Category Archives: Performance review – miscellaneous

Handel’s Alexander’s Feast

Posted on by
Reply

Amanda-Forsythe-Credit-Arielle-DonesonHandel’s Alexander’s Feast is an oratorio to a text by Newburgh Hamilton based closely on an earlier Dryden St. Cecilia’s Day ode.  The basic plot is that Alexander is feasting in captured Persepolis with his mistress Thaïs.  Inflamed by the music of Timotheus he decides to burn down the city in revenge for his fallen soldiers.  Cecilia descends from Heaven and substitutes music for the king’s barbarous intentions.  There are solo and choral numbers and a couple of duets and there are two concerti; one for triple harp representing Timotheus’ lyre playing and an organ concerto for St. Cecilia.  It’s all quite tuneful and interesting if not as inspired as some of the better known oratorios.

Continue reading →

Plug in

Posted on by
Reply

I went to see Esprit Orchestra’s show Plug in at Koerner Hall last night.  I don’t often go to purely orchestral concerts but Jenn Nichols was dancing and I have this feeling that I ought to listen to more contemporary music.

The first piece; Symphonie minute by José Evangelista, is a highly compressed “symphony” in four movements.  Each movement only lasts a couple of minutes and it uses a large orchestra.  It’s intriguing that in such a short time each movement has a clearly defined character.  It’s quite dissonant but very easy to listen to and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Dress Rehearsal 2

Continue reading →

There are no words

Posted on by
1

Krystyna Zywulska was a Polish resistance fighter who was captured and sent to Auschwitz.  She took to writing lyrics and setting them to an eclectic mix of tunes as a way of coping with the horror of the camp.  Somehow this was pleasing to the powers that be and she found herself with a relatively soft job processing the possessions of arriving prisoners.  She survived to write a number of memoirs about her experience.  The story is oddly similar to that of Zofia Posmysz, who inspired Weinberg’s The Passenger.  This time the opera is Another Sunrise; a collaboration of Gene Scheer and Jake Heggie commissioned by Music of Remembrance and premiered in 2012.  There’s a companion piece by the same team; Farewell Auschwitz, which sets some of the Zywulska texts, in translation and reworking by Scheer, to a wide range of the kinds of music that Zywulska used.  Last night both pieces got their Canadian premiers in a production by Electric Bond Ensemble at Beth Tzedec directed by Aaron Willis.

IMG_1043

Continue reading →

Tap:Ex Forbidden

Posted on by
1

Tapestry’s new experimental show opened last night at the Ernest Balmer Studio.  It’s a “mash up” of Persian classical music and hip hop around the theme of The Child and The Stranger, who turns out to be Lucifer.  Lucifer seeks to show the child that authority and rules serve only to allow the powerful to abuse and punish others.  This is explicated in six short scenes using the various musical resources and styles available.

TapExForb-photobyDahliaKatz-1433_preview

Continue reading →

I due Figaro

Posted on by
Reply

Mercadante’s I due Figaro(1) is one of a number of operas that continue the story of Figaro, Almaviva etc into a third instalment.  It sets a libretto by Felice Romani based on Les deux Figaro by Honoré-Antoine Richaud Martelly.  It premiered in Madrid in 1835 but was lost for many years before being rediscovered in 2009 and given at the 2011 Ravenna Festival.  Yesterday in got its Canadian premier at VOICEBOX:Opera in Concert.

iduefigaro

Continue reading →

GGS Vocal Showcase in Mazzoleni Hall

Posted on by
Reply

It’s that mid point of the academic year when the GGS puts on a recital programme that features a fairly full selection of the available singing talent at the Conservatory.  This means one sees everything from first year undergrads to singers in the final stages of a master’s degree, who may already be singing professionally, so it’s a constant exercise in recalibration.  It wasn’t helped last night by the fact that I had serious TTC problems causing me to miss the first three numbers on the programme plus feeling a bit frazzled for the rest.  So, in no particular order, I’m going to write about what I particularly enjoyed.  Omission should not be over-interpreted.

Continue reading →

All the Strauss

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday’s Amici Ensemble concert in Mazzoleni Hall was an all Richard Strauss program featuring an array of guests.  First up was the Duett Concertino where regulats Joaquin Valdepeñas (clarinet), David Hetherington (cello) and Serouj Kradjian (piano) were joined by violinists Timothy Ying and Jennifer Murphy, violist Keith Hamm, Theodore Chan on bass and Michael Sweeney on bassoon.  It’s a program piece in which the clarinet represents a princess and the bassoon, a bear, who eventually, of course, transforms into a handsome prince.  There are lots of dance rhythms from the strings and some sly quotations from Der Rosenkavalier along the way.  It’s fun and it was very well played.  I almost wonder if it was too smooth.  The bear certainly seemed very suave and his transformation was not terribly abrupt.  Still, bear!

amici

Continue reading →

Russell Braun and Carolyn Maule at Mazzoleni Hall

Posted on by
2

8b440c574ff48428011373a5639b_GalleryYesterday’s Mazzoleni Songmasters concert featured Russell Braun and Caolyn Maule in a generous and varied program anchored on Schumann’s Dichterliebe; a setting of sixteen poems by Heine.  It was framed by three Mendelssohn songs and a varied and intriguing second half program.

Russell is a singer at the height of his powers.  He has a lovely instrument and perfect control of pitch, dynamics and tone colour.  He’s also a sensitive and musical human being.  Throw all that at text and music as rich as Dichterliebe and the result is inevitably quite wonderful.  One could just luxuriate in an emotional journey through the highs and lows of romantic love and a physical one up and down that magical river, the Rhine. The Mendelssohn was rather lovely too.

Continue reading →

Toronto Operetta Theatre’s Candide

Posted on by
1

I’ve been familiar with Voltaire’s satirical novella since I was a teenager and have reread it many times but I’d not seen the Bernstein operetta/musical version until last night when it opened at Toronto Operetta Theatre with, I think, the original Lillian Hellman 1956 book though a later reduced orchestration (I’m guessing on that).  I was very curious because it’s not obvious how one might turn Voltaire’s sequence of drily narrated, utterly absurd scenes into drama.  The answer turns out to be to insert the author as a spoken word narrator linking scenes and play it straight though the two mile high cliffs and sheep get lost in the wash.  Fair enough.  It works pretty well.  The whole thing is reasonably true to the spirit of the original though in places, especially in the musical number, it’s definitely tailored to a 1950s Broadway sensibility.

Beeler lifted

Elizabeth Beeler with company and Tonatiuh Abrego as Candide

Continue reading →

Christmas improv

Posted on by
Reply

Wednesday evening saw the last Whose Opera is it Anyway? of the year in the new digs at Bad Dog Comedy Club.  Last month’s line up of singers; Rachel Krehm, Michael York, Gillian Grossman and Amanda Kogan, were joined by Adanya Dunn and an elf.  Natasha Fransblow was at the keyboard again.  Greg Finney; the thinking man’s Don Cherry, MC’d.  The format was as ever; a line up of improv games with audience input.  Highlights included the Three Minute Messiah, Adanya giving her mum a dildo and the deep, dark depths of Keith Lam’s Instagram account.  And beer.  And Greg’s suit.

The news is that LooseTEA now has a regular slot for WOIIA.  In the new year you will be able to catch them at Bad Dog on the third Sunday of the month at 9.30pm.  It’s a better venue than the old place and it’s a fun way to spend an hour and a half or so.

woiia-dec