Recitals at Rosedale opened the season yesterday afternoon with a program entitled A Walk on the Dark Side featuring Leslie Ann Bradley, Alysson McHardy and Geoff Sirett with Rachel Andrist and Robert Kortgaard at the piano. It was an extremely well put together program with a range of pieces on the themes of myths, legends and fairy tales.
Stefania Turkewich
Yesterday, for the second time inside a week, I found myself at a musical event celebrating a nation and a nationalism not my own. It’s a rather weird experience (1). The first had been a performance of Dvoràk’s Jakobin, not reviewed here as I was reviewing for Opera Canada, and yesterday was the launch of the CD set Galicians 1; the fourth instalment of the Ukrainian Art Song Project. This latter is the lovechild of British Ukrainian bass-baritone Pavlo Hunka. Indeed it’s almost an obsession. He has tracked down scores for 1000 largely unknown art songs by Ukrainian composers and has plans for them all to be recorded by 2020. The latest bunch are by Galician composers Denys Sichynsky, Stanyslav Liudkevych, Vasyl Barvinsky and Stefania Turkewich. The party line reason for the neglect of this music is, unsurprisingly, persecution under both Tsarist and Soviet regimes. This was mentioned in at least one of the many introductions and speeches of thanks yesterday and provoked a loud “Absolute rubbish!” from the rather scholarly looking gentleman two seats to my right. It does rather look a bit more complicated with composers holding prestigious conservatory posts but eventually falling foul of someone in the apparatus and getting sent to a labour camp for obscure reasons. I don’t think that was unique to Ukrainians.
Last Days is a staging of songs and texts from and about WW1. It’s directed by Tim Albery with music direction by David Fallis and it’s performed by students from the University of Toronto Opera Program. 
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Talisker Players’ first concert of the season was an interesting mix of material around the general theme of travel; the music neing intersperse with related texts read most pleasingly by Derek Boyes. First up was soprano Virginia Hatfield with a French baroque rarity; Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Le Sommeil d’Ulisse. This piece is scored for flute, violin and harpsichord continuo and the violin part in particular, very well played here, takes an important role. The piece, which is largely recitative, was sung stylishly, beautifully and, as always, extremely accurately by Ms. Hatfield. One quibble though. If one is expecting the audience to use the provided translation of the text it might be advisable to leave the lights up enough to allow them to be read!
Artists of Atelier Ballet with image of Meghan Lindsay as Alcina. Photo by Bruce Zinger.
Opera Atelier’s first real venture into Handel is accompanied by some significant shifts in aesthetic coupled with some slightly puzzling throwbacks. The work chosen is Alcina. It’s not Handel’s best known (or, indeed, best) but it’s a perfectly serviceable example of Handel’s Italian works for the London stage. The plot, ultimately from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, concerns the sorceress Alcina who has an illusory kingdom made up of the souls of men she has ensnared. Her most recent conquest is the knight Ruggiero. His betrother, Bradamante, disguised as her brother, Ricciardo, shows up with Ruggiero’s former tutor, Melisso. Melisso has a ring which shows things as they are, shorn of illusion. Eventually they use this to return Ruggiero to his duty and Alcina’s kingdom goes up in smoke. Along the way there’s also a sub-plot involving Alcina’s sister, Morgana, who falls in love with Ricciardo to the dismay of her lover Oronte. In the original there’s also a boy looking for his father and a lion but they got cut in Marshalll Pynkoski’s version. In fact there’s probably close to an hour in total cut from Handel’s score.
Opera 5’s latest show presents two rarely seen French one act operas. First up was Reynaldo Hahn’s 1897 work L’île du rêve. It’s one of those French officer falls in love with beautiful sixteen year old girl on tropical island and then “duty” calls and he dumps her and she dies of a broken heart pieces. The only twist is that here he offers to take her back to France but the ruling princess advises her that, away from the island, she will lose her charms and he’ll come to despise her so she doesn’t. A touch of French worldliness colouring this rather overdone plot device perhaps? The staging, by Aria Umezawa, is fairly simple though clearly a lot of thought went into how to make the intimate scenes between the principals work. There are also some rather beautiful projections involved.
Obeah Opera is an ambitious work using music, words and dance to explore some aspects of the 17th century Salem witch trials through the eyes of enslaved African women. It’s being presented by Nightwood Theatre and Culchaworks Arts Collective as part of the New Groundswell Festival. The central character is Tituba, a traditional healer and practitioner of Obeah; a traditional religion or system of magic. The narrative takes us through the transportation of the women from Barbados to be sold in Salem and their lives as domestic servants to the pivotal point where Tituba saves the life of the sick daughter of the local minister and is accused of witchcraft. Along the way we get some very high energy action from the large cast, especially where African themes are explored. It’s an all female cast and the music is all sung a capella. This was also a workshop of a work in progress intended for the arts festival at next year’s Pan-Am games so last night did not represent the finished product.
So, after the rather scattered events of the summer last night’s fundraiser for Opera 5 at Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu felt like the start of a new season. It was well attended and organised in an intriguing and fun format. Basically, Team Day and Team Night were competing to see who could raise the most money. There were four rounds in which a singer from each team presented an aria, song or MT number. The one with the most pledges got to sing his or her “show off” aria. For an additional donation, the loser got to do the same. Given that some of the city’s best young singers were performing it was to be expected that it was a good show.
Loose TEA Theatre’s new show Autocorrect Opera opened last night on the steamy outdoor patio of Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu. It’s a double bill of one acters adapted for the age of the smartphone and the text message. The first piece; Sravinsky’s Mavra was played fairly straight. The young girl Parasha does open the piece with a lament about her boyfriend not texting her and the final denouement is brought on by a missed text but otherwise the plot isn’t much altered though we get a neat updating to the home of a contemporary, status conscious bourgeois with references to the price of Ferrari tyres etc. Good performances all round with Morgan Strickland as a well sung, angsty Parasha, Greg Finney, with his characteristic power and comic timing, as the rich and rather obnoxious father. Keenan Viau, coming in at short notice for an indisposed Daniel Wheeler, was the convincingly annoying neighbour and Justin Stolz was excellent as the extremely unconvincing cross dressing pizza boy, boyfriend, maid. So, good fun but maybe not taking the theme of the evening as far as it might have gone.
Yesterday saw the 21st and final performance for this season for the Bicycle Opera Project; the conclusion of a five week, fourteen city trip around Ontario. Fittingly for an eco-opera venture it took place at the Evergreen Brickworks in a bare brick and sheet metal industrial setting.The programme consisted of seven pieces; short works or excerpts from longer ones, all by contemporary Canadian composers and scored or rescored by them for the unusual ensemble of keyboards, flute and clarinet that accompanied the singers.
First up was an excerpt from Brian Current’s Airline Icarus. They played the scene where the passengers and stewardess are expressing their hopes and, more vehemently, fears. It’s an uncomfortably funny scene and it was played here in a more broadly comedic manner than in Tim Albery’s original staging. That proved very effective as a stand alone especially with most of the audience up so close. Fine performances from all four singers with Chris Enns as an extremely angsty academic, Stephanie Tritchew flirtatiously displaying her considerable charms and some neat eye rolling from Larissa Koniuk and all anchored by Geoffrey Sirett reprising the role of the Businessman. I was reminded too what a fine score this is, even in the reduced arrangement used here. Continue reading
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