The last Soundstreams concert of the season took place at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Saturday evening. In Terra Pax: Lamenting the losses of war was curated by Anna Pidgorna. While by no means only about the Russian invasion of Ukraine that was a strong thread running through the concert.
I really enjoyed Operamania at the Great Hall last November so I was rather looking forward to Operamania II at The Parkdale Hall on Friday evening. Basically it was the same folks; Opera Revue augmented by Greg Finney, Ryan Downey and Queen Hezumuryanga plus the four wrestlers of Junction City Wrestling and much of it was the same fun material so it should have been a blast.
Maeve Palmer
I finally made it to AtG’s Opera Pub for the first time in a long time. Ladst couple of times I went it was at the Drake and that just felt so wrong! It’s now at the Tranzac which just makes all kinds of sense. It’s a decent size, it has a pretty good bar and it’s easily accessible on the the TTC. And it feels like a pub, not the lobby of a five star hotel. Also it has lots of AtG history including the original La Bohème (2011) and the 2017 remount. Stay there please AtG. Continue reading
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.
