and Esprit Orchestra is now up at La scena musicale.
Photo credit: Karen E. Reeves
The second programme in this year’s West End Micro Music Festival had its first performance at Redeemer Lutheran on Friday night. It was a mix of contemporary instrumental and vocal works with some unusual Hildegard von Bingen and some interesting lighting (Billy Wong) and staging.
First up was a set for Lenny Ranallo on electric guitar and soprano Danika Lorèn wrapped in a sheet. It was certainly different, and surprisingly effective, to hear von Bingen on electric guitar. This was followed by Danika singing Sofia Gubaidulina’s Aus den Visionen der Hildegard von Bingen with electronic backing. This sets short fragments of german text and was presented with great precision.
Next was Cassandra Miller’s Perfect Offering. This is scored for chamber ensemble (violins – Julia Mirzoev, David Baik; viola – Hezekiah Leung, cello – Peter Eom, flutes – Sara Constant, clarinets – Brad Cherwin, piano – Joonchung Cho with Simon Rivard conducting). It’s based on a peal of bells from a convent in France and is rather beautiful in a minimalist sort of way as you might expect fro something based on bells. Continue reading
Three Islands is a UoT Opera show that opened at the Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre at York University on Thursday night. The show is conceived and directed by Tim Albery who has wrapped two 20th century English language one act operas in a wrapper crafted from Kaija Saariaho’s Tempest Songbook.
Ariel’s Hail from Tempest Songbook (Saariaho): Prospero – Ben Wallace, Ariel – Aemilia Moser
This year’s West End Micro Music Festival opened on Friday night at Redeemer Lutheran with a programme titled Ecstatic Voices. It was a mix of works for eight part a cappella vocal ensemble and a couple of solo tuned percussion pieces.
There’s something a bit special about unaccompanied polyphony.that has fascinated composers ever since the (probably apocryphal) debate on the subject at the Council of Trent. I think a good chunk of it is the sheer versatility of the human voice which can do so much more than sing a tone. It can laugh, whistle, speak, grunt, chatter and all manner of other things and if the composers of the Renaissance were happy to stick to tonal singing more recent composers certainly haven’t been. Both were in evidence n Friday.
The ensemble was made up of eight singers (Sydney Baedke, Reilly Nelson, Danika Lorén, Whitney O’Hearn, Marcel d’Entremont, Elias Theocharidis, Bruno Roy and Graham Robinson with Simon Rivard conducting) all well capable of singing major solo roles. This was no semi-pro SATB group!
There can be few poets whose work resonates as widely as that of the Ayrshire ploughboy and philanderer Robert Burns. His influence has been felt from Bengal to Massachusetts and beyond. Celebrating that influence was the the point of Confluence Concerts’ Robert Burns – A Passion for Freedom curated by Alison Mackay which played at Heliconian Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings.
Today’s noon hour concert at Metropolitan United Church featured soprano McKenzie Warriner and pianist Christine Bae. Ellita Gagner was also scheduled to sing but, unfortunately, she was not able to do so due to illness. So we got a hastily reorganised programme.
The Redwood Theatre was packed on a wet Sunday evening for the latest gala from Opera Revue. This time the theme was circus with guests Kalen Davidson juggling and setting things on fire, Haley Shannon on aerial silks, Ambur Braid doing Ambur things and Walter Bowen Braid jumping through hoops. The usual gang; Danie Friesen, Alex Hajek and Claire Elise-Harris were of course also clowning it.
operaramblings 